New hampshires role is to be the primary, that is first of all the primaries in the nomination process and thats a spot on the calendar that we held now for about a century and its grown in importance over time as the president ial nomination process became more democratic with a small d. New hampshire and iowa Work Together to basically narrow the field for the rest of the country. New hampshire primary has been the first in the nation for a century and it actually happened by accident. Two accidents. The Fortunate One is for us. One is that New Hampshire decides to hold its primary in conjunction with town meetings which occurred in the springtime and that wasnt to be first, that was essentially to save money, to have multiple elections on the same day. But when we started the president ial primary, we were not first. There were a couple other states ahead of us but remember the time, it wasnt the case that primaries decided who the nominee was going to be. Even though some states held primaries in the early 20th century, it wasnt the case that the candidate who won the most primaries became the nominee. That was still in the hands of party bosses. In other words, being first didnt matter all that much. A couple other states decided not to do the primary when they were doing it, so New Hampshire by default up in line and became first. They were first for decades and no one thought much about it until the middle to late 20th century when there were reforms to the nomination process that made primaries much more democratic, again with a small d. And made that first in the nation slot so important because of all the Media Publicity that the winner of that first primary received. Weve been first for a century, but only important perhaps for half a century, give or take. A primary is a type of election thats been around now for more than a century in the United States and dates back to the progressive era of american politics. It was an attempt by reformers to take Party Nominations for president , for us senator, any kind of Party Nomination for office out of the hands of party bosses. Who were seen to be corrupt and to put it in the hands of the people so essentially, the primary was seen as a vehicle of reform because reformers thought that it would make politicians accountable to the ordinary rankandfile members of their Political Parties and not elites. So New Hampshire took up the primary during the progressive era and has kept it ever since. The amount of attention that such a small state that is huge and its the envy of the other 49 states. Well, 48 because iowa certainly gets its share of attention as well but we get a huge amount of attention relative to our small size and the small number of delegates that we have to give out to the candidates. For example, in the 2016 nomination process, we were seeing candidates left and right, week in, week out for more than a year prior towhen the actual nomination primary was held. So to be in New Hampshire during a president ial election season, if you are a political junkie or activist, its a wonderful place to be because you can see any candidate that you would like , they are going to be coming to town sooner or later. The first thing we traditionally do is they go to someones living room. They began with a socalled house party. It might be a local activist, either democratic or republican who holds a party in their house, maybe their living room or their backyard if its summertime and the candidate comes and what the host does is brings together as many people as she can and typically when its months earlier, they are part of the activist class of New Hampshire voters, not so much the ordinary voters but the activists who breathe and eat politics and would come out to see a candidate on a july night in the backyard the mosquitoes, just to get a glimpse of the upandcoming candidate. Thats where they start and they start small and they say can we fill a living room with people who want to see this candidate and traditionally they build outward from that so they will try to fill say a School Auditorium with perhaps 100 or 200 people. What theyre hoping is that by the end, say a week before the primary that theyve got several hundred people coming to each of their events that they are holding a week before the primary with people spilling out the door so the object is to build slowly and to be late. New hampshire demographically is noteworthy for a couple things. One is that its a very white state. There are very few minorities in New Hampshire so and second, we are not a very religious state compared to other states inthe union. New hampshire voters tend to go to church less and to say im a member of a particular religion , left, and we can to be more highly educated than the nation at large so those are a few things that stand us apart on the rest of the country. New hampshire voters have a weakness, have an attraction to candidates whose intent is to upset the apple cart. And not to perform politics as usual. We saw a good example of that in 2016 where Bernie Sanders on the democratic side, donald trump on the republican side very much different on a number of policy issues but both with the same attitude of elites dont know what they are doing. Then send me to the white house and i will change b as we know it. Time and again, in New Hampshire primary history, you see candidates have a certain attraction to voters whether its Jean Mccarthy or George Mcgovern back during