The torch is passed

By Jill Zuckman, Globe Staff, May 23, 1999

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- These are tumultuous times for the New Hampshire conservative. Taxes are on the table, the Legislature has passed a gay foster parents bill, and the long-resisted Martin Luther King holiday is expected to become law this session.

Now, after more than half a century with a Loeb at the helm of the Manchester Union-Leader, the state's most prominent conservative voice, the torch is being passed from Nackey S. Loeb to Joseph W. McQuaid, who has moved from editor to president and publisher. McQuaid insists the Union-Leader's staunch ideology will not wobble.

Nevertheless, the 50-year-old, third-generation newspaperman will be watched closely. He is taking over a storied newspaper from a legendary family in a state, and a newspaper business, that are changing quickly. He inherits a paper with a national reputation as kingmaker in the Republican primary, but at a time when conservatives in his own state worry about the fate of the political philosophy the Union-Leader has so long championed.

"I think we're going to hell in a handcar," declared Jim Finnegan, the retired chief editorial writer for the paper. "This whole crusade to keep government as close to the people as possible is in serious jeopardy."

At the moment, though, the more immediate question is who among the Republicans crisscrossing the state will get the golden nod. McQuaid said he is still waiting to see how the field shapes up. But he also hints that there could be trouble ahead for Texas Governor George W. Bush and that longtime favorite Patrick J. Buchanan, endorsed in 1996, may have lost his patron.

"I don't know what George W. is, whether he is conservative or moderate," McQuaid said. "So far, he's played a typical politician's game and really not said much of anything on the issues. Maybe he'll turn out to be a conservative, maybe he'll come up here and turn out to be right of the Union-Leader."

On Buchanan, who called Nackey Loeb his political godmother, McQuaid noted that the commentator had lost most of his organization to other candidates.

"I don't know what's going on with Patrick J. Buchanan," said McQuaid, whose wife, Signe, is not organizing for the candidate as she did in 1996.

Yet that rebuff is mild by Union-Leader standards. After 18 years as president and publisher, Loeb, who is 75 years old and in frail health, has retired. Her husband, William Loeb, bought the paper in 1946 and ran it, with a pen that was pointed and frequently poisonous, until his death.

He dubbed Richard Nixon's secretary of state, "Kissinger the kike," and he called Martin Luther King Jr. "a pious, pompous fraud." He wrote that the "only good Communist is a dead Communist," and avidly supported Senator Joseph McCarthy. He called Buddhists and Muslims "heathens" and "infidels." And he repeatedly described Robert F. Kennedy as "the most vicious and most dangerous political leader ever to appear on the US scene."

William Loeb's legacy continues to reverberate today. He fathered the anti-tax pledge, which most politicians needed to sign to get elected. Governor Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, signed the pledge, and spent much of this legislative session fending off attempts to institute an income tax to pay for public schools.

Nackey Loeb, heir to the Scripps-Howard publishing fortune, was just as opposed to taxes, big government, and communism as her husband, and just as quick to take a politician to task. Her words, however, were written with a slightly softer tone.

Buchanan cited her endorsement in 1996 with helping him upset Bob Dole in the New Hampshire primary. George Bush, on the other hand, could never catch a break.

When Bush was vice president, she wrote: "We certainly don't want someone who is either so stupid or so dishonest as president of the United States."

As McQuaid takes the helm, few in New Hampshire actually expect to see the newspaper veer from its colorful course.

The newspaper, with a daily circulation of about 63,000 and a Sunday circulation of 85,000, has its detractors.

Political observers say the Manchester Union-Leader frequently does a better job tearing down a candidate than building one up as it continually weighs in on campaigns, elections, and the issues of the day.

"When they make up their mind that they don't like a candidate and they editorialize six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 days in a row, that has a terrific cumulative effect -- especially in the Republican party," said Steve Duprey, chairman of the state GOP.

Nevertheless, candidates avoid the newspaper at their peril.

"You cannot emerge as the dominant candidate of the right without their endorsement," said Thomas Rath, a veteran Republican strategist who is advising Lamar Alexander.

"If the Union-Leader were to endorse George W. Bush, this race would be over, stick a fork in it, he would be the nominee of the party," said David M. Carney, a Republican political consultant.

On the other hand, if McQuaid decides to endorse Dan Quayle, Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer or Buchanan, that candidate would likely emerge as the alternative to Bush, said Carney.

McQuaid said that he, his father, B. J. McQuaid (the Loebs' first editor-in-chief), and William and Nackey Loeb have all shared a similar philosophy over the years.

"There aren't many conservatives left and we have to stick together," said McQuaid, who began working part-time for the Sunday News as an office boy at age 15 and became editor of the Sunday paper at 22.

McQuaid is troubled by the current movement toward more taxes, but he thinks a change is coming and that lawmakers should beware. He's also dismissive of the suggestion that the King holiday or the gay foster parents' legislation represents anything new in New Hampshire.

"I think the state has always been more liberal than it is perceived from outside the state," he said. "It's always been more liberal than the Union-Leader would like it to be."