A New Shade of Granite
New Hampshire's voters are changing, and the candidates are scrambling to adapt
EXETER, N.H.-When Nancy Hill moved here 40 years ago, the town's claim to be the founding site of the GOP didn't seem at all ironic. "There were about 10 Democrats in the town," she says.
But sitting in downtown's Green Bean on the Water restaurant, Hill can point out the changes all around her. The Green Bean itself, adorned with pictures of cats and a sign reading, "Well-behaved women rarely make history," used to be an auto parts store, while across the street, Serendipity, a clothing boutique, replaced a plumbing supply shop. The young professionals who pass in and out of the funky cafe don't look much like the millworkers and shoemakers who populated the town in the '60s. And Hill, who now lives in nearby Stratham, can no longer count her fellow Democrats on her fingers.
In November, 64 percent of Exeter's straight-ticket votes went to the Democrats, contributing to a political reversal in a state that has been a Republican stronghold almost as long as there have been Republicans. The sea change is the result of many factors, from the unpopularity of the president to local politics. But perhaps the most consequential is a demographic shift in the state's notoriously idiosyncratic voters, who cherish their "first in the nation" primary, slated for January. As the Democratic and Republican candidates assemble in the state for debates, they must figure out how to woo this new New Hampshire, and fast.
With its "Live Free or Die" ethos that disdained everything from an income tax to a mandatory seat belt law, the Granite State remained conservative long after the rest of New England turned deep blue. But Election Day saw Democrats take control of both houses of the state legislature for the first time since the Grant administration. Democratic Gov. John Lynch cruised to re-election, while the state's two U.S. representatives, both Republicans, were ousted. "In five to 10 years, it'll be a solidly Democratic state like the rest of New England," predicts Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
The seeds of the change, experts say, can be found as far back as 1964, when Barry Goldwater's ultraconservative campaign for president alienated many liberal Yankee Republicans. Democrats like Lynch have become increasingly savvy about avoiding the tax land mine, and state Republicans tend to be apathetic about the social agenda of the national GOP. The party nationally has "lost its way in a lot of ways," Dan McGuire, chairman of the state's libertarian Republican Liberty Caucus, told a nodding group of party faithful last month. "What gives me the right to tell you how to live your life?"
But the shift to the left has accelerated since the early 1990s, when a recession collapsed the construction and real-estate markets, and the state lost 50,000 jobs. New Hampshire transitioned into an increasingly high-tech, service economy, with top employers now including Fidelity Investments in Merrimack and British defense manufacturer BAE Systems in Nashua.
Access. The new jobs, along with comparatively modest home prices and easy commuting access to Boston, have turned southeastern New Hampshire into a mecca for former residents of other New England states and the mid-Atlantic cities. Over 200,000 people migrated into the state between 2000 and 2005. At last count, the state's population had grown to 1,314,895, an 18.5 percent increase from 1990 and the fastest growth in New England.
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