So, apparently there’s this little business of an election in New Hampshire today that has a few people paying attention….
Before Jimmy Carter was the Democratic nominee in 1976, he began his trek to the White House as “Jimmy Who???” in New Hampshire, campaigning long before anyone else, doing more than due diligence by meeting the voters one-on-one. New Hampshire’s primary had been first in the nation since the 1950s, but Carter’s surprise win there and his subsequent capture of the nomination and then the White House turned the curious little election into the Most Important Event in American politics.
So, every four years like clockwork, the news media invade New Hampshire for a few weeks, and inevitably focus on Dixville Notch, the tiny town that opens its polls at midnight on primary day, a good six hours or so before all the others, and since there are only a handful of voters in town the results are known almost immediately. Prior to 1976, this was just a cute photo op for the pages of Life magazine, but these days the news media treat the couple of dozen voters like they were the deciding ballots for the whole election.
As it so happens, I have a personal connection to Dixville Notch. Dixville Notch is the town where The Balsams Resort is located, and my wife’s college friend Donna and her husband Rick are employees of the resort — she is the ski instructor, and he is the musical director. In fact, they actually live at the resort (nice, eh?), and for the past several election cycles have been part of the ballyhoo of the primary.
In the photograph above, you can see Donna casting the very first ballot in Dixville Notch. For a few years now, the polling place for the primary has been at the resort itself (let’s face it, there isn’t much THERE there, y’know?), and most of the people voting are the resort employees who live there. This isn’t the first time that Donna has been The First Voter, either. Somewhere I have a video clip of her from the 2004 election, too.
Rick is also part of the act. He’s one of the voting officials. In this MSNBC photo, he’s jotting down the final vote tallies so they can all go home and go to bed like normal people. They’ve got lots of snow up in the mountains this winter, so I’ll bet business at the resort is booming. Of course, all the media people clog the hotels closest to the Manchester airport so they can get the fuck out of Dodge tomorrow morning, but maybe Brian Williams or Katie Couric might stay over and enjoy the luxurious accommodations.
The only unfortunate bit of news I have to relate to you about this is that they voted Republican, more’s the pity.
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