Transcripts For CSPAN QA History Of The New Hampshire Primar

Talks about the primary history and the state of politics there. After that, Prime Ministers questions from the british house of commons. Forum withs iowa president ial candidates talking about money in politics. Host joe mcquaid, longtime publisher and editor at large of the New Hampshire union leader. We will spend an hour talking but the history of the New Hampshire primary. Before we get into history, lets talk with the current one. Michael bloomberg is not competing in iowa or New Hampshire in the early primaries and committing lots of money later on in the process. What does that do to the relevance of your primary . Guest there are all these questions about the relevance of the New Hampshire primary, dating back to its mundane beginnings. People are not going to campaign, they are going to spend a lot of money or they are not. The short answer is i dont know. There are 10 or 11 serious candidates for the democratic nomination, and he is blowing by the early ones and thinks he can get street cred by buying it, which i think is probably not going to work for him. Even if heently that does not win the nomination, he will spend money to help whoever wins the nomination get elected. But i think that just underlines, i have all the money in the world, i am going to spend it. People asked about the relevance of the primary when these televised debates, which i hate to call them debates because they arent, they are reality shows. And the dnc in cooperation with the various networks have already sliced the field down based on money and whole numbers, right and poll numbers. The most recent one will have six people in it. They have had fewer or close to that in the past when there are more candidates than that. I think that hurts the relevance of the primary nominating process entirely, not just New Hampshires role as the first primary. Guest as host as you said, there is a debate about whether these first primary states should continue to have the role they do. Make the case for our viewers. Why should they continue . Guest first, and you corrected yourself about the primary and the caucus. Say,e governor likes to iowa picks corn, New Hampshire picks president s. I love that. I was stuck up on New Hampshire a few years ago. Caucus, what is that . A bunch of people in a living room . That doesnt count. Now even the candidates say it counts. Relevance of the early states is the ability of candidates to come in and tried to convince voters to vote for them. I dont know if i have answered your question. Host why is it the demographics and the counterarguments are to it continuing. Guest i think you cited bloomberg and a lot of money, and i cited the networks. I think it is the first and last place where a candidate is upfront and personal if he or she chooses with voters, and voters get to kick the tires on them. Having said that, that is not always the history of the New Hampshire primary. I hate to be the naysayer, you got to be there, you got to shake hands, jimmy carter did it. In 1952, which was the first time that the names were on the ballot, the guy who won on the republican side was not in the state, did not campaign here, wasnt even in the country, eisenhower. The same thing happened in 1964, with a republican who won the primary not only not in the state or in the country, he wasnt on the ballot. He won on a right in on a writein. New hampshire is always different. I think it appreciates being first, and people turn out. It is one of the highest turnout states in primaries in the country. Wide and not representative of the country, then with the exception of bloomberg who has not cited that as a reason, why are all these other candidates coming to New Hampshire . Why arent they just saying, it is too white and i am not going there . Host your secretary of state is the longestserving secretary of state in the country. How important has he been to the process . Guest he has been important because he gets it. And the law was changed years ago to have the secretary of state and just the secretary of decision, and he or she makes it when they determine that nobody else is going to have a similar event before them. He is important to it because he has street credibility. He is a democrat, and he actually was challenged in his last election. He was elected by the state legislature, and a really partisan democrat tried to make it into a really partisan office, and bill gardner hung on by the skin of his teeth. But he is honest as the day is long. He knows the history, and he thatt do anything to mire history or give the idea that this is anything other than a straight shooting event. Host political relevance a side, how much does the primary mean to New Hampshires image and its economy . Than economy wise, other pete dupont was the guy who built the wmu are tv studios wmur tv studios in manchester because he spent so much money in the day. With 11wise, even they spentdidates, some time here, sometime in iowa, i have not seen a recent dollar figure on how much that is. I am sure the state would say it is worth 8 billion. But it is a point of pride for the people. The local public Radio Station in New Hampshire did a podcast this year called stranglehold. And it is a series about the New Hampshire president ial primary. But it is very negative about the primary, and i am wondering, all the people in New Hampshire who support and listen to that station, what are they getting for their buck . It was astonishing to me. I listened to two episodes and stopped listening because i was no longer interested. Maybe they said some good things about it. The unveiled one of first towns to vote, does not have a lot of people in it and they have to find people to have enough to vote. This time, they got a fifth guy to come in and register. He happens to own the mothball hotel, and he is trying