New Hampshire is best known as the home of retail politics, a place where an unknown presidential aspirant can shake enough hands and reach enough voters to emerge as a serious national figure without spending millions of dollars.
BUT THE STATE'S reputation for down-home politicking is being seriously challenged by this year's governor's race. Three wealthy Republicans running against one another in the GOP primary are about to set a record that makes most New Hampshire residents gag. Campaign spending reports filed this week reveal that together they are heading toward the $13 million mark. That means the per-vote cost in the Sept. 10 primary will exceed the sums lavished on the voters by such high-dollar candidates as publishing magnate Michael Bloomberg in New York City's mayoral race and investment banker Jon Corzine in his successful bid for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey.
Craig Benson, the cofounder of Cabletron Systems, is the biggest spender with $7.3 million of his own money invested in the race so far. The other two contenders-former U.S. senator Gordon Humphrey and Bruce Keough, a state senator-fortunately have rich wives who apparently don't mind their ambitious husbands draining the family fortune to keep up with Benson. Humphrey is in for $3.5 million so far; Keough has spent almost $1.6 million of his wife's inheritance. The pool of voters in tiny New Hampshire is not large enough to justify such mammoth expenditures. "We should just put our hands out," says the owner of a bed-and-breakfast in the town of Wilton, where my husband and I spent a few days vacationing.
Some people in the state think the lavish spending is an anomaly, a freak of politics prompted by Benson's entry into the race. Others see it as a last gasp before the campaign-finance reform passed by Congress goes into effect. Neither theory holds up under scrutiny. What's happening in New Hampshire is more a harbinger of things to come than most would like to believe. First, the new campaign-finance law does nothing to curb the expenditure of money by millionaire candidates as long as they spend their funds on themselves. Surveys show that voters don't mind; they figure a candidate who's got the wherewithal to pay for a campaign will be less susceptible to being bought by special interests. Second, it's expensive to advertise on television, even in a small state like New Hampshire. Stations don't offer discounts to political candidates; if anything, broadcast rates rise during campaign season.
Benson started buying television time a full year before the election. And he didn't just buy the local stations; he went for the bigger-beaming broadcasts out of Boston so he could blanket the state. The last time New Hampshire residents felt so stalked by political advertising was when millionaire publisher Steve Forbes spared no expense in his 1996 bid for the presidency. Those voters who turn off the television still can't escape. The candidates are churning out so much bulk mail promoting themselves that New Hampshire residents practically need a forklift to deal with the volume.
Benson has never been elected to anything, but he got a hankering to get into politics and figures he can buy the governor's office like he buys everything else. His finance chairman until recently was former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, a man with such expensive tastes that he had a $6,000 gold and burgundy shower curtain installed in his Manhattan apartment. When Kozlowski got indicted for fraudulent business practices this summer, Benson quickly dropped him from his campaign and acted as though he barely knew him. It was a virtuoso performance reminiscent of the way President Bush distanced himself from former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay.
Four years ago, the New Hampshire governor's race cost less than $3 million, and that was Republicans and Democrats, primary and general elections combined. What attracts Benson to the job? He has no demonstrated history of public service. When he speaks of government, he denigrates it as though it's there mainly for the joy of cutting it back, like some out-of-control vine.
Benson's candidacy has accomplished the rare feat of uniting the fiercely conservative Union Leader newspaper and the progressive Concord Monitor. The Union Leader appealed to Republican primary voters to stop Benson: "No one really knows what Craig Benson's politics are. Having supported Democrat Jeanne Shaheen in the past, he is now claiming to be a conservative. He is an unknown entity...." The Concord Monitor sized up Benson's campaign message this way: "Make nice to Christian evangelicals. Bash gay people. Say you're pro-life. Hug a gun." But the paper is equally skeptical about who the real Benson is, and they don't want to find out. "He got rich as a corporate chieftain, but how does that qualify him for the state's highest office? Voting for him is like hiring a plumber to wire your house."
Driving through New Hampshire, political signs sprout along every highway and byway like a bioengineered form of fall foliage. None offers any clue about which candidate is a Republican or a Democrat. In a state with the slogan on every license plate, "Live Free or Die," no candidate wants to risk offending potential voters by openly advertising a party affiliation. Independents are the fastest-growing group of voters in the state, and they can decide on the day of the primary whether to vote for a Republican or a Democrat.
Jogging one morning with my radio going, I heard former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani in a paid ad warmly endorse Republican Sen. Bob Smith, who is locked in a contentious battle for his party's nomination. Giuliani said Smith has the best prescription-drug plan he's ever seen and that he has distinguished himself as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He didn't mention that Smith is a Republican or that Smith is so conservative on most issues that he left the GOP for a time because it wasn't far enough to the right for him. Giuliani, a social progressive, wouldn't normally be touting Smith. But everything in New Hampshire is relative. Smith's challenger, the affable Rep. John E. Sununu (son of the former White House chief of staff during Bush I), is seen as the more conservative of the two, and Giuliani gets points from party stalwarts for wading into the fray no matter which side he picks.
