The tyranny of New Hampshire foiled

Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Jeff Danziger, a cartoonist and writer who has penned images and stories for Vermonters for more than 30 years.

It’s not only the money that the New Hampshire primary brings to their state. It’s the … well, OK, it’s the money. Their television stations are rolling in dough, their restaurants are crowded with journalists and hangers-on, and their merchants’ registers are clicking like castanets.

Meanwhile, we here in Vermont, who, God knows, are much better equipped to make an intelligent decision about the future of the country, are ignored wholesale. What are we, chopped liver? And we are forced to watch cranky salty old New Hampshire men crackle wise to the candidates, and floor credulous news crews with their clever regurgitations of pawky humor. But actually it’s the money.

The money is why New Hampshire has a primary in the first place. And it’s the reason why they have maintained the first-in-the-nation status despite many other states, attempts to dislodge them. The New Hampshire legislature has passed laws to make them first in the nation no matter how early they have to schedule. They have negated the plan for regional primaries by promising that they will hold to their vote even if they have to do it in the middle of the summer two years before the election.

Estimates of exactly how much money being first is worth vary with the estimator, but suffice it to say it’s enough to make a dent in the cost of Irene’s damage, or balancing Vermont’s school accounts. And through all this we sit and watch this concocted farce and do nothing, even though there is an easy way to take advantage.

First, let’s admit the facts. New Hampshire and certain other states (Delaware comes to mind) have always had a character flaw that prompted their legislators to come up with schemes rather than honest financial planning. Delaware has crooked corporate laws, and soaks everyone who is forced to drive through on their short stretch of interstate. New Hampshire, from their early days, was in it for other people’s money. They did everything possible to sell as much liquor as possible to the passing public. They had the nation’s first lottery, preying on the weakness of Americans for anything that promised riches without labor. And that was back when lotteries were thought to be gambling, a sign of human fraility. (We now know it’s not gambling. You have almost no chance.)

In short, New Hampshire, the Grabbit State, turned the primary system into an additional scheme for selling lottery tickets and liquor. Someone in their legislature, some crotchety old loon ruminating in his backhouse, realized that politicians’ lust for early approval could be turned into a quadrennial cash cow. The important thing was that they be first. Iowa muscled in with their caucuses, but as we have seen this week, a lot of the caucus decisions are based on whether some farmwife has put enough Jack Daniels in the casserole. Caucuses are good-natured gab-fests. Primaries are ballots.

Here’s my idea. Vermont should have primary at the same time. Naturally, New Hampshire, in their spiteful and vicious cupidity, would set their primary before any date that Vermont announced. So our law has to be framed as follows: The Vermont Primary will be on THE SAME DAY as the New Hampshire Primary. Hah! No matter what date they select, ours will be the same. They can fume and fuss, and sue, and throw non-deposit beer bottles across the river, but whatever day they select will be ours, too. I don’t know why nobody here didn’t think of this. Just not greedy enough, I guess.

That would mean that the millions in additional trade that goes to New Hampshire would be shared by Vermont. It would also mean that the beggar-thy-neighbor, hard-fisted, poor-mouthing, unchivalrous and ungenerous attitude of New Hampshire would be tempered by the kinder, warmer, more humane attitudes found in Vermont. That might be an overstatement, but not by much. And no matter how much New Hampshire voters forced primary candidates to twist their taxation and social stances into the crabbed demands east of the Connecticut, a countervailing attitude of fair play and friendly persuasion would mellow the worst of all that west of the river.

Our television and radio stations would reap bountifully. Our merchants would share the harvest, and our hoteliers would be awarded with a boost in traffic. The sales tax revenue would choke the coffers, so to speak. And if the plan worked, within time, Maine and Massachusetts would join, so that the reasonable plan of regional primaries would evolve. Naturally they would be grateful for our leadership.

Also naturally, New Hampshire would fume and snort. That alone makes the idea worth doing. They would call it stealing their traditional role in American politics. I call it Yankee ingenuity. And as we all know a Yankee is a man who eats pie for breakfast. Another good Vermont idear.