Manchester--On a bus ride to the Hopkinton Town Hall, Republican presidential candidate Senator Phil Gramm, R-Texas, said the issues of the 1996 campaign have a direct impact on the lives of college students.
"The issues we [the candidates] are debating will impact on the quality of your life [as college students] and you need to be involved in that debate," Gramm said.
Gramm will be coming to Dartmouth this Friday where he will deliver a speech in Collis Common Ground.
Members of the Conservative Union at Dartmouth traveled to Manchester yesterday to attend a speech Gramm gave to the New Hampshire Gun Owners and the Presidential Forum and sponsored by the National Rifle Association.
"We wanted to see Gramm and the other candidates," said Mark Cicirelli '96, CUAD vice president.
Most of the 20 students who participated in the trip were not Gramm supporters.
"CUAD does not endorse any one candidate," Cicirelli said. "As a group we will try to help out all the Republican candidates."
Cicirelli coordinates Gramm's campaign at the College.
Dartmouth students accompanied Gramm on a bus ride from his first speech in Manchester to the Hopkinton Town Hall and had the opportunity to talk personally with the senator.
Gramm introduced himself and shook hands with everyone on the bus before taking a seat next to Cicirelli.
According to Cicirelli, the conversation centered mostly around the deficit.
"He thanked me and said he appreciated all the work I did as his campaign coordinator at Dartmouth," he said.
"Gramm said he looks forward to coming to Dartmouth on Friday," he said. "He likes college students and thinks they like him."
Gramm said he last came to the campus to speak at the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration's commencement two years ago.
He said he will give only a short speech and leave a lot of time open for questions when he comes to campus on Friday.
"I love people to come and ask me the questions that are really on their minds," he said. "I hate it when people play the 'gotcha game.' "
There are two main features that Gramm said distinguishes him from the other Republican candidates.
"I know who I am and what I believe in," Gramm said. Secondly, Gramm said he knows "the American system better than the others."
At his speech before the New Hampshire Gun Owners, Gramm made his stance as an avid opponent of gun control clear.
"I am a strong supporter of all the provisions of the Constitution of the United States," he said.
"The second Amendment is all about freedom," he added. "I intend to protect and defend each and every part of the Constitution."
The crowd of about 75 people gathered at the Courtyard in Manchester enthusiastically applauded these statements and booed at the mention of Sarah Brady's name. Brady is the wife of James Brady, who was shot in 1981 when President Reagan was attacked in Washington.
Gramm said if gun control really worked, Washington, D.C. would be the safest place on earth, but instead it is the murder capital of the world.
As a public figure, Gramm said he and his family receive death threats frequently. After the bombing in Oklahoma, someone threatened to blow up his mother's house.
Gramm's mother asked, "With all the meanness out there, should I get a bigger gun?"
"I am a shooter and a hunter. It is an important part of my life," Gramm said, citing that there has not been a hunter in the White House since Teddy Roosevelt.
Gramm, an advocate of the death penalty, wants to enforce a harsher prison system.
Gramm wants to do away with amenities like color televisions and weight rooms and make prisoners work 10 hours a day, six days a week.
He said that the $22,000 spent to keep someone in prison per year is greater than the cost of attending Harvard University.
A balanced budget is one of Gramm's key campaign promises.
"In 1994, we promised the American people we would give them a balanced budget," Gramm said. "If we don't live up to our campaign promises, we are no different than Bill Clinton."
He ended his speech on an optimistic note and said, "We don't have a problem in America we can't fix."
