With the commotion surrounding Sen. Bob Dole and MTV's visit to the College in addition to the caravan of other presidential candidates and their entourage of news media, it is difficult to forget it is primary season.
Every four years, Dartmouth receives more national attention than any other college in the nation -- almost by accident of location.
By the beginning of February, it is no longer a novelty to learn that a Dartmouth student appeared on MTV, shook hands with Kansas Republican Dole, was quoted in the New York Times or conversed with presidential hopeful Pat Buchanan.
New Hampshire is the first primary in the nation. The state's legislation that designates the date of the primary states that New Hampshire's primary will be a week before any other state in the nation. This year it will be held on Feb. 20.
Most important college in the nation
Every four years, Dartmouth becomes "more important than any other college in the nation," according to CNN Political Analyst Bill Schneider.
The host of speeches and debates, the conductor of state-wide voter polls and the provider of labor and consulting forces for campaigns and the news media, Dartmouth is an important player in the New Hampshire primary.
Dartmouth's political importance is largely a function of its location, Government Professor Constantine Spiliotes said.
As the only Ivy League college in New Hampshire, Dartmouth serves as the state's "intellectual center," he said.
Political Reporter for WMUR News of Manchester Carl Cameron said this year Dartmouth has exerted an especially strong influence over the primary process.
"Particularly this year, Dartmouth polls and [Director of the Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences] Linda Fowler have offered the nation an analysis that in years past New Hampshire has lacked," he said. "Ms. Fowler's having been quoted by the national press as well as CNN has added to the credibility of New Hampshire's accuracy in choosing the next president."
Fowler said that historically candidates have always come to Dartmouth to give speeches.
"But our role in the public eye has greatly increased because of the polling," she said
While candidates use the College to advance their campaigns, the College also benefits from the role it assumes during the primary season.
Washington Bureau Chief for the Boston Globe David Shribman '76 noted the special attention Dartmouth receives from presidential candidates.
"No one running for president skips coming to Dartmouth," he said. "That is good for Dartmouth and good for the candidates and good for everybody."
"As a result you never have a president in the White House who has never been to our college," Schribman added. "Princeton and Cornell cannot say that."
The primary also serves to increase the political awareness of students at the College, Government Professor Richard Winters said.
"New Hampshire is a very political state in so far as more people pay attention to politics in the state," he said. "This is true at Dartmouth as well."
For the past two primary cycles, MTV has decided to begin its million dollar "Choose or Lose" campaign, which encourages young people to vote, at Dartmouth.
Intern at the Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences Jim Brennan '96 said he thinks the primary attracts the attention of most students at the College.
"I think if anything this is one of those situations where even if you are not involved in politics you have a sense of what's going on," Brennan said.
This raised awareness, combined with Dartmouth's different areas of participation in the primaries, causes the College to become a "training ground" for people who aspire to careers in politics, Spiliotes said.
"Dartmouth obviously has an important role in the sense that a lot of people who go to Dartmouth become involved in New Hampshire politics," Spiliotes said. "They go on to careers in business, law or politics."
Tom Rath '67, presidential hopeful Lamar Alexander's Senior National Advisor and New Hampshire state chairman, discovered his interest in politics after experiencing the New Hampshire primary as a freshman at Dartmouth.
"It all started at Dartmouth in the fall of '63," said Rath, who is New Hampshire's Republican party treasurer, was a delegate to the last three Republican conventions and worked on Dole's campaign in 1988 and Bush's in 1992.
He said then-presidential candidate Nelson Rockefeller asked Dartmouth students to help him with his campaign when he visited the College in 1963 for a football game.
After working on Rockefeller's campaign for a year, Rath maintained an involvement in politics.
That experience "showed me that politics was something I wanted to do for the long-term," he said. "The primary is a great point of entry into the political system for folks who want to see what politics is like."
First in the nation
New Hampshire residents take great pride in their state's status as "first-in the-nation." Acknowledging the predictive value of the primary's outcome, they tend to be the best-informed group of voters in the nation.
For the past 40 years, the outcome of the New Hampshire primary has predicted with remarkable accuracy the outcome of the upcoming presidential election a good nine months in advance.
Of the 13 other states which continuously held primaries between 1952 and 1992, New Hampshire was the only state where the winner of either the Republican or Democratic primary became president.
"Between 1952 and 1992, New Hampshire has had a 100 percent batting average for meticulously selecting the nation's president nine months before the election," Winters said.
President Bill Clinton broke this trend in 1992 when he became the first candidate since 1952 to ascend to the presidency without first winning the New Hampshire primary.
The state's success in predicting the outcome of the general election has caused the New Hampshire primary to attract an inordinate amount of media attention.
"The New Hampshire primary predicts the winner not because New Hampshire is all that representative, it is that everyone pays attention to it and takes it seriously," Schneider said.
Fowler said it is often the case that New Hampshire voters upset the front runner or expose his weaknesses.
"The press pay a lot of attention to the New Hampshire primary, not because of retail face-to-face politics, although that is part, and not because New Hampshire voters have a nose for the winner, although that is part," Fowler said. "New Hampshire primary voters create news by behaving in an unpredictable or volatile way."
Cameron said the New Hampshire primary supersedes the importance of its closest rival, the Iowa caucus, for media attention because the primary involves the general public in the selection process. The Iowa caucus will take place on Feb. 12.
