ANCHESTER, N.H. - In 1979, Gordon Humphrey, a newly minted member of the US Senate, went to Washington with a style that was often described as shoot-from-the-hip. He wielded twin pistols of social and fiscal conservatism. He feared little and fought hard.
He crusaded against the ''vile holocaust'' of abortion, campaigned against government spending and congressional pay raises. He advocated a naval blockade of Cuba to stop the spread of communism.
Every once in a while, one of the bullets he fired would ricochet off the Capitol's marble pillars and hit him in the foot.
He was quoted as calling battered women's shelters ''indoctrination centers.'' He said, ''Homosexuality, that is the practice of it, is immoral, and the consequences to our society of that immoral practice is AIDS.'' He criticized a woman with young children for running for Congress.
''I've mellowed,'' Humphrey said in an interview last week. ''I'm 20 years older. I was the youngest US senator when I was elected. I was 38, had never held public office. Not only was I young, I was unseasoned, totally green, wet behind the ears. A bit too brash and rash for [my] own good.''
Now, Gordon Humphrey wants to be governor of New Hampshire, and he has already spent $1.76 million in his bid to unseat two-term Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen. Humphrey has loaned $1.2 million of that sum to his own campaign, much of it from his wife's inheritance.
His friends say this is a kinder Humphrey who has put away his pistols for good. His foes say he is the same old gunslinger, who has holstered his guns just for the election season.
Although Shaheen easily won reelection two years ago and was on Al Gore's list of vice presidential candidates, some polls have shown Humphrey to be within striking distance of victory.
Analysts say Shaheen is politically vulnerable because of the unresolved issue of how to fund education in the state. Humphrey says voters can trust him to solve the problem without an income, sales, or capital gains tax.
In 1987, then-US Senator Warren Rudman said of his fellow Republican Humphrey: ''People call him a loner. ... He doesn't always believe that compromise is the best route. He tends to be uncompromising, but that's not necessarily a weakness.''
But Rudman points out that the office Humphrey is seeking today is profoundly different from the US Senate, and he thinks Humphrey will adjust.
''He will see he has to work solutions out with a legislature,'' Rudman said. ''I think that Gordon, within the bounds of his own principles and beliefs, [knows] you have to be more flexible as a governor than as a senator.''
Ralph Hough, a Republican-turned-Democrat and former state Senate president, is suspicious of this new image.
''I guess I can't argue that his ads would try to cast him in that light,'' said Hough. ''But I know the man. And he may have the best media people in the world, but I don't believe them.''
Over the years, Humphrey's name and the term ''antiabortion'' became virtually synonymous, and the association continues. In January, he participated in a memorial service at a Concord recycling center where fetal remains once were found.
Two years ago, Humphrey backed Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry in his run for Congress. Humphrey disavowed that support this year, after learning, he says, that Terry has advocated the execution of doctors who performed abortions.
In the US Senate, Humphrey led the battle to secure US backing of anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan. He battled for term limits and, true to his word, did not seek a third term in 1990.
During his Senate tenure, Humphrey moderated his views on issues like aid to Central America and the environment. He distanced himself from some right-wing political action committees and split with conservatives over an attempt to ban flag burning, calling it a threat to free speech.
''I think people change, people grow,'' Rudman said.
Democrat Dayton Duncan served as chief of staff for Governor Hugh Gallen. ''If he has changed,'' Duncan said of Humphrey, ''that change seems to have coincided with his announcement for governor.''
As a US senator, Humphrey was ''five or six degrees farther right'' than his 1978 campaign led voters to believe, Duncan said, adding that he expects the same pattern to hold once again.
''I think he would be the most ideological governor since Meldrim Thomson,'' Duncan said. ''I don't think that. I know that.'' Thomson, who served from 1973 to 1979, was a flamboyant, antitax conservative who once advocated arming the National Guard with nuclear weapons.
''He's wrong,'' Humphrey said flatly. ''My role model would be John Sununu - and some melding of Steve Merrill, who was Mr. Smoothie.''
Humphrey, a former commercial airline pilot, is upright in pinstripes, with white hair and blue eyes.
His gubernatorial bid - after one term in the New Hampshire Senate and eight years in private business, including consulting for a subsidiary of chemical giant W.R. Grace & Co., exporting ATM parts, and supporting business ventures in Russia - is focused largely on the debate over how to solve the school funding problem.
''It's clear that the next governor's plate is completely occupied, almost completely occupied, by school funding, school reform, and fiscal housecleaning, fiscal management,'' Humphrey said.
''With respect to social issues, I don't really have much of an agenda,'' he said. ''Because the office of governor doesn't really lend itself to much of that.''
But social issues figure into any budget debate. The Department of Health and Human Services is the state's biggest line item. Recent governors have signed or vetoed bills relating to abortion.
Humphrey says he would advocate for parental notification for abortion and for a ban on so-called partial-birth abortions. He has said he would work against any bill similar to Vermont's civil unions for same-sex couples.
Foes say his maverick nature will not lend itself to crafting a plan to pay for education. But Humphrey says he understands the need to build consensus.
''As governor, one is not going to make dramatic changes,'' Humphrey said. ''I'm no longer the young man in a hurry, I guess.''
Humphrey has taken the state's famous pledge against income, sales, and capital gains taxes. He wants to fund education within existing revenues. He frequently raises the specter of an income tax and says he does not want New Hampshire to resemble what he calls ''Taxachusetts.''
Humphrey's political enemies are ''trying to paint him as some sort of dinosaur out of the '70s,'' said a friend, Tom Rath.''I don't think that's an accurate portrayal of the person I saw running for governor this time or an indication of how he might govern were he to become governor.''
But Hough urges, ''Look at the record.''
The Shaheen camp has wielded the record and statements Humphrey made over the years.
As for his 1980 comment about battered women's shelters being ''indoctrination centers,'' Humphrey said that, while he took responsibility for the statement, he believed it to be from remarks written by a staff member that Humphrey entered into the congressional record without reading.
Humphrey says he has always believed ''that protection of one's most basic rights to live unmolested, unassaulted is one of the most fundamental functions of government.'' He says he is now more aware of domestic violence.
Though he voted against the Americans with Disabilities Act, Humphrey says he understands the needs of the disabled and would vote in favor of ADA.
Fatherhood has changed him, Humphrey says. He and his wife, Patricia, have two sons, 12 and 15.
''Raising children certainly teaches you patience,'' he said. ''And it teaches you to acknowledge the differences between people ... and to look for the brighter side of human nature.''
