The New Hampshire Primary used to be in March. In more recent years, it has been pushed back, in a push back at efforts to horn in on our “first in the nation” status. In 2007 – 2008 it was almost pushed back to the year prior to the election year. Usually it lands close to Valentine’s Day. The February 11th primary falls three days prior to the day that is of private interest, rather than public. We might be forgiven if thoughts of politics co-mingled with thoughts of love. All is fair in both. To the jaded, both are replete with skulduggery, manipulation, power and passion.

Couplings have had political consequences. Take King Henry Vlll, now there was a man who could get things done. Intrigues, political and otherwise, are common in democratic process as well. In the spirit of the primary season, let us recall a few with a New Hampshire twist.

Our neighbor from Maine, Senator Ed Muskie, headed into the 1972 New Hampshire Democratic primary a national and local front runner. The shambling senator seemed to personify gravitas. He won raves as the Demo nominee for VP four years earlier, projecting calmness and cool in the face of hecklers in that passion rent election year. What a contrast he would offer against The Trickster, the sweaty used car salesman from Whittier. However, in addition to an ability to project calm, Muskie also had the meanest temper this side of Amy Klobuchar. William Loeb, the ever playful far Right publisher of the Manchester Union Leader, and no fan of Muskie, saw benefit in needling Big Ed. He called him “Moscow Muskie.” No reaction. He published a letter of dubious origin, saying Muskie seemed to enjoy slurs directed at French Canadians. That became a bigger deal a year later.

Then Loeb reprinted a story from another publication that had Muskie’s wife Jane unwinding with a drink with reporters, and suggesting they swap “dirty jokes.” Muskie pulled a flatbed truck up to the Union Leader’s offices, in heavy snow, and denounced Loeb as a “gutless coward.” Loeb was lucky, Muskie said, that he was not standing in front of him on the back of that truck. Then he seemed to choke up. It remains in dispute whether it was tears or snow running down Muskie’s face. His win in the primary was deemed underwhelming. His campaign collapsed. Times change. Sixteen years later it was practically required that presidential candidates weep on the public’s shoulder. Mike Dukakis is still trying to live down a wonky and dispassionate answer about the death penalty, in reply to a debate question about whether his opposition to such would change if his own wife had been raped and murdered.

Bill Clinton had none of the Dukakis reserve. His strength seemed to be that he reminded everybody of the guy in the beer commercial who says “I love you, man,” so he might get his friend’s Bud Lite.” His 1992 New Hampshire primary campaign tanked amid questions of marital infidelity. The same thing sank Gary Hart four years earlier. Clinton lost the primary, but introduced himself and his wife to millions of beer soaked Super Bowl viewers, in a special 60 Minutes interview, where he and Hillary pretty much said he’d fooled around, and what of it? He was elected.

Dartmouth alum Nelson Rockefeller, Governor of New York back when that made you a formidable presidential contender, headed into 1963 the front runner to take on JFK in 1964, especially in the Granite State. Kennedy believed that Rocky would have defeated him in 1960, had Rocky been the GOP nominee. Rocky seemed to weather a 1961 divorce, but his 1963 remarriage to a much younger, just divorced mother of several small children was too much. A blizzard of write-in votes for another liberal Republican, Henry Cabot Lodge, torpedoed Rocky in New Hampshire. He Lodge became known as “Henry Sabotage” to Rockefeller’s friends.  At the 1964 GOP convention that summer, as the charismatic, gravel voiced governor was all but shouted off the podium, a female delegate on the convention floor stood screaming over and over at Rocky, “You lousy lover! You lousy lover!” To some, Rocky was an Edward Vlll, giving up his shot at the White House for love. Others saw the arrogance of a rich guy who thought he could do anything. Rockefeller served another decade as New York governor. He served a short and unhappy stint as Gerald Ford’s appointed post Watergate VP. By today’s standards, it was a tame scandal. There was an interesting coda. In January of 1979, the 70 year old Rockefeller, still wed to his bride of 1963, died of a heart attack in flagrante with his 25 year old mistress.

It was a surprise in 1961, when conservative Styles Bridges seemed supportive of liberal Republican Rockefeller’s 1964 presidential hopes. Bridges would not live out the year. Bridges was a staid and steady type. That was his strength. A poor boy from Maine, who parlayed teaching and editing gigs and a stint as a public service commissioner into the New Hampshire governorship at age 36. From that point forward, for as long as he lived, no Democrat was elected governor of New Hampshire or senator from New Hampshire. Not on Styles’ watch. Even Loeb understood that Bridges was the GOP boss in the Granite State. His navigation of conflicting ambitions and ideologies in the state Republican party was legendary.

Widowed as a young man, a powerful senator in Washington by 1944, Bridges married Doloris Thauwald, a 29 year old native of Minnesota, who had attended Strayer Business College and worked for the IRS and the state department visa office. In contrast with her staid husband, Doloris took to the Washington social scene. The senator soon found himself walking back his wife’s more strident conservative public statements. Attractive and assertive, an ardent feminist and conservative, she both charmed and antagonized Senator Bridges’ staff and associates. By the mid 1950s, Press Lord Loeb was promoting Doloris for the other senate seat from New Hampshire. Hillary, eat your heart out.

All Hell broke loose when Senator Bridges died in November of 1961. The senator was not even buried before Loeb was publicly demanding that governor Wesley Powell, a young and ambitious former chief of staff to the late senator, appoint The Widow Bridges to the seat. Powell, Bridges, and Loeb had all assisted each other in the past. This time Powell defied Loeb, appointing his attorney general to the seat. Loeb vowed revenge. His newspapers heavily promoted Doloris Bridges for the senate seat, in a 1962 primary she lost narrowly. Loeb also promoted a GOP primary challenger to Powell. Powell lost. In November, for the first time since the Great Depression, Democrats won the senate seat and the governorship. Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential bid in New Hampshire was crippled by GOP pols at each other’s throats. Senator Norris Cotton, weary of Doloris Bridges’ loose cannon behavior, on Goldwater’s “behalf,” once pulled a bottle of Old Crow from his desk drawer, handed it to a Goldwater staffer, and said “go  fuck Doloris.”  The Granite State Evita again sought election to the senate in 1966, this time without Loeb’s support. She lost badly, and died of cancer three years later.

Why do some girls always go for the bad boys? Lucy Hale was the daughter of John Hale, senator from New Hampshire during the Civil War. Hale is one of four men with statues of themselves in front of the State House in Concord. Hale was a staunch abolitionist. He left the Democrats over slavery, helped form the Free Soil party, and then became a Republican. Lucy Hale was the belle of Washington. She was smart, flirtatious, and stubborn. Theodore Roosevelt’s comment about his daughter, Alice, comes to mind. “I can run the country, or look after Alice. I can’t do both.” Lucy was courted by such luminaries as young Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Robert Todd Lincoln, son of President Lincoln, who encouraged such a match.

Alas, Lucy was hanging out with this loser actor! She was even spotted making out with him in public! She gave him a ruby engagement ring! In one of his last official acts, President Lincoln named John Hale ambassador to Spain. This had the added advantage of getting Lucy away from the less than ideal suitor, the actor. Hours later, Lincoln went to the theater, and was assassinated by the actor and boyfriend, Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. The Hale’s headed for Spain. Booth was shot trying to flee a burning barn, ten days later. As he lay dying, he asked that his hands be lifted so he could see the ruby ring Lucy gave him. He was reported to have repeated the word “useless,” as he looked at the ring. It is just as likely he repeated the name Lucy. Lucy Hale went on to marry New Hampshire Senator and Navy Secretary William Chandler.