Hampshire Primary

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Six weeks before the first-in-the-nation Democratic presidential primary here in New Hampshire, the competition in the nine-candidate field is thick and heavy - for second place. Well before the first vote has been cast, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's wide lead in all the polls, in fund raising and in recruitment of volunteers has observers already looking to the race for runner-up for drama and significance in the contest. That impression has been reinforced by two developments - Dr. Dean's endorsement by former Vice President Al Gore and last week's nationally televised debate, which proved to be an unwitting advertisement of Dr. Dean's strength.

ST. LOUIS - Blake Ashby seems just a bit anxious. "I have nothing but respect for the president," he declares in his standard opening line. He follows it up by announcing, with all due respect, that he's running for George W. Bush's job. The respect is important because Ashby, a 39-year-old Missouri entrepreneur, has been a committed navy-suit-and-red-tie Republican since he first studied GOP values during a civics class his sophomore year in high school....

WASHINGTON - Howard Dean is expected soon to announce that he has won the support of Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Baltimore, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, a nod that could help the former Vermont governor gain traction with African-American voters in his pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination. Cummings' backing might also help Dean repair any damage over his recent comments invoking the Confederate flag. With a formal endorsement likely within days, Cummings praised Dean enthusiastically in an interview this week, calling him "somebody who can energize our base" and "the kind of candidate we need to run for president of the United States."

NASHUA, N.H. - There's a phenomenon in politics known as "buyer's remorse." Like a shopper who chooses an expensive new car and then has second thoughts, it refers to a candidate who wins strong early support, only to trigger a desire among voters to change their minds. It occurred most conspicuously in 1976, when Jimmy Carter won a series of early primaries and was on his way to the Democratic presidential nomination when doubts arose about whether he could beat Republican President Gerald Ford.

LEBANON, N.H. - In presidential primaries, native sons are supposed to have an advantage when they run in or near their home base. It worked for John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts in the New Hampshire primary in 1960 and even (just barely) for Edmund S. Muskie of Maine there in 1972. So Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut ought to be riding high approaching the same primary in January. Except there is the inconvenient fact that two other New Englanders, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, are also running hard here for the 2004 Democratic nomination.

WASHINGTON - A few days ago in New Hampshire, about 250 political junkies gathered to celebrate the 50th birthday of one of the state's most treasured institutions: its first-in-the-nation presidential primary. The New Hampshire primary actually is more than half a century old, but on March 11, 1952, New Hampshire Democrats and Republicans were able for the first time to vote directly for presidential candidates whose names were on the primary ballot rather than simply for delegate slates.

WASHINGTON - If you thought after last year that there wasn't anything politicians could do to make the way we pick our president any worse, you thought wrong. Long before the Florida fiasco that threw the 2000 election into the Supreme Court, the election year was rendered a circus by virtue of the insane jamming of most of the states' presidential primaries into a few weeks in February and March. Now it turns out that if Democratic Party leaders have their way, the primary election schedule will be even more crowded and frenzied even earlier in 2004, out of concern that the Republicans will again get more attention, as they did in 2000.

WHATEVER the final count in Florida, it will be months before Democrats get over the shock of seeing all that Republican red creeping over the electoral map late Tuesday night. It wasn't a trick of tired, bloodshot eyes: George W. Bush had taken West Virginia and Al Gore's home state of Tennessee, and was perilously close to seizing the Democratic strongholds of Wisconsin, Iowa and Oregon. Everywhere, disbelieving Democrats thought to themselves, "It shouldn't be this close." The candidate who had been primed for the presidency his whole life, with a strong economy at his back, shouldn't be on the verge of losing to a man with five years of on-the-job experience.

WASHINGTON -- Whatever the outcome, the presidential election campaign of 2000 taught several lessons that should be taken seriously by the politicians, press and public but probably won't be: There are, it turns out, limits on the value of political money. Spending $60 million of his personal fortune can lift an obscure executive from New Jersey, Jon S. Corzine, into the Senate, although by an unimpressive margin considering the amount. But money is far less influential in presidential campaigns because the candidates get so much attention from televised debates and from the news programs that they become familiar figures.

WASHINGTON -- The first installment of a two-year Harvard study of presidential voters called "The Vanishing Voter Project" has come up with the altogether unastonishing finding that voter interest and involvement peaks when the campaign action is hot and falls when it cools off. To find this out, the study conducted weekly national polling of 1,000 respondents from mid-November to mid-April, funded with a first slice of a $900,000 grant from the Pew...