In N.H. campaigns, there's logic to the logistics

By Jill Zuckman, Globe Staff, March 14, 1999

DERRY, N.H. -- Thomas D. Rath, the veteran political activist, keeps a chart listing 85 voting precincts that contain 67 percent of the Republican vote in this first-in-the-nation primary state. He has a map with push pins, too, showing where his candidate, Lamar Alexander, has been, and where he still needs to go.

"You've got to go where the votes are," said Rath. "We want to be there as regularly as we can."

It was no accident, then, that Alexander launched his second bid for president here last week, in this large, prosperous Republican stronghold where turnout is traditionally high. In 1996, Alexander placed third in Derry, with 1,055 votes, following Bob Dole and Patrick J. Buchanan. This time, Alexander is determined to do better.

While voters may think the candidates are traversing the state indiscriminately, every campaign stop at a quaint village, sprawling suburb, or urban center is the product of calculation by political strategists.

"It is part science, part art," said David M. Carney, a longtime New Hampshire political strategist unaligned in the Republican primary.

How candidates structure their time in New Hampshire cannot be overvalued. For example, a candidate who visits Bedford, next door to Manchester, is likely to see more Republican voters than if he or she travels three or four hours to conservative Coos County, which borders Canada and has only 3 percent of the state's population.

"It is the most important part of the campaign in terms of management because time is the one resource you can never get back," said Carney, who worked for Dole in 1996 and former President George Bush in '88 and '92.

The strategy varies only slightly between Democrats and Republicans. More than half the 747,367 registered voters in the state live in just two of the 10 counties -- Hillsborough and Rockingham -- in the southern tier. And that's where the candidates, Republican and Democratic, spend the bulk of their time.

So when Vice President Al Gore takes his first campaign trip to New Hampshire tomorrow, he will appear in Manchester, the state's largest city, and the one with the most Democratic votes.

In fact, out of 15 trips here since 1994, the vice president only ventured twice out of the three main population counties -- Rockingham, which includes Portsmouth; Hillsborough, which covers Manchester; and Merrimack, which claims Concord. Once, Gore visited Laconia to address the New Hampshire AFL-CIO, a key constituency; and once he traveled to Lebanon to attend the Democratic State House barbecue and address the Dartmouth Medical School's bicentennial symposium dinner.

When strategists chart their candidate's logistical course through the Granite State, there is a bible of sorts that they use. The New Hampshire Manual for the General Court includes the voter registration, voter turnout, and vote totals from every election in every voting ward.

That's how Rath can tell not just where the Republican voters are, but where to find Republican voters who might consider themselves moderate and might be attracted to Alexander, based on how they have voted in previous elections.

To be sure, many other factors go into scheduling. For example, campaigns look for events that will draw sizable crowds or important constituencies, and for settings that will reinforce the candidate's message and look good on television.

On March 26, Gore will head to North Conway up in Carroll County's White Mountains for the annual Grover Cleveland dinner, a chance to mingle with Democratic activists there, despite its out-of-the-way location. And Alexander's kickoff was held at the Derry Village School, a self-proclaimed "21st century learning community," to underscore his platform of bettering education.

Candidates also tend to spend their days in one area of the state. Rath said he doesn't like his candidate to waste time in the car, when he could be talking to voters. Also, traveling from east to west is no easy feat due to the indirect layout of the roads.

At the same time, campaigns want to hit as many media markets as possible during a single day, visiting communities with daily and weekly newspapers and attracting television coverage.

"If you're on the front page of the newspaper, you can be everywhere the newspaper is delivered," said Michael Whouley, one of Gore's top strategists. "And as long as TV is covering you, you're reaching the voters. But in New Hampshire there's no substitute for personal contact."

Despite the similarities in their approaches to the state, Democrats and Republicans are drawn to different spots. Many Democratic primary voters tend to live in Nashua, Keene, and the seacoast area, while Republican primary voters cluster around Salem and Derry.

Richard Winters, a Dartmouth College government professor, said he rarely sees candidates in Hanover and the Upper Valley unless they are giving a speech at the school.

"They're not up here for two fundamental reasons: The voters are in the southeastern section of New Hampshire, and the news media outlets, television and print, are in the southeast," Winters said. "It's not just that that's where the voters are, you spend less time getting from one voter to the next."

Then again, sometimes there is no logic at all to where a candidate will go and what he will do once he gets there. On primary election night in 1992, Bill Clinton had tried everything to save his candidacy from allegations of adultery.

But insomnia had kicked in, and the candidate was wired with energy. Rather than pace his hotel room, Clinton spent the night visiting bowling alleys, diners, and other all-night establishments in and around Manchester just to shake the hands of night owls.