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.
The transplants helped drive down already low levels of religiosity; just 24 percent of New Hampshire residents attend church regularly, a low matched only by Vermont. These new New Hampshire residents tend to be highly educated and economically elite. And they vote heavily Democratic, adding strength and numbers to homegrown concerns about healthcare, the environment, and particularly the war in Iraq, which nearly 40 percent of state Democrats listed as their top issue this spring.
The muted objections to the state legislature's approval of civil unions-the governor signed the bill last week-is one sign of the state's deepening liberalism. But the change doesn't mean New Hampshire's politics will look like the rest of New England's, experts say. Tax remains a dirty word, and the Democrat-controlled state Senate last week voted against requiring seat belt usage, leaving the state as the only one without such a law.
Nor should the wave of new residents be seen as a total loss for the GOP. Though Republicans complain about the liberal influence of Massachusetts transplants, New Hampshire's border with the Bay State is dotted with towns where conservative sentiment has been reinforced by angry middle-class refugees of "taxachusetts." The influx includes Bill Cavanaugh, who moved to Salem, N.H., after retiring from the Marines. Asked whom he expects to back in the primary, he gives an answer that would make a lifelong resident proud: "Richard Nixon. He's the only one who can't do any trouble."
For the politicians who are debating at St. Anselm College this week-the Democrats on June 3 and the Republicans on June 5-calculating how to succeed in the shifting landscape of state politics is made even harder by the growing number of independent voters, who can choose to vote in either party's primary. The volatile group has doubled in number since 1992, and their ranks are larger than either party's registered voters. In 2000, independent voters turned to the Republicans, handing Sen. John McCain a win over George W. Bush, the establishment candidate. In 2008, polling suggests nearly 70 percent will be picking among Democrats.
Leaders. For Republicans, the change lets the candidates play mainly to their base, which perhaps explains why the GOP front-runners have done little to soften their stances on the war in Iraq. McCain still has strong support from his 2000 run and has been ahead in some polls, but former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has been the leader in others. "[Romney's] very popular among people for whom making fun of Massachusetts is a hobby, because he took on some of the institutions there," says Dean Spiliotes, a politics professor at St. Anselm.
For Democratic candidates, whose primary will most likely include both party loyalists and many of those independents, the strategy seems more complicated. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton-who shows a lead in polls-is focusing on traditional Democratic voters, "working middle-class families," according to a staff member in the state. But Illinois Sen. Barack Obama scores high marks with the state's new Democrats-those with high incomes or advanced educations and those who have recently moved to New Hampshire.
As for John Edwards, whose 2004 campaign for the Democratic nomination stumbled in New Hampshire, it's full speed ahead with a populist agenda. At a town hall meeting in Keene last month, he laid out his wish list-billions of dollars for education in developing countries and universal healthcare. He even suggested mandatory public service. Not exactly "Live Free or Die." "If you're looking for careful, I'm not your guy," Edwards said to a skeptical questioner. "I'm not going to be careful. I'm going to be bold."
Bold, yes. Political suicide? Hard to say. For now, the Granite State's political character isn't etched in stone.
An interactive map on state primaries and politics is atwww.usnews.com/primarymap
This story appears in the June 11, 2007 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.