David M. Shribman: New Hampshire won't go quietly into 3rd place

CRAWFORD NOTCH — Two hundred years ago this month, a ferocious storm moved through these mountains, prompting a massive landslide that killed seven members of the Willey family and two hired workers. More than two decades ago, the Great Stone Face, the beloved rock formation above Franconia Notch that was the symbol of this state and the inspiration for scores of 19th-century paintings and the soaring oratory of Daniel Webster, collapsed. Last week, the Democratic National Committee took steps to end more than a century's tradition of New Hampshire holding the first presidential primary, delivering the prize to South Carolina.

Nothing if not resilient in the face of sadness and crisis, New Hampshire — shaped by massive geological forces that created the hills and glens of this state, buffeted by economic forces that created and then demolished what once was the largest cotton textile complex on the globe — has hewn to tradition, nurtured a culture of independence, adjusted to powerful gales of change, even endured extreme winds (234 mph, most powerful recorded in the Northern Hemisphere) and bracing temperatures (wind chill minus 109 degrees Fahrenheit).

Now it's girding to fight for the life of its political culture.

One asset: The Republicans show no sign of moving their 2028 primary. One response: Guided by a Granite State law that requires the state to hold the first presidential primary "seven days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election" — to the mind of politicos here, Iowa's contest, a caucus, doesn't count — the Democrats likely will hold their primary before South Carolina's anyway.

With the support of GOP Gov. Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire Democrats will dare the party to refuse to seat its delegates in the national convention. But those delegates were never the point. In 2020, the last time the party had a contested presidential nomination, New Hampshire's 24 delegates constituted less than 1% of the total. Moreover -- little known fact -- the state wasn't in compliance with party rules for all but two of the 10 contests between 1980 and 2016.

"There's no reason we have to listen to this decision," said former Secretary of State William Gardner, who for decades fought to keep New Hampshire first.

The impact of New Hampshire always has been to test presidential candidates in an environment of highly engaged voters. It has provided a signal to the country of the legitimacy of some candidates (Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, Bernie Sanders) and the weakness of some highly touted others (Nelson Rockefeller, President Lyndon Johnson, Edward Kennedy, Bill Bradley). Often candidates who lost (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden) were strengthened by the test they endured. The primary illuminated the weakness of at least one winner (Edmund Muskie) — an affirmation of the wisdom of the state's poet, Robert Frost, who in "Two Tramps in Mud Time," wrote, "The sun was warm but the wind was chill."

This state has held the first primary since 1920 (winner: Herbert Hoover, who wouldn't be elected president for another eight years) and has been established as an important political test since 1952 (the first of two Eisenhower victories).

The key to the cult of New Hampshire is the intimacy of the process, conducted in living rooms, libraries, church basements — a reflection of the truth that Thornton Wilder, who set his 1938 Pulitzer-winning play "Our Town" in the fictional community of Grovers Corners, New Hampshire, identified when he wrote, "In our town, we like to know the facts about everybody." It is indelibly marked by the aggressiveness of the voters who attend meet-and-greets and town meetings, as former Gov. Nikki Haley, accustomed to South Carolina politics (and shivering — it was only November!) discovered as she entered a Hooksett, New Hampshire, meeting site in 2023.

"If you don't put the people who want to be president in a room with informed people who ask them tough questions," said former state Attorney General Thomas Rath, "you take the vitality out of the electoral process."

This primary has produced enormous color — the discomfort that Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio showed when a farmer thrust a live chicken into his arms in 1952, the failure of Gov. George Romney of Michigan to strike the single remaining pin in a frame of bowling, and the bull's-eye Gary Hart scored in an ax-throwing competition. But it has a damaging distinction for Democratic policymakers: It's 91% white, only 2% Black (Democratic Party: 18%) and 5% Hispanic (Democrats: 16%).

South Carolina's great assets: Biden's dramatic 2020 emergence to contention after placing fifth in New Hampshire came there. And a quarter of its population is Black at a time when Democrats want to solidify their ties to that important voting bloc.

But New Hampshire's new outlaw status among Democrats, who are proposing that it vote third, 17 days after South Carolina (which went first in the 2024 contest, though it didn't matter because Biden was an incumbent whose nomination seemed inevitable) and a week after Nevada, may actually appeal to some candidates.

If, for example, a candidate such as Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who would be expected to do well in South Carolina, contests an early New Hampshire primary and does well, he could solidify his position as a putative frontrunner. A progressive candidate who likes to defy convention such as, say, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, could campaign here alongside her ally Sanders (winner of two primaries and a familiar figure across the state border) and have a breakthrough to catapult her into serious contention that she's unlikely to win in South Carolina.

"I have faith in the Democrats of New Hampshire," John H. Sununu, a former Republican three-term governor, a White House chief of staff, the father of a governor and a senator and the man deservedly credited with rallying Vice President George H.W. Bush to his comeback 1988 victory over Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, said in an interview. "They will gather together, and with the force of the law about being at the head of the parade, we will have a good first-in-the-nation primary."

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David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.