With all the current controversies about the Republican primary calendar — with Florida moving its contest to late January, and triggering a move up by the officially sanctioned early states — many people are waiting for New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner to announce when his state will vote. TPM spoke with Gardner, seeking a further piece of information: How did New Hampshire come to enjoy the its place in the primary calendar that so many have taken for granted, and what does the state have to offer for the country?
Gardner has been Secretary of State since 1976, and was a Democratic state representative when he ran for the position (but since then, he has stayed out of partisan politics, and does not endorse candidates, or do any campaigning or fundraising). The New Hampshire Secretary of State is elected every two years by a secret ballot of the state legislature — and even though there was a Republican majority when Gardner first ran, and also for nearly all of the period since then, he has continually been re-elected.
Also, Gardner noted, New Hampshire Secretaries of State tend to serve for very long periods in office — there have only been four of them since 1928, including himself. Indeed, Gardner was first elected when the previous Secretary had died in office, and at that moment there were no living former Secretaries of State to turn to for advice.
One question for Gardner, of course, is that some people in other states will question why New Hampshire and Iowa have the privilege they enjoy, of holding the earliest contest to pick the presidential nominees, compared to larger states throughout the rest of the country. What would he say to that?
“Well it’s not been very often that Iowa and New Hampshire voted for the same person. And it helps to have a place where someone who might not have the most fame, or the most money, would have a chance,” said Gardner. “And New Hampshire certainly provides that stage for those kinds of individuals. And people have won the New Hampshire primary who were never expected to have a chance, in both parties in my years.
He also added: “And you can win here without the most fame and the most money, such as Eugene McCarthy; as John McCain; Gary Hart winning over the former Vice President Walter Mondale; John McCain came in here in 2000, he didn’t have the most money or the most fame compared to who he was running against.
“It does keep that dream alive, that anyone’s son or daughter can someday grow up to be president. You’ve got a small place you can get around, and if you win you’ve got a chance to go all the way — and some of them it has happened to. And that would be less likely in California, or Texas, or Florida, or New York.”
So how did the primary get to the place where it is today?
Originally, Gardner said, New Hampshire state law set the primary for the first Tuesday in March, at the same time as their annual New England-style town meetings. In fact, that date is still on the books today — but subject to a crucial amendment in the 1970s, as we shall see.
The New Hampshire primary has gained prominence over the course of many decades, starting in 1952 when Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN) campaigned heavily in the state and defeated incumbent Dem President Harry Truman. Things were also very interesting on the Republican side, where a campaign to draft Dwight Eisenhower defeated the more conservative frontrunner, Sen. Robert Taft (R-OH) — and Eisenhower officially entered the race soon after, went on to narrowly defeat Taft for the nomination, and won the general election in a landslide after 20 years of Democratic presidents.
But the primary then truly broke through, Gardner said, in 1968, when Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-MN) campaigned heavily in the state, recruiting an activist base of young volunteers from across the country on an anti-Vietnam War platform. McCarthy then only narrowly lost to incumbent Dem President Lyndon Johnson — which caused Johnson to drop out of the race soon afterward.
“And since we had the primary the second Tuesday of March, if you look at the Time magazine that came out the week after New Hampshire that year, the first nine pages were all about New Hampshire. The third page was entitled ‘The Crusade of the Ballot Children’ — all these 18, 19 and 20 year-olds, who weren’t old enough to vote, who came across the country and changed the course of history.
“And now the eyes of the country were looking at New Hampshire and saying, ‘why can’t we have the same thing?’ This is amazing that the little guy can make a big difference.”
There then followed a small race in the 1972 cycle by some other states to leapfrog New Hampshire, with one success story that continues up to today: Iowa Democrats — but not Republicans — scheduled their caucuses for January of 1972, ahead of their previous caucus dates in late March. The Iowa Republicans later followed the Dems’ lead, holding their own caucuses on the same day as the first contest in 1976, and ever since.
And in Nevada in 1969, a young state representative named Harry Reid (yes, the same Harry Reid) proposed a bill to move up the state’s primary to before New Hampshire. However, after bill passed the legislature, it was vetoed by Gov. Paul Laxalt (R), who wished to avoid the quarrel with another state. Florida attempted to hold its primary on the same day as New Hampshire — which would attract candidates to the state that was both larger, and warmer during those winter months — but New Hampshire successfully out-maneuvered them, and moved up its primary.
New Hampshire law was amended after the 1972 cycle, to give the Secretary of State the authority to set the primary date, with the mission of keeping it at least seven days before any similar contest — making an exception for Iowa, due to its state’s Democrats having already held their caucuses earlier in the previous cycle.
Since then, the state has had a lot of notable results: Jimmy Carter’s win in 1976, Ronald Reagan in 1980, the post-Iowa comebacks of both George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis in 1988, the upsets by Pat Buchanan in 1996 and John McCain in 2000, and McCain’s comeback in 2008. And most recently, Hillary Clinton’s victory in 2008 brought her campaign back from the brink after her third-place finish in Iowa, and set up the months-long battle in every state between Clinton and the ultimately victorious Barack Obama.
And every time, New Hampshire has kept its high profile, as the first full binding primary, following the Iowa caucuses.
“I know that I’ve set the date at a time when both party chairs said it was the wrong date, and the governor said it was the wrong date, and there was an attempt to have the legislature change who actually had the authority,” said Gardner. “But at the end, months later it turns out that if I hadn’t set the date the way I did, we would not have been first. so sometimes, at the present time people may not agree with you, but later on for reasons that were not known at the time, I’ve certainly had some luck during my years.”