to revive the place. He moved from another town just to be the fifth guy in there. There are other early towns that have done it in the past. But it is pride. You wont get maybe this is the exception but you wont get a lot of people in New Hampshire dissing the New Hampshire president ial primary because they know how much it has meant in the history of the country. Host in addition to the traditions, the tiny towns voting first, a couple other things that distinguish it is the low filing fee. In past years, it has brought dozens of candidates into the process. Does that still happen and does it impact the process . Host guest it may be heftier now. Supreme runs every few years. The man with a boot on his head. His campaign has something to do with ponies for everybody. He manages to come up with the dollars. It used to be hundreds of people on the ballot. All kinds of wood, people who just wanted their name on the ballot. I think the secretary of state did bump up the fee to something a little more credible. But you still get a lot of offthewall candidates who are here just to get a little attention, are very upset if a newspaper or the tv or the radio doesnt give them the same attention as it gives others, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Host the other thing that distinguishes it is that it is an open primary, that you can cross party lines. How does that impact the ultimate outcome . My latehe independence, buddy don tibbetts was the Statehouse Bureau chief for many years, and he did not like that term, independents. He called them undeclared voters. It was not like they were in the independent party. But they were at least a third of the electorate. They can walk into the polling station on election morning and say, i want a democratic ballot, and vote for the democrat. Backcan come right out, go up to the people at the Registration Office and say, switch me back to undeclared or independent. They can do it on the republican side. Beent know if there has any really good analysis of how much of an effect that was. But i think you can see it over the years in certain races. Barry goldwater, mr. Conservative republican, versus Nelson Rockefeller, new york eastern establishment. They lost to a guy with a writein, and i think that was because people were upset with the choices, and people who may have not had a particular Party Affiliation decided they were going to do that. Was certainly on antiwar vote and 1972 on antiwar vote. You have people going on one side or another as a result of that. Is the 64t trump million question. Just what has been trumps effect on the electorate . He has the Republican Party in his pocket, but are a lot of undeclareds upset with trump going to go into the democratic primary to vote for one of those people, hoping they can beat trump . Or are they going to go in a republican field and it is pretty much governor wells, the only one running on that side. He thinks he is going to do better than i think he is going to do. I think the republicans are going to go for trump. The trump people and a lot of undeclareds will go democratic because they want to pick somebody who they think has the best chance of beating trump. Host another mainstay of the primary has been your newspapers editorial. Famously in the last go around, you did not support donald trump as a candidate. What are you going to do this time . Trump first, i honest to god did not know when i compared him with the grownup two in back to the future that the screenwriter of that movie had based the grownup biff character on donald trump. I didnt know it. It was just kismet. What are we going to do this time . I think we will endorse on the democratic side. We have done that in the past. We endorsed Joe Lieberman years ago. Side, i dontcan think it is worth much because the trump people have the party, etc. We are not going to endorse trump. Dont like if you trump, there is another guy in the race, bill wells. I dont know if that will be an endorsement. I think the real play is on the democratic side, and it is a year where there are so many candidates that even the conservative Union Leaders voice might have some difference. Host speaking of bill wells, this time around on the democratic side, there are at least three candidates with geographic proximity. How much has proximity mattered to New Hampshire voters . Guest i was asked a question the other day, and i dont think a lot. I think Bernie Sanders won the primary in 2016 because he wasnt Hillary Clinton, and it should have been a wakeup call to the democrats that maybe she wasnt the best candidate. He was known to them. Ed muskie won the democratic primary in 1972. He was from the neighboring state of maine, but he did not win it to the expectations that he was supposed to. I am not sure how much paul bill paul tsongas beat clinton by in 1992, but i dont think it has a lot of play. Youve got warren, youve got to vow, youve got wells, youve got sanders. There are a lot of ways to split it up. I dont think it makes any difference. Host you have been covering the primary as a journalist for all of your career. What is the very earliest New Hampshire primary memory you have in your life . Guest goodness. Primary, i dont know. General election is 1960, when my mother said they should have run eisenhower again. He would have beat kennedy and nixon. But probably 1968. I was in college. It was mccarthy versus lbj on that side, nixon on the republican side, and william loeb and the paper were in nixons corner that year. On the democratic side, i dont think i was as aware of it then as i am now. But the guy who ran Eugene Mccarthys campaign had started our sunday newspaper with my dad in 1946. A gentleman named blair clark, who was later president of cbs news and editor of the nation magazine. How those two guys politically ever got along they didnt for long. But mccarthy did not win in 1968. Johnson beat him on a writein. But mccarthy beat the expectations game, which is what this is all about. Reallyessional memories jump more i didnt cover a lot of 1968, but in 1972, i was the editor of the sunday paper and mr. Muskie pulled up in front of the paper. Host we are going to talk about that. I want to start with the 1952 race. Guest why not start at the beginning . Host one thing we should note, New Hampshire is celebrating its centennial, 100 years of this. When did it actually become what we know today, the relevance . Guest we are celebrating more than our centennial. We are celebrating the centennial of being first in 1920. Andoined the fray in 1916, the guy who owned the union to do with had a lot the whole primary system and was a buddy of teddy roosevelt. 