As primary day neared in New Hampshire, Dwight Eisenhower's forces spread across the state to speak for their man. Pennsylvania's big Senator Jim Duff, Ford Foundation President Paul Hoffman, Connecticut Governor John Davis Lodge and Kansas Senator Frank Carlson were out on the campaign trail. Television's Tex McCrary was roaming the mountains and valleys with a troop of entertainers, which included Tony Lavelli, onetime Yale basketball star (he shoots baskets at rallies), Maestro Fred Waring, Entertainers Les Paul & Mary Ford. Tex's wife, Jinx Falkenburg, was there ("as a wife & mother") to decorate the scene.
No Snow-Under. As the campaigners whooped if up, the Eisenhower organization's national manager, Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., was anything but overconfident. He knew that Governor Sherman Adams and some other big-name Republicans would be elected as Ike-pledged delegates. He also knew that the polls showed Eisenhower running ahead in the preference race. But he realized what many an outsider did not: New Hampshire is not safe Ike territory just because top Republican brass of the state are in his corner. In the lower echelons of the G.O.P. organization, there is many a Taftman, and Bob Taft is not going to be snowed under. A defeat for Ike or a narrow victory would be a serious blow to the key argument that he is a winner and that Taft isn't. That argument blared last week from 21 billboards along New Hampshire highways: "A vote for Ike in March means a G.O.P. November."
The Taft bandwagon was ready for a threeday, 500-mile swing through 20 cities and towns. With most voters thinking about the March 17 income-tax deadline, Bob Taft will dwell on two of his favorite subjects: Government extravagance and high taxes. As the Ohio Senator campaigns, 26 strategically-placed billboards will call attention to Ike's non-campaigning status: "We're for Taft because we know what he stands for."
"Be Human." On the Democratic side, Tennessee's Senator Estes Kefauver was driving along the highways and byways, ambling up & down the wintry main streets, drawling, shaking hands and winning votes. Harry Truman's friends, suddenly worried, hammered together a campaign. They hit something, not necessarily a nail, on the head with a slogan: "Be human, vote Truman."
Next Tuesday, New Hampshire voters will gather for town meetings to decide local issues (e.g., should the old covered bridge over the Contoocook in the town of Boscawen be demolished?). Then, with the political eyes of the U.S. on them, they will step over to the polling booths to 1) select delegates to the national conventions, 2) cast their ballots for the man they prefer for President. By next morning the first real straws will be eddying in the 1952 political wind.