A Modest Proposal about the New Hampshire Primary

Advice from N.H. State Rep. Jim Splaine (D-Portsmouth) for political activists from states other than New Hampshire who are peeved about the Granite State's vaunted first-in-the-nation presidential primary: "Put [your] battles against New Hampshire aside, and start going about the business of addressing issues of concern to the nation." Splaine was lauding the enactment of House Bill 1125, another one of those measures designed to thwart efforts by other states to get in ahead of New Hampshire when it comes to choosing presidential nominees.

Splaine may be right -- perhaps it is time for those political activists from other states to find better things to do. But is it good for New Hampshire?

Here is a proposed, but blasphemous, answer: Not necessarily.

The laws of physics, and common sense, would suggest that there is only so much energy within New Hampshire to be devoted to politics. For at least half of every four-year political cycle, this energy gets sucked into the black hole of presidential politics. The Democratic Party is seemingly a permanent, and overmatched, minority in the state legislature. But instead of devoting themselves body and soul to changing this reality, Democrats busy themselves with intra-party squabbling over whether Hillary Clinton or John Edwards or John Kerry or Mark Warner or the guy who cleans your septic tank is less un-electable. Somebody has to get embroiled in all that squabbling, of course -- but is New Hampshire really well-served by serving as Ground Zero?

A prominent figure in New Hampshire Democratic politics once smiled volubly when confronted with this hypothesis -- he was, after all, addressing a constituent and so had to be polite -- and pointed out that these presidential campaigns pour an awful lot of money into New Hampshire. He was referring, specifically, to all the donations various presidential primary campaigns make to this or that Democratic politician inside New Hampshire.

Okay. But tell me what New Hampshire's Democratic politicians have been able to achieve as the result of receiving this largesse. Craig Benson was such a mean-spirited, contemptuous, arrogant ethically challenged governor that he essentially handed the governor's office to the Democrats in 2004. Meanwhile, the callow John Sununu is our U.S. Senator instead of Jeanne Shaheen, there seems little chance of ousting Jeb Bradley or Charles Bass -- and the Democratic influence in the Legislature is reduced to tie-breaking fights among Republican legislators.

It is not time for New Hampshire's major political parties to surrender the primacy of the New Hampshire primary. But, as the argument wages on about whether such a move would be a good thing for national politics, New Hampshirans should at least have the independence of thought to question the dogma that the state should fight to keep its primary no matter what.