"The New Hampshire primary is important because it is the first time average voters are engaged in a state-wide election," Cameron said. "Unlike Iowa which is a caucus of activists, the New Hampshire primary really is a preference poll of real people."
"Because of the primary's longevity and media coverage, people who participate are just about perfectly informed," Winters said. "Voters understand the importance of the election."
New Hampshire's percentage of voter participation usually far exceeds that of the primaries and caucuses in the other states.
Schneider said the New Hampshire primary is not only important for who it does pick but for who it does not.
New Hampshire, Schneider said, is a "killing field" for presidential aspirants who are unsuccessful in the primary.
Winters, too, said the New Hampshire primary has "a tremendous winnowing quality," which occurs when aspirants who are unsuccessful decide not to take their campaign any further than New Hampshire.
Intimate politics
Alexander would have to be in pretty good shape to hike across every state in the union and Dole could never schedule visits to every town in the U.S. -- but they are willing to perform these duties on a smaller scale in New Hampshire.
"The campaign in New Hampshire is the last place in America where candidates and voters interact face to face in an intimate exchange of ideas," Cameron said. "In other more urbanized areas, candidates rely on television, news conferences and vast audiences."
The New Hampshire primary conjures up images of politicians partaking in intimate politics -- speaking to small groups of people gathered in front of quaint city halls, visiting general stores or talking to customers at the local coffee shop.
Winters calls these "visual fixtures" of the New Hampshire primary.
Joseph Grandmaison, U.S. director of the Trade and Development Agency and former Democratic state chairman of New Hampshire, said the nature of campaigning separates the candidate from the people.
"It's unusual for [presidential hopefuls] to come in contact because they have become officials in every sense of the word," he said.
"The very process by which an individual's career develops that puts them in the position of running for president separates them from real people," said Grandmaison, who ran for governor of New Hampshire in 1990.
New Hampshire voters are frequently described as independent, anti-government and extremely proud of the attention that the primary brings to their state.
GOP presidential candidate "Steve Forbes is carrying on fast because he is carrying that vote," Schneider said. "It is never a good idea to run in New Hampshire as a candidate of the government or the institution."
In order to be successful in New Hampshire, Spiliotes said, candidates "need a compelling message -- something that acknowledges the role of New Hampshire in the process -- if candidates don't tailor their message, they will run into trouble."
While most people immediately acknowledge that in New Hampshire republicans lean farther to the right than conservatives in the rest of the nation, Winters said few people realize that New Hampshire democrats are more liberal than most.
Spiliotes said the Upper Valley does not represent a typical sampling of New Hampshire voters but contains more democrats than the rest of the state.
The Media's role
When the presidential candidates brave the New Hampshire winter every four years to campaign for the first-in-the-nation primary, an entourage of reporters and cameramen is never far behind.
By itself, the New Hampshire primary receives more media attention than is given to all the primaries in the 17 southern states -- which include Texas and Florida -- and the seven Rocky Mountain states combined.
Spiliotes said the interaction between presidential hopefuls and the media produces a "snowballing effect."
The media stops covering candidates who do not fair well and they consequently become unable to attract money, he said.
The media "balloons up the importance of the New Hampshire primary," according to Winters. "There is a confirming and self-redefining quality about it."
Shribman said the media plays a vital role in establishing the importance of the New Hampshire primary.
"The media attention creates the role," he said. "We cover it and cover it because of its importance."
Winters said two factors contribute to the barrage of media attention showered upon the state -- its proximity to several major media centers and its small size.
Half-a-dozen important New England media centers exist near each other between Portland, Manchester and Boston, Winters said.
New Hampshire's small size makes it efficient for politicians to campaign in the state, he said.
Winters said when coming to New Hampshire, presidential aspirants travel in a "golden triangle" around the southeastern part of the state.
Concord is at the northwest point of the triangle, Portsmouth is at the eastern point and Nashua is at the triangle's southwest point. Manchester marks the epicenter of this triangle, he said.
"A good marathon runner can run the perimeter [of the 'golden triangle'] in three days," Winters said.
Mapping the candidates' appearances and travels across New Hampshire also indicates that both are closely related to the population demographics of the state, Winters said.
Evolution of the primary
Schneider said the New Hampshire primary "has taken on more and more importance principally since the nominating process was reformed in 1972."
The 150 million Americans who are at least 35 years old and were born in the United States are eligible to run for president.
For a candidate to get his name on the 1996 presidential ballot in New Hampshire requires merely a $1,000 entry fee and a signed "statement of intent."
This year 45 presidential hopefuls filed for the state's primary. In 1992, 66 people filed for the primary.
To narrow down this extensive list of presidential aspirants, the founding fathers developed the electoral college system.
Representatives from each state are selected to elect the president. These representatives can be elected through either a primary or caucus system -- or both.
A primary is a state-wide election in which either all party supporters or all eligible voters vote for the representatives.
A caucus is a gathering of party leaders who select the state's electors.
Until the 1972 reforms in the presidential nominating process, caucuses were the most popular method for selecting electors.
The 1972 implementation of the McGovern-Fraser reforms, which aimed to open up and democratize presidential nominations, significantly altered this process.
The reforms shifted the selection of candidates from the state to the national party level. With this change, the importance of presidential primaries superseded that of caucuses as the preferred mode for choosing candidates.
Currently, about 75 percent of the nation's electors are selected by primaries.
