Under-undercard debate
Lesser-known candidates invited in from the cold in New Hampshire
I’d never moderated a presidential debate. And it did not take long for me to recognize there was nothing I could have done to prepare for the first.
“A car was burned in my yard on my farm … and I’m not too happy about it,” Republican hopeful Stephen Comley declared in his opening statement.
Comley was the first of 23 candidates to speak at a quadrennial forum at St. Anselm College for lesserknown presidential hopefuls, part of a decades-old ritual in the nation’s first primary state in which even those candidates without national name recognition can make their case to voters.
For all the focus on the Donald and the Bern, on Hillary and Jeb, they are only a few of the 58 people whose names will appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot. The majority of them are like Comley, for whom the $1,000 candidacy filing fee was one of the biggest expenses of the campaign, along with the cost of coming to Manchester on a bitterly cold night for the debate, which gave them a chance to finally promote their platforms before television cameras.
The biggest news out of the debate Tuesday night was that the candidate who wears a boot on his head and promises free ponies for everyone was banned.
Four years ago, he stood up and glitter-bombed a fellow Democratic candidate who warned that homosexuality was a sin against nature. Vermin Supreme — his legal name now — said God told him to make the candidate gay. The debate sponsors didn’t appreciate the cleaning bill and this year told him thanks but no thanks.
One candidate vowed to “bring the message of Christmas to as many people as possible.” And another said he was in the race “partly on the issue of dignity for white people.”
What would be your follow-up question?
The event has often been labeled a “fringe forum” and dismissed with jokes. And to be sure, some candidates file for ballot access not for a noble purpose but for self-promotion — such as it is, with an audience in the dozens at St. Anselm College and perhaps only hundreds watching on C-Span.
But most of the candidates who attended Tuesday were earnest participants with a desire to share their ideas on issues they feel passionate about.
Jon Adams, a Democrat from New York, says that his top issue is student loans and that he’s running because he is “tired of the hate-mongering, the fearmongering and the infighting in this country.” Steven Lipscomb of Santa Fe, N.M., is campaigning on behalf of what he calls a “Fix It America” constitutional amendment, apparently to implement campaign finance and redistricting reform.
Republican Joe Robinson of Boston says he’s running because no wealthy politician could “appreciate the pain” of the unemployed, underpaid middle class. He says his most important issue was to show how the Environmental Protection Agency had hurt the economy with “junk science.”
And then there were the lesser-knowns who argued they had a greater claim to participate in the nationally televised network debates than some of those who did. Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente of San Diego has qualified for the ballot not only in New Hampshire but in 23 other states. That includes Ohio, where former two-term Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who has participated in all the major Democratic debates, failed to qualify.
And though they might not admit it, for some, the easy access to the New Hampshire primary is all about the experience.
The day after the debate, I was at the New Hampshire Statehouse in Concord reporting on speeches to the Legislature by some of the top-tier Republican candidates, and on a nearby appearance by former President Clinton on behalf of his wife, Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton.
As I worked in the hallway between speeches, one of the lesser-knowns, Democrat Sam Sloan, approached me. The night before, when I’d asked him what he could do to jump into the top tier of candidates, he responded by citing his experience as a chess master.
Sloan was showing his daughter around the Capitol. I lost track of them after covering Bill Clinton’s rally. But when I saw Sloan again later, he said proudly that they had made it to the rope line after the event. He won’t be president of the United States, but at least his daughter has shaken hands with someone who was.