Gary Hart: New Hampshire; Where the Little Guy Can Win

Where the Little Guy Can Win
Gary Hart
12.10.2005

My many New Hampshire friends have been in contact recently to seek help in defense of the New Hampshire primary, a subject I know something about. To honor their friendship and loyalty and, once again, to show my respect for the voters of New Hampshire, I submit these thoughts.

For the Democratic Party to place large population states ahead of New Hampshire would be a tragedy.

I say that not only as the proud winner of the New Hampshire primary. I say it more as a concerned citizen. New Hampshire is human scale. It enables unknown candidates such as I was to meet people face-to-face, to present their ideas, and to have those ideas tested by real people in real living rooms in real towns.

We all know what has happened to politics in America. It is corrupt. It is corrupted by money, interest groups, and mass media. Every political force in the past three decades has been directed toward bigger, more expensive, more media-oriented campaigns that avoid, wherever possible, candidate exposure to everyday people with individual concerns they want their president to address.

Since the South Carolina Republican primary in 2000, it is my belief that George W. Bush has not appeared before any audience representing a cross-section of America. All his public appearances for the past five years have been before hand-picked audiences of supporters guaranteed to applaud his every utterance before national television cameras. When was the last time Bush had to answer a question from a main-street American?

I say to my party: Don't do this. Don't move New Hampshire into the background just to provide larger playing fields for political consultants and interest-group candidates. A new candidate from a small state with no money, however interesting, provocative, or challenging his or her ideas are, will not stand a chance.

New Hampshire gave me a chance. According to one revisionist political theory, I ''peaked" in New Hampshire in 1984. That theory avoids the fact that, after the voters of New Hampshire gave me a chance, with the help of tens of thousands of volunteers and small donors, I was able to go on and win all the New England states, eight of nine Super Tuesday states, 11 of the 12 last primaries, including California, and end up with 25 primary and caucus victories and 1,200 loyal delegates at the last contested nominating conventions in more than 30 years.

Unless the Democratic Party wants to limit its pool of candidates to those with tens of millions of dollars in the bank, largely from interest groups, with highly paid political consultants and with multi-million-dollar television campaigns, the nomination process must begin in a human-scale state like New Hampshire. It is the last and only chance the ''dark-horse" candidate has to show what he or she is really all about and what they have to offer.

One would have to be more cynical than I to believe there are those in power in my party who do not want to see people like me have a chance, people who have not already made their deals with interest groups and powerful contributors, people who really do have new ideas and fresh approaches, and perhaps even uncorrupted leadership to offer. I choose not to believe this. But if the Democratic Party puts the big states ahead of New Hampshire, I, and a lot of other people, may have to reconsider.