Bemused Voters in New Hampshire

THE pressure on the candidates is rising as the March 7 date for the nation's first presidential primary in New Hampshire approaches. Followed by a swelling contingent of national newsmen, the campaigners are making pitches at Kiwanis and Rotary lunches, grabbing invitations to high school assemblies, frantically chasing any kind of crowd in a rural state whose independent-minded voters tend to shun mass meetings. While they enjoy the attention and welcome the money spent by press and politicians, the objects of all the hoopla--the residents of New Hampshire--look on with bemusement but remain unmoved.

When housewives chatter over mid-morning coffee at the Rexall drugstore in postcard-pretty New London, N.H., or their husbands banter beside their ailing cars at Kidder's Garage, there is little talk of Muskie, McGovern or McCloskey. Instead, there are complaints over rising taxes expected from a new sewage system and the costs of operating schools. In the paper-mill town of Berlin, Kelly's Pastry Shop now sells more doughnuts (7-c-) than turnovers (150-c-, as residents worry about living costs. "It takes two working now for a family to get what it needs," notes Mrs. Laura Allain, a clerk in the shop. "Before, we could always set something aside."

Jumping Prices. As legislators at the capitol in Concord battle over whether to institute a state income tax (New Hampshire is the only state without either a general sales or an income tax), there is little that the presidential candidates can say about such local issues. How can they soothe Annette Picard, widow of the police chief of Peterboro, when she complains that her property tax is now $1,000 a year? "I could sell the house and rent an apartment, but I don't want to.

You should be entitled to your home," she says.

Nor can they ease the worries of Mrs. Nancy Blanchette, a machine operator in a Manchester yarn factory, who laments: "I go shopping every Wednesday, and it seems like every two or three weeks I see the prices jumping up right in front of me. We wait six months for a raise, and by the time we get it it's gone."

Residents of New Hampshire are not convinced that the Administration's price controls are working. While Democratic candidates berate Nixon about inflation and recession, listeners seem skeptical that the election of any of them would make much difference.

New Hampshire seems relatively unconcerned about such national questions as school busing and welfare reform, possibly because the state has few blacks. One national issue which seems to stir lingering emotions is the war in Viet Nam--although at nowhere near the high pitch of four years ago. "This war kept a lot of younger people back," notes Alexander DuMesnil, Berlin's assistant police marshal. "My son was afraid he'd get drafted, and he still might. But the tenseness is going away--he's getting ready to buy a car." Bob Kohler, a Viet Nam veteran at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, protests quietly that "they're still dying one by one over there."

Minuet. The frustration over Viet Nam ought to help such antiwar candidates as Democrat George McGovern and Republican Pete McCloskey. But McGovern backers have had difficulty getting local students to work hard for their man. "I think these kids are into not being radical now," explains Frances Bennotti, a McGovern worker manning a campus campaign table in Durham. Nor does the issue necessarily hurt Nixon. Dick Allison, a tram conductor at the Cannon Mountain ski area, lost a cousin in Viet Nam. He considers the war a tragic mistake, but defends the Administration's pace of withdrawal. "I don't like just walking out now," he says.

Some residents express downright hostility toward the candidates. "These politicians, what do they care about us?" asks Berlin's DuMesnil. "The only time we see them is when they're looking for a few votes." At a high school assembly in Milford, a student opened the questioning of Democratic Senator Vance Hartke by asking: "Senator, do you think students should be forced to come to these political rallies?" Hartke said no--and the student promptly walked out. As polltakers, reporters and canvassers for the candidates keep probing the voters, resentment is growing. "The people are getting tired of being asked questions," observes one of Muskie's campaign coordinators. "I wonder if it doesn't do more harm than good."

After traveling through the state from Peterboro to Hampton and from Milford to Berlin, TIME Correspondent John Stacks finds that much of the intense campaigning is "out of joint with the reserved, modest and altogether sensible views of New Hampshirites about what the primary can mean to them. The New Hampshire contest is a minuet conducted by the press and the politicians. It means more to both those groups than to the people of New Hampshire."

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