the vietnam war era, whether its Ronald Reagan on the republican side, gary hart in the 1980s, Going Forward to the present day, barack obama even. Weve seen examples where New Hampshire voters are attracted to these candidates who are reform minded candidates who are policy as usual candidates. Success for a lot of candidates means absolutely everything. That a New Hampshire primary could be there window to essentially competing for the rest of the nomination season, we saw that with Bernie Sanders. He lost in iowa but one in New Hampshire and given the momentum and publicity that he gained from that victory, he was able to compete with Hillary Clinton basically through the rest of the nomination season. He didnt win but New Hampshire gave him that momentum, that publicity that enabled him to continue and certainly for donald trump on the republican side. He also lost iowa but New Hampshire basically set him on the right path for the nomination. So New Hampshire does a couple things. One is it gives candidates if they succeed here enormous amounts of free publicity, enormous amounts of Media Attention and thats only become more intense as say, Cable Television networks have become increasingly enamored with the nomination process and with every event every week, its like the super bowl every week so thats one thing and second, New Hampshire gives candidates barometer of how they are going to appeal to different segments of the National Electorate. Not every segments because as i mentioned earlier, we dont have many minority voters so we are not a good judge or barometer of that but other types of voters, we are a good barometer so donald trump for example, what was striking to me when the results were coming in that evening were not only his margin of victory but that he was appealing to a very broad crosssection of republicans so not just workingclass white voters but just basic ordinary republicans. One of the chief criticisms is that New Hampshire is not representative of the american electorate as a whole. That we are not a true microcosm in the sense that we dont reflect thediverse city , racially, ethnically of the nation as a whole, thats number one. Number two is basically the argument, why not give someone else a chance. There are lots of other allstate out there for example. That could host a primary, why should New Hampshire always get the lions share of attention every four years. Im three is that the New Hampshire primary is past its prime. Because it becomes more of a National Contest and so why give New Hampshire as much exposure as its getting when really it should be a National Electorate deciding the contest though those are some of the chief criticisms. New hampshire sees itself as the guardian of a more personal type of politics. Thats been lost in the era of Cable News Networks and National Political advertising and super pacs. That we still see ourselves as a place where a candidate can rise up from being a Virtual National unknown to becoming a contender for the nomination. And you can go back to say jimmycarter , the one term governor of georgia who came to New Hampshire not on paper at least and especially friendly place for a southerner and yet he was able i virtue of his hard work to campaign, win the primary and use that to vault himself to national prominence. We can point more, more recently to say john casey, the governor of ohio basically lost in the crowd for months and months during the nomination process while donald trump, jeb bush, marco rubio got more attention but john basically said im going to make my stand in New Hampshire. He did a lot of very small events, i remember seeing him two or three months before the primary at a local social club in manchester. He was speaking to maybe 100 people, 100 people, one evening and i looked and i said okay, here he is. We will see what he does and a couple months later he wound up surprising everyone by finishing second place. In New Hampshire, i had a candidates like jeb bush who had a lot more money to spend. By virtue of working hard, having a positive message that appealed to voters. He didnt win the nomination but he did why not sending until the end which was more than candidates with more money, more exposure got to do. So even nowadays, New Hampshire likes to pride itself on putting forth before the National Public a candidate for whom we say hey, take a look at this guy. We like him. He what you think. I think New Hampshire will always try and as long as theres a nomination process, that allows the primary tuesday first, as long as both Political Parties and all the candidates dont gang up on New Hampshire, i think it will be our intent to always stay first. I think that first in the nation primary is an integral part of New Hampshires political culture which i would define as first and foremost participatory. And after an activist told me one time when i was working on my book that the thing about New Hampshire is anybody can play here and that can be candidate but also activist who can get involved in the campaign. And have a role that might be well out of proportion to their actual political experience. Are there professional campaign here, no question about it but its still a place where a citizen can take apart and we take pride in that. Tv is in concord New Hampshire. Up next we speak with author Howard Mansfield about his book turn and jump which explains how the concept of time zones came about. Time first meant when the