| President | Several modern Presidents |
| Location | Concord, NH |
| Operated By | The State of New Hampshire |
| When Visited | July 6, 2017 |
| Who With | My friend, Sara |
| Presidential Significance | New Hampshire is a hot spot of Presidential campaigning |
| Pre-Visit Reading | Unfortunately, no biographies of Vermin Supreme |
I was going to post about something else this week, but since it’s the week of the New Hampshire Primaries, I couldn’t help think of an unplanned visit to the state’s capitol building about two and a half years ago.
My friend, Sara, and I had been winding our way through new England and had just visited Franklin Pierce’s grave (see my post on that here). I have a thing where I like to collect shot glasses from all the states I’ve been to, so even though we had a full day of Vermont fun ahead of us, we embarked on a hunt for a New Hampshire shot glass that lead us to the heart of downtown Concord.
Don’t get excited about the term “downtown.” Concord is a city of 42,000 people. The main street through downtown is charming as all get out, lined with shops and friendly people, and very easy navigate and find parking. We visited a bookstore I really liked and poked around a little. At some point we asked someone if they knew where we could buy a shot glass, and they pointed us to the State House, suggesting we try the gift shop inside.
We walked over to the New Hampshire State House, which sat right along the main drag. It was set off a bit by a one block square green space, and capped by a modest, gold-accented dome. Before heading in, we stopped to look at the Franklin Pierce statue out front. Inside, it feel eerily empty, as the state legislature was not in session.
When we found the gift shop, the first thing we noticed was the abundance of campaign materials displayed inside. Well, that and a full-sized cardboard cut-out of Donald Trump. If I recall correctly, the nice older lady running the gift shop mentioned that a lot of visitors like to take pictures of the Trump cut-out. I have no pics of the cut-out in my photo history.
Before walking into the gift shop, I wasn’t evening thinking of New Hampshire’s role as the first presidential primary election in the country (Iowa does technically go first, but they do caucuses). But the wall of signs, stickers, pins, and photos, many of them signed by the candidates, caused me to instantly recall the notable role that New Hampshire plays in the primary process.
New Hampshire has enjoyed first-in-the-nation primary status for a full century, starting in 1920 (back then, citizens of the Granite State voted for state electors, rather than the actual Presidential candidates). This has made New Hampshire’s primary way more influential and important that its small population and relatively tiny number of delegates would merit on their own.
Every Presidential election cycle, pundits and candidates weigh performance in New Hampshire heavily in predicting who is likely to win in later contests, or even deciding whether or not to stay in the race. As I type this, two Democratic candidates (Andrew Yang and Michael Bennett) suspended their campaigns just last night after not doing well in the primary. Granted, these were candidates that were never considered front runners, but NH has had much larger impacts. Both Harry Truman and Lyndon Baines Johnson, sitting Presidents at the time, decided to not run for a second full term of their own after a poor showing in New Hampshire.
Overall, it’s difficult to quantify how much New Hampshire influences elections since knowing the results of early primaries like New Hampshire undoubtedly influences the voters of later primaries. But for must years since 1952, when candidates themselves began appearing on the ballot, the ultimate winner of the Presidency is the person who won the New Hampshire Primary for their party.
The significance of the New Hampshire Primary means that this state, with a population not quite as big as the city of San Diego, gets slathered with attention by Presidential candidates and their teams. The lady of the gift shop spoke to us fondly about all the candidates that had been by the State House, or that she had encountered in other settings. Apparently leading up to the primaries, you basically trip over potential future Presidents just walking down the street.
As she was telling us stories and pointing out some of the campaign paraphernalia, we couldn’t help being distracted by one particular autographed poster featuring what appeared to be the human equivalent of a garden gnome. “Oh yes,” the lady told us. “That’s Vermin Supreme.”
Besides being an interesting-looking fellow with a name that reminded me of the character Beef Supreme from one of my favorite POTUS-related (ish) film, Idiocracy, Vermin Supreme is a performance artists who uses tactics like always wearing a boot as a hat and campaigning on topics like zombie apocalypse preparedness and free ponies for all to bring awareness to his fairly anarchist positions.
He may seem like a joke, but after appearing on the New Hampshire Democratic primary ballot for a few election cycles (and not doing well), this year he actually won the state’s primary! The Libertarian Party primary. With 26 votes. Apparently only 150 people voted in the New Hampshire Libertarian Primary. But hey, he still won. He even garnered four more votes than his closest competitor, and TWICE as many votes as “None of the above.” That’s not nothing.
In the end, my short, unplanned visit to the New Hampshire State House did not help me realize my goal of acquiring a state-specific shot glass, but what I acquired instead was a feeling of connection to some of the tradition surrounding our Presidential elections, and the awareness of a delightful eccentric who quickly became my favorite perennial Presidential candidate.