House race in N.H. may be election day portent

Support for Bush
On House roll call votes in 2005, Bass voted with the Bush administration about two-thirds of the time, according to a tally done by Congressional Quarterly magazine.

Bass is a longtime ally of President Bush who has nicknamed him “Bassmaster.”

Asked whether Bush will campaign for him in his district, Bass said, “That will be my choice” and then let out a loud laugh. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

Bass portrays himself as non-partisan. “I’ve always prided myself on being able to work with Democrats, I get lots of Democratic votes, that’s why Paul Hodes isn’t going to win,” Bass said Friday.

“Voters in general have a pretty dim view of the president and of the work Congress has done. But I also believe that 12 years of constituent service, of breaking with the party where I thought it was in the interests of New Hampshire and the nation (will make) most people see me as being quite different from the standard mold,” he said. “If there’s anybody in Congress that defines independence it has to be me.”

And he argues that 2006 isn’t 1994. “I spent three hours in Salem today: we went all over the place, the town house, the senior center, the country stores, and when I ran in 1994 and beat Dick Swett, there was real anger out there. There’s none of that today,” Bass said in an interview Friday.

But he sounded worried that anemic turnout among Republicans might undermine his bid for a seventh term.

Democrat pounds away
Meanwhile, Hodes pounds away in small gatherings such as in Berlin and large ones, like the New Hampshire Democratic party convention last weekend where 800 turned out.

Bush and Congress “have given us the incompetence of Katrina and Iraq; they’ve given us the corruption of Abramoff and DeLay, but it hasn’t stopped there, because that corruption has been right here in New Hampshire with phone-jamming scandals from the Republican National Committee,” Hodes told his Berlin audience.

He said, “The machine is broken and Charlie Bass is just a cog in a broken machine. He’s a nice enough guy, but he’s been ground up and spit out….When I go to Washington I’m bringing my backbone with me.”

Hodes contrasts Bass unfavorably with another New Hampshire New Republican, David Souter, with whom Hodes had a memorable job interview back when Souter was the New Hampshire attorney general and hired Hodes to work on his staff.

Life-changing meeting with Souter
“It was an event that changed my life,” Hodes said. “I had never met somebody who impressed me so much. And the qualities he impressed me with are qualities that are very important to public service in New Hampshire: fiercely independent, absolute integrity, a real backbone….”

Hodes seems less commanding than some other House candidates we’ve seen this year — he still glances down at his notes during his speech and some of his rhetoric has passed its sell-by date (“putting people first” and “this election is not about me, it’s about us.”) But voter disenchantment and sagging Republican morale may make this less significant than it would be in a typical election year.

University of Maryland political scientist Thomas Schaller, the author of a forthcoming book on how Democrats can build a non-Southern majority, puts the Bass-Hodes battle in its wider context: “In the rectangle formed between New Hampshire, Delaware, Iowa and Minnesota are nearly four dozen moderate, (Nelson) Rockefeller-style Republican incumbents who find their usually-safe districts suddenly in the Democrats' crosshairs. If Bass survives he will be one of the fortunate ones. But if he doesn't he will be part of a larger, regional story.”

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