Meanwhile, Back on the Ballot . . .
14 Republicans Are Running Against Bush -- and the Belief That It's an Imaginary Race
By Hanna Rosin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 30, 2003; Page C01
One in a series of reports from the New Hampshire primary campaign
HAMPTON, N.H.
All the parking spaces outside Lupo's Seafood Restaurant are full, but the crowd didn't come to see Dick Bosa -- it's pasta night. Still, Bosa will say here what he says in any hardware store and radio station and hotel lobby that will let him in the door: "Hello, I'm Dick Bosa and I'm running against Bush. There is a Republican primary, you know."
Repeat to Bosa the common myth that President Bush is running unopposed and you are in for a jab of his thick finger. There will be 14 Republicans listed on the New Hampshire presidential primary ballot besides the one who currently holds the office. Among them are Bosa, the former mayor of Berlin, in northern New Hampshire; Michael Callis, a bricklayer from Conway; and Robert Haines, who could safely be described as a colorful character familiar to patrons of the coffee shop Breaking New Grounds in Portsmouth.
Each of them has a Web site, at least one die-hard supporter (wife, girlfriend, child, loyal employee), and $1,000, which is all you need in New Hampshire to file your bid for the presidency (most states require a few thousand signatures). Bosa showed up on the afternoon of the last possible filing date, Nov. 21, and paid his fee in coins, for reasons having to do with the hegemony of the Federal Reserve but also "because as a dark horse candidate I have to make a splash."
Locals justify their claim to the nation's first binding presidential primary with a romantic Horatio Alger-ish notion: In this tiny state, anyone with gumption and a good pair of boots can triumph over the established political machines by making his claim directly to the voters, the old-fashioned democratic way. Of course, by "anyone" they mean someone such as John McCain, Gary Hart or Pat Buchanan, all of whom have won the primary. But tell that to Dick Bosa.
"I'm more credible than [Wesley] Clark or Al Sharpton," he says, mentioning some of the Democrats running. "At least I was elected mayor."
Some of the candidates are on quixotic crusades that seem to be driven mainly by inner voices. Haines, for example, lists his issues as "national security," "the economy," "health care, of course." But after a while he'll get around to the "Dark Side, okay . . . the deliberate attempt by the Dark Side to infiltrate the church," he told the Dartmouth Review. (Haines was not available for comment, as he was serving time for a parole violation.) For Callis, the central issue facing this nation is "Max Hugel" (CIA deputy director under President Reagan) and "the way the central intelligence agencies in this country have been conducting themselves."
Judged by effort, the most serious Republican candidates are Bosa and John Rigazio, a Rochester, N.H., businessman who owns several variety stores that sell "cigarettes, alcohol, potato chips, juices, those kinds of things," says Claire Nugent, a cashier who moonlights as his spokeswoman and single campaign employee because "I believe in everything he says."
For both of them the central issue is the same: "Jobs, jobs, jobs," as Rigazio says; the loss of manufacturing jobs in New Hampshire and the nation, more broadly the neglect of the working stiff at the hands of "large worldwide corporations," more broadly still the triumph in America of a rich entitled blueblood class as embodied by President Bush.
Still, it's a lonely crusade. These candidates travel alone, hold their own signs, get their own glasses of water and often hold news conferences with no media in attendance. When they say they had a radio interview, they mean they called the station during the caller response period.
Rigazio held a town meeting at the Rochester Opera House recently that drew 80 people on a blizzard night. But mostly he's known for running ads in two major local papers, open letters costing him an estimated total of $200,000, each running 800 words and full of emphatic capital letters.
"To those of us who listen to the MEDIA tell us that the RECESSION IS OVER and the JOBS are a LAGGING ECONOMIC INDICATOR but JOBS will soon PICK UP as the ECONOMIC RECOVERY PROGRESSES, I have to wonder HOW DUMB the media (who spread our government's FALSE FIGURES to us) think the public is."
Underlying all these efforts is a certain seething irritation with President Bush. David Gosselin, former chairman of the state Republican Party, ran ads and started a Web site this fall calling for a Republican to challenge President Bush in the primary. He has substantive disagreements with the president, about the war in Iraq, his treatment of big business. But mostly it comes down to "character," an issue that crystallized for him when he caught a ceremony on C-SPAN of an aircraft carrier being named for President George H.W. Bush. "Arrogant," Gosselin says. "I have something against this princeling succession. I'm just sick of sons of rich kids running the country, and it's about time someone challenged them," although he adds that the current crop of challengers is not "credible."
This last claim is a subject on which the current candidates are very touchy. Rigazio takes a band of brothers approach and sticks up for his fellow "fringe candidates, I guess they call us," in which he includes Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who "don't get no ink, whatsoever."
The patrons of Lupo's might not recognize Bosa but they can't help noticing him. In his cowboy hat he just about scrapes the ceiling of the restaurant. His hands are the size of most people's heads and his eyes are big and bulging. Bosa's goal is not to win, exactly, but to get at Bush: "Put a giant spear into his belly or at least his leg. Make him come out of New Hampshire limping."
His schedule could rival that of any major candidate. In a month he's crisscrossed the state, from far northern Pittsburg to the southern Seacoast, talking about how the "wealthy inherit the nation and leave us back at the plantation with our McJobs." This day's itinerary, shortly before Christmas, includes 32 stops, five radio station calls and two media interviews, all instigated by him. In between, he does his day job as a sales rep for an Italian ceramics company. He wakes up every morning at 2 and then later, when Italy sleeps, he campaigns. "No one works harder than I do," he says.
His strategy, by choice and by default, is "to meet the people. This is a retail state," he says, "and no one can beat me campaigning. I read people very well." At this moment, he has waitress Rebecca Brucato deep in conversation although her section is full. "What do you think of him sending Baker over there?" she asks, referring to Bush's dispatching of James A. Baker III, former U.S. secretary of state, to visit Asia next week to discuss Iraq's foreign debt.
"He's a guy who doesn't fight his own fights," says Bosa, a decorated veteran. "He's just a silver-spoon kid who's never had a real fight."
"You think there's a good chance he won't get elected?"
"Yeah, I'm gonna beat him. I did the Seacoast, the Connecticut River Valley. I gave out 1,200 'Bosa for President' calling cards and only eight people said they support him. I'm gonna beat him," he says. Brucato lets it pass in polite silence.
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