n today's menu, no campaign spin or punditry, just the voices of real voters. They came out on two raw January nights to size up the insurgent candidates in the Feb. 1 New Hampshire presidential primary - Democrat Bill Bradley and Republican John McCain.
Phyliss Corrigan, an independent from Gilford, was at the Elks Lodge in Concord last week to take a look at Bradley, for the third time. She has heard McCain twice. Bradley was asked about voter turnout, marijuana use at home, the environment, and his vote against bombing Iraq during Desert Storm. Corrigan said she sees Bradley as ''an honest man'' with a vision who ''really wants change.'' She likes his approach to health care coverage. Both Bradley and McCain talk a lot about campaign finance reform, which is high on her agenda. But Corrigan, whose husband spent 28 years in the US Army, wants to hear more from Bradley about defense spending and veterans' benefits. That is McCain's territory. His personal history, as a US Navy pilot in Vietnam and as a POW, is at the core of his campaign.
''That's why I'm still a fence-sitter,'' said Corrigan, who is trained as a nurse. ''If I combined both of them they would meet every need.'' On Texas Governor George W. Bush, she says, ''I can't get a feel for the man.'' And Vice President Al Gore, as Corrigan sees it, has had his chance for the past eight years in Washington. Magazine publisher Steve Forbes has some good things to say, but is ''not viable,'' she said.
Susan Frisbee of Concord voted Republican in 1996 but won't this time, she said. ''They are not talking about the things that are important to me,'' including education and health care, she said as she waited in the Bradley crowd.
''I'm tired of incrementalism,'' she said at one point. ''I look forward to somebody with big ideas.'' She thinks who can win is not relevant at all.
''I actually resent that issue,'' she said. ''I think we should vote for who we think is the best president.''
N.Y. couple take part in a N.H. tradition
Dressed in their matching Irish knit sweaters, Andrea Kolyer and her husband, Steve, of New York City were just ''cruising around'' on their regular late-January drive up this way when they saw something about the Bradley town meeting in Concord and decided to drop in. They were awed by their glimpse at up-close-and-personal presidential politics.
''Oh, I love this,'' said Andrea Kolyer, who was amazed at how ''intimate'' the setting was there in the Elks Lodge, with a standing-room-only crowd (of about 100 or so) in a small town that was otherwise closed down for Sunday evening. She's in the market for an ''anti-sleaze'' candidate and has been leaning toward Bush, but now she says she will think about Bradley.
''This is wild,'' her husband said as they were leaving the Elks Lodge.
She did not like answers she heard
At the Amherst Middle School, consultant Linda Fraser, an independent, came to size up McCain last week. She says what she has heard about him may be ''too good to be true.'' She voted twice for President Clinton (with no regrets) but thinks Gore is ''too weak on matters of any substance.'' She has no interest in Bradley. Her work often takes her to Houston, and she doesn't like what she sees there under Bush's leadership, she said. Her second choice is Forbes, whose tax reform plans she finds appealing.
McCain fielded questions for an hour, on Amtrak subsidies, Internet taxes and regulation, long-term care, foreign policy, war crimes, the IRS, foreign policy, health care, education and military benefits. Fraser made her decision. ''I'm not voting for him,'' she said firmly. ''He wants to rule the world.'' He's riding on his military coattails, Fraser said, which is a way of life that promotes restraint and stifles creativity.
Arthur Lewis of Amherst hasn't voted for a Republican since Ronald Reagan in 1980; Lewis is a former air traffic controller, one of those fired by Reagan when the controllers went on strike in the 1980s. Lewis says he's still burned up about it, but is drawn to McCain. ''I believe in his integrity,'' Lewis said. And he likes what McCain says about getting rid of special-interest groups in Washington - the ''Gucci'' shoe lobbyists, as they are described when Bradley speaks. Lewis would also like to hear more from Bradley, but at least in the Feb. 1 primary he thinks he will vote for McCain ''to give him a chance.''
Jon Hanc, 21, of Amherst, and Jason McConville, 21, both college students, stood out among the family-oriented, middle-age crowd that came to hear McCain. These two are interested in issues like Social Security and foreign policy. Most people their age, they said, have other things than politics on their mind, like getting a job or just getting through school.
''I personally don't think anyone cares anymore,'' said Hanc, a senior at the University of New Hampshire. When the economy is good and life seems to be humming along, Hanc said, their attitude is, ''Why worry when there's nothing to worry about?''
Cancer survivor talks to McCain
D onna Parker of Milford caught McCain's attention toward the end of the session. ''I'm a cancer survivor,'' Parker began. That's not an announcement she makes every day in front of a crowd, Parker said later, and ''it was scary.'' She wanted to know what the government could do to help families like hers, who had to pay out thousands of dollars for chemotherapy drugs that she says her insurer refused to cover.
