In New Hampshire's frozen Lake Winnipesaukee region, a tall, stiff-spined farmer in high laced boots stood before the Meredith Village Savings Bank one morning last week and shook his head slowly. "I've had so much information from so many candidates about what I should do," said 70-year-old Jesse L. Ambrose, "that my bucolic mind is utterly confused."
Only three weeks away, New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation Republican presidential primary is indeed enough to befuddle almost any mind. For a while, it figured to be a two-man contest between Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller. From that it has turned into a scramble involving half a dozen big-name Republicans.
The ballot itself indicates the difficulties facing G.O.P. voters. It is a fearsome document, divided into five columns, containing some 125 names and running H ft. long. The fifth column is for the presidential and vice-presidential "popularity contest." In it are listed the avowed candidates: Goldwater, Rockefeller, Maine's Senator Margaret Chase Smith and Harold Stassen. Two New Hampshiremen are listed, presumably just to see their names in print: Norman Lepage, a Nashua accountant who also ran in the 1962 senatorial primary; and Wayne Green of Peterborough, publisher of a ham radio magazine, who filed for Vice President. Unlisted, but with backers busily courting write-in votes, are Richard Nixon and U.S. Ambassador to South Viet Nam Henry Cabot Lodge.
For a state with only 14 delegates to the G.O.P.'s July convention (out of 1,308) and four electoral votes (out of 538), the candidates are spending lavishly of their time, energy and money. By primary time, Rockefeller will have campaigned four full weeks in the state and Goldwater three. Nixon and Lodge plan no appearances, but their supporters are doling out good cash for expensive mailings and high-powered organizations in attempts to draw at least 10,000 write-in votes apiece, which they hope will establish them as possible compromise candidates in July.
Crowded House. New Hampshire has long since come to expect such serious efforts in its primaries. The state itself takes its politics in dead earnest. Though it is 45th among the states in population (606,921), its 400-member house of representatives is the fourth-largest in the English-speaking world (after Britain's Upper and Lower Chambers and the U.S. House), giving a remarkable number of people a crack at active roles in politics. In a sense, the house perpetuates the New England town meeting, and in that sort of atmosphere even the most attractive candidates are hard put to get a bandwagon rolling.
Despite its 3-to-2 Republican edge and its reputation for old-fashioned conservatism, New Hampshire is not composed wholly of taciturn Yankee shopkeepers who spend winters around potbellied stoves, summers shooing away tourists, and election day pulling G.O.P. levers. Fed by waves of immigrants from Ireland, Central Europe and Canada, its population is 39.2% Catholic. One-sixth of its citizens are French Canadian, and there are communities where French is the first language, not English.