No one ever said running for Congress is easy.
Jim Bassett '78 said yesterday afternoon that he did not know when he would be home for his four-year-old daughter's birthday later that night &emdash; but the only thing he is sure of is that he would be there after his debate in Milford.
Bassett, 37, a moderate Republican lawyer, is stumping New Hampshire's first district, fighting to win the primary against nine other contenders. The winner will face incumbent Democrat Dick Swett in the November election.
Besides holding a full-time job and being a husband and the father of three, Bassett logs more than 1,000 miles in his car every week traveling New Hampshire roads.
Though the hours are "grueling" and the breakfast meetings are long, he said he is looking forward to winning.
You can tell he is used to being the non-politician politician.
"I am not a politician … Swett and the rest are politicians &emdash; just using a lot of rhetoric, being everything but specifics," Bassett said at the beginning of the interview. "Not knowing or just not saying the specifics."
Bassett even uses politician words &emdash; "deficit reduction," "cutting entitlements," "gridlock" and "PAC money."
But Bassett has a message.
"Unless we're willing to pay substantially higher taxes, we must confront the problem [of entitlements and ballooning debts]," Bassett said. "To do nothing is unacceptable. It condemns your generation and my children's generation with burdens that you cannot pay."
Bassett said he has presented a plan to deal with the federal debt and balance the budget by 2000, while the other candidates have not.
The Concord lawyer is taking aim at not only his primary opponents, but also at Swett, criticizing them for accepting Political Action Committee money.
"Look, I want to run this election New Hampshire-style with only individual contributors. I'll never be the first person in any race to take PAC money …" he said. "I will be the only Republican to be able to turn to Swett on the stage and criticize him for accepting that money."
Just like Bassett said he did not expect to go to law school after graduating from the College in 1978, he said yesterday morning that he did not think about running for New Hampshire's House seat.
"A year ago I would not have expected to be out running for politics," the former government major said while sitting in the Collis Center during an interview.
Since graduating from Dartmouth and then the University of Virginia Law School in 1982, Bassett has remained close to the College.
He is currently a lawyer in Concord &emdash; he takes a vacation starting next week &emdash; and works closely with the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center on medical malpractice suits.
Bassett, a brother in Alpha Delta fraternity while he was an undergraduate, said being on the lightweight crew team taught him "the value of hard work and perseverance &emdash; values that can be helpful in what I am doing now."
The Republican contender, who said he is pro-choice and would have, unlike Swett, voted to ban automatic machine guns, said he might have received his first taste of politics while working as a reporter for the College's radio station, WFRD-FM, covering the 1976 elections in New Hampshire.
