Granite State's Shaheens put weight behind Kerry
By Patrick Healy, Globe Staff, 1/4/2004
MANCHESTER, N. H. -- Jeanne and Bill Shaheen were nervous. It was 1:30 p.m. on the day of New Hampshire's 2000 presidential primary, and early exit polls were favoring Bill Bradley and portending danger for Al Gore, the candidate of the Democratic governor and her husband, Gore's state chairman.
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By dusk the Shaheen machine had kicked into high gear: Get-out-the-vote phone calls buzzed from union halls to retirement homes, from Portsmouth to the North Country. Governor Shaheen bolted her own fund-raiser to go on radio statewide urging a Gore vote. Her husband hammered his precinct captains to deliver the 20, 30, 50, or more Gore voters they had promised. Shaheen aides knocked on doors in Nashua, where voter turnout had been low, and brought hot coffee to freezing Manchester voters in line to cast ballots. Gore himself went back to the streets to shake hands.
"We called everybody and did everything we could think to do," Jeanne Shaheen recalled.
And by later that night Bradley was conceding to Gore, who led by a mere 4 points.
"Gore did a good job, but it's Jeanne and Billy who know where to look for votes," said Dante Scala, professor of politics at Saint Anselm College and author of "Stormy Weather," a study of New Hampshire primary victories.
Four years later, no asset is more precious to Senator John F. Kerry's presidential bid than the Shaheens -- their endorsement of him last year and their leadership roles in his campaign; their highly coveted lists of donors and registered voters; their local know-how about the best spots for house parties and other campaign events; and an organization they began building with Jimmy Carter's race in 1976, which Bill Shaheen chaired here.
Kerry's campaign has just launched what it calls "our comprehensive Shaheen January battle plan" for massive voter turnout to win New Hampshire's Jan. 27 primary.
To that end, with Kerry devoting much of his time to the Jan. 19 Iowa caucuses, the Shaheens and several well-known allies will begin three days of visits on Friday to diners, downtowns, and neighborhoods in 11 cities where Gore performed well in 2000.
Kerry himself has told friends that if he overcomes Howard Dean's double-digit lead in opinion polls here, he will owe a huge debt to the Shaheens.
"While we don't agree with Jeanne and Billy on this one, Senator Kerry's best shot is probably having them on his side," said Mary Rauh, a friend of the Shaheens and, like her husband, John, a former Democratic candidate for Congress. The Rauhs have endorsed retired General Wesley K. Clark.
A great organization can add 3 to 5 percentage points to a candidate's vote total, Bill Shaheen says, and analysts concur. But with Kerry trailing Dean in polls and fund-raising, some Democrats and many political analysts are skeptical that the Shaheens have enough pull with the heavily liberal primary electorate to bolster Kerry's candidacy and overcome the Dean juggernaut here in just three weeks. The stakes also are high for the Shaheens' political futures.
"If we had a couple more months I know we'd win this thing, though I should say I still think we will win no matter what," Bill Shaheen said, in a nod to Kerry's increasingly aggressive style on the stump.
The Shaheens are the closest thing Democrats here have to political royalty, "the Bill and Hillary Clinton of New Hampshire," in the words of some observers.
In 1996 Jeanne Shaheen became the first Democrat elected governor here in 16 years, and the first woman ever to hold that office; she was reelected twice, in spite of this state's heavily Republican voter rolls, in part by tapping her organization and the canny political skills of her husband, a former judge.
Yet some analysts say their star has dimmed a bit: Jeanne Shaheen has been out of office since losing her 2002 US Senate race, and a former governor's endorsement carries less weight than a sitting governor's.
Also, Shaheen's own track record opposing a statewide income tax and supporting the death penalty has angered many liberals -- who could make up half of primary voters -- raising questions about whether the Shaheen sheen helps Kerry with left-leaning voters drawn to Dean's antiwar, outsider message.
"In presidential primaries, it's always been said that organization is everything," said Jennifer Duffy, an analyst with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report newsletter in Washington. "But New Hampshire may prove that to be a big lie," she added, and, referring to Dean, noted: "Maybe a new personality with a better message, and a good organization, trumps it all."
Democratic machine politics in New Hampshire is hardly the cutthroat business of New York City wards of old -- or even of Chicago's Democratic halls of today. While the Union Leader newspaper's conservative editorial board has come closest to punishing Republicans who don't toe the party line, the state Democratic Party, since its founding in the mid-1800s, has traditionally been rurally based and politically disorganized.
"When people ask me about my political machine, I usually refer them to my sister Shirley," said Bob Baines, the Democratic mayor of Manchester, offering a favorite quip about local politics. Baines has endorsed Kerry and is part of the Shaheens' voter turnout plans.
Instead, the Shaheens' machine rests on three decades of heavy organizing on behalf of Democrats in a relatively small state.
"I've voted for Jeanne every time, and love her support of kindergarten and working people, and I'm sure her proeducation views transfer to John Kerry," said Audrey Rondo, a Democrat who attended a Milford, N.H., "chili feed" featuring Kerry and Shaheen on Friday.
They also know everyone who is anyone in state politics, observers say.
"It's less of a grassroots machine than a money-raising, motivate-the-usual-suspects machine," said Mark Fernald, who ran as a liberal protest candidate against Shaheen in the 2000 primary and won about 38 percent of the vote. "Many people believe she is most effective as a messenger and defining her opponents in negative terms."
Indeed, the Shaheens' fingerprints are evident in the recent overhaul of Kerry's message and campaign.
According to Kerry advisers, both Shaheens supported Kerry's move in November to fire campaign manager Jim Jordan as a way to attack the growing perception that Kerry was faltering and would lose to Dean. Jeanne Shaheen -- who had tangled with Jordan during her Senate race, when he worked for a Washington committee that aided Senate Democrats -- encouraged the hiring of new manager Mary Beth Cahill, Bill Shaheen said. "When you don't have firm leadership at the top, nothing else works," he added.
Shaheen became Kerry's state chairman in January, with his wife coming on as national campaign chair last fall.
They have also championed Kerry's use of national security as a double-barreled weapon to criticize Bush and point out Dean's deficit of experience. This was a risky strategy, since it invited more questions about Kerry's stand on the Iraq war, which has hurt him with liberal Democrats. (He voted for military action but opposed Bush's move to war before, Kerry says, diplomatic options were exhausted.)
Yet it appears to be paying off with some voters who like Dean but worry about the Vermonter's lack of foreign affairs expertise.
The Shaheens have coached Kerry to make time for as many questions as possible from voters, instead of giving windy answers. After Kerry finished fielding questions at the Milford event, Jeanne Shaheen told the audience that if anyone still had a question, they should come up and talk to her.
"It's kind of like what we did with Al Gore, pointing out that voters here like to look you in the eye and ask you their question," Bill Shaheen said. "The nice thing about Senator Kerry is, he takes advice well." |