1948 was the last time the candidates names were not on the ballot, and that was changed by a couple of people on the legislature and governor adams, sherman adams. I dont know if when he did it he had in mind getting eisenhower to run. But even then, the modern primary, the names were on the ballot, but that didnt mean anything because the delegates names were on the ballot, and those were often separate. Host confusing. Guest confusing as hell. I am not, truman said, going to run in the primaries. What the hell are the primaries about . But it made a difference. Host in 1952, candidates were on the ballot for the first time. You started to tell the story about the gop side with eisenhower, who was serving as nato chief in europe. Talk to me about the relevance of that on the democratic side with president truman and the republican side. Guest like a good interviewer, you ask a question and i ignore it and tell you a different answer. Host [laughter] ok. Guest i dont want to forget that trivia that few people know is eisenhower came to New Hampshire before the president ial primary in 1948, at the invitation of the partner of the paper. Leadere at the union speaking series. He was in uniform. He spoke in front of city hall. Finder was trying to get him to run for president. Loeb in 1948 was for thomas dewey. Eisenhower goes back to the military and writes a famous letter that is that military people should not get involved in politics, im out. 1952, he was not out. But on the democratic side, truman had completed his first elected term as president and had won that stunning race in 1948 against dewey. And it was assumed he would run again. Hisid not consent to having name put on the New Hampshire ballot until just a little bit before the election. Primaried, which is a word that has become a verb now. He was primaried by a senator, who a lot of people outside of cspan do not know. And he campaigned in New Hampshire wearing a chrome skin cap. This was before Davy Crockett appeared on disney. He was not really a senator. He was a very sophisticated guy. He had gotten some National Visibility because of some racketeering hearings his Senate Committee has held. He came up here and beat harry truman. In a several weeks announced he was not running for president again. Host before we move on, why has Harry Trumans stock going up so much in the years when he was clearly not possible in the time he was in office . Guest i think that happens with most president s. It has happened with nixon in terms of his worldview and getting us out of entanglements in vietnam. Will it happen with donald trump . That one is a real question mark to me. But harry truman was a plainspoken guy. Hadot in trouble because he some people in the cabinet who were making personal gains out of their positions when 1952 rolled around. He was not as tough on communism as you needed to be in 1952. But his stock has gone up since then because in the closing days of world war ii, a guy who had not been plugged in on anything on fdrs people until fdr died, then they said, harry, here are the keys to the place. By the way, we have something called the abomb, and truman had to deal with that and deal with the end of the war and deal with a warravaged europe. I think historians now, especially with mcculloughs great work, assess him higher than he was at the time and higher than my brother assesses him. Host that is important. In 1968, we were in the throes of vietnam. We did not know how that year was going to unfold with the king assassination, the kennedy assassination, the tumult was conventions. But in the primary, what happened in 1968 . Guest kennedy wasnt in yet. He had been talking about it. Host robert. Guest correct. What happened was that kennedy saw what Jean Mccarthy Gene Mccarthy was able to do in terms of young people. A lot of young people from out of state coming in because mccarthy was clear about it. He was forgetting out of vietnam, he was the antiwar candidate, he was a bit of a poet, and people came in and slept on peoples floors and basements and walked around campaigning for mccarthy. Up of fewn, who ended weeks afterwards not running at duplicatenk it was a of what happened to truman in 1952. Truman loses the primary and several weeks later says, im not running. Johnson, even though it was a writein, it was well organized by the state democratic party. He gets more than 40 of the vote, which is unheard of. Johnson sees that, and he is not running. So that was huge. On the republican side, it was pretty much nixon. He had a couple of people who were toying about it. Rockefeller was toying about it. Did not get in. Romney did get in, famously took a tour of South Vietnam by the generals. Since the mood was changing, said, i guess i was brainwashed, in saying he was for the war. So nixon rolled up a substantial victory. You mentioned editorials in the union leader. Loeb was running the paper at that time and was famous for his front page editorials about many things, including president ial politics. And i always remembered the alliterative headlines of his editorials. And