McCain offered her his ''deepest sympathy'' and began to talk generally about the impact of serious illness. Then he abruptly interrupted the dialogue to inform the crowd that the gray-haired photographer milling around the microphone, pointing a big zoom lens at him, was former White House photographer and Pulitzer Prize winner David Kennerly. It was an awkward diversion. Parker kept her smile while McCain joked with the audience. He then finally returned to her and spoke at some length about more funding for cancer research.
Parker, who works for the American Cancer Society in Manchester, said the interruption threw her off momentarily, but she liked McCain's honesty. She is still ''very undecided'' and is thinking about backing Gore because of his health care positions. In the meantime, she said, she has been invited to a lunch for McCain later in the week, so ''I'll hit him up again.''
McCain experience counts with veteran
Another longtime Amherst voter, an elderly man in a neat flannel shirt and sweater vest, didn't get his chance to ask a question. He wanted McCain to assure him he wouldn't lie if he got to the White House. He and McCain have something in common, he said. A retired engineer, the man, who would not give his name, said he was a 17-year-old soldier in the US Army Air Corps in 1945 when he helped liberate the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau. ''I saw what happens in prison camps and it is so horrendous,'' he said. McCain spent five years in the POW camp known as the ''Hanoi Hilton,'' and the Amherst man knows what it takes to survive that. ''It tells me that guy has a lot of fortitude ... You can't back him off,'' he said of McCain. The man's second choice is Bush, but he wants to tell him to ''get down to particulars.''
Disparity is found in prices of drugs
The high cost of prescription drugs for seniors and the disabled on Medicare has been a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail, and a study released last week by a coalition of public interest groups added fuel to the debate.
A random survey of 30 New Hampshire pharmacies found that Medicare consumers, who pay out of pocket for their drugs, are charged more than twice what the drug companies charge HMOs and insurance companies that run prescription plans for big groups and can negotiate lower prices. About 14 million Americans who get Medicare benefits because they are old or disabled do not have prescription drug coverage, according to the report, which was prepared by Public Citizen in Washington, D.C., New Hampshire Citizen Alliance for Action and the New Hampshire Association for the Elderly.
The study covered 10 drugs used most often by seniors to treat various illnesses, including osteoporosis, high cholesterol, ulcers and diabetes. For the drug Prevacid, which is taken for ulcers, New Hampshire seniors paid 135 percent more over the counter than the price paid by big groups. For Zocor, which is commonly taken for ulcer treatment, the price was 246 percent higher at the drug store.
A bill now pending in Congress would provide a prescription benefit for Medicare recipients and require drug companies to charge pharmacies the same low price for Medicare recipients as they do for other big groups.
Humphrey survey encourages him
News from the stateside election circuit: A survey of 503 New Hampshire voters showed Governor Jeanne Shaheen beating former US senator Gordon Humphrey 47 percent to 39 percent. The gubernatorial poll was commissioned by Humphrey - who is buoyed by the results. His consultant, Dave Carney of Hancock, says the numbers confirm Shaheen's vulnerability if she seeks a third term.
The poll was conducted Dec. 13-15 by The Tarrance Group of Alexandria, Va., and has a margin of error of 4.5 percent. Shaheen was rated favorably by 63 percent of the voters polled, and unfavorably by 31 percent, numbers that satisfied her supporters considering the tumult over the education battles in Concord. Humphrey was rated favorably by 41 percent and unfavorably by 16 percent. However, 24 percent of the voters surveyed had never heard of Humphrey, who last ran for statewide office in 1984, and 19 percent had no opinion about him.
So what does all this mean? Eleven months before the election, before either Humphrey or even Shaheen or anybody else for that matter has officially entered the race? While Shaheen's performance in office is hashed out routinely in the media, little has been said so far about Humphrey's voting record, either in the US Senate, where he served from 1979 to 1990, or in the state Senate, where he served for one term, 1991-92. He has been out of elective politics since then. Shaheen has been busy trying to ward off critics of her statewide property tax as well as members of her own party, angry at her stand against the income tax.
Shaheen's legal counsel and longtime aide, Judy Reardon, said Humphrey is at his high point now because voters ''have forgotten what an extremist he was'' when he was in public office.
Recently, Humphrey has criticized the state Supreme Court for its decisions in the Claremont education case and attacked a state official for ''bullying'' a tax collector and for treating local officials like ''brainless robots.'' He also called for a halt to all new tollbooths, which he called a ''mortal danger'' to drivers. He has described Shaheen as timid, unimaginative and wishy-washy.
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