Signs of the Times

An Ornithological Look at the New Hampshire Primary

This is an updated 2020 version of a 2004 piece that appeared in Chester College’s literary magazine.

Imagine my surprise when I checked my answering machine and heard a familiar voice: “Hello, this is George W. Bush…”

Beep. That was the only message. Oddly, the then-President forgot to leave a number where I could call him back. Half an hour later I received five other callers urging me to vote for them instead. Even James Earl Jones rang me up that night, though he was just trying to get me to switch my phone service to Verizon. With all the politicians trying to reach me, I’m surprised he was able to get through.

It was 2004, and that was my introduction to the joy, or perhaps the curse, of living in New Hampshire during a political year. Most of the time New Hampshire is just one of those small, unobtrusive states east of New York, but every fourth year politicians of all stripes stampede across the state line because of our early primary. Some wear suits and ties, others prefer business casual or blue jeans, and at least one wears a boot on his head. Suddenly you can’t turn around without bumping into someone who’s running for president.

Back then, the phone bombardment started in earnest well before the primary. My phone started ringing off the hook, and most of the calls were from Joe. Senator Joe Lieberman, I mean. But he called to chat so often, I feel comfortable calling him Joe.

He probably needn’t have bothered calling so much. According to the polls, the only contenders with a real shot at winning New Hampshire that year were John Kerry, Howard Dean, John Edwards, and Wesley Clark. Their voices sore from campaigning in Iowa, they flew into New Hampshire for more speeches. A joke making the rounds referred to them as “the four hoarse men of the apocalypse.”

One week before the primary, the up-and-down swing of the polls was interesting — if dizzying — to follow. I decided to conduct my own, private, unofficial poll. Like a bird watcher, I started counting the number and types of posted campaign signs springing up in my neighbor’s yards.

If the winner had been determined by who had the most signs, then John Edwards might actually have won New Hampshire that year. Someone stuck a flock of at least 300 Edwards signs in the snow banks overnight. I suppose those signs didn’t reflect the candidate’s true level of support, since one dedicated person supplied with an arsenal of signs and a reliable vehicle could have put them all up in just a few hours. But the signs popping up in residential front yards did count. Dean and Kerry were neck-and-neck, with Clark “four-star” signs not far behind.

There’s a strange fascination with watching these small, colorful rectangular signs spring up out of the January snow. A Kerry sign here, a Clark sign there, and, oh look, there’s even an odd Gephardt sign.

One afternoon I spotted my first rare and elusive Kucinich sign. In ornithological terms, that was almost as startling as sighting a jack pine warbler perched on a moose antler. Then I saw the yellow-throated “Firefighters for Kerry” sign, also rare, mingling with the more common “Kerry blue.”

The next morning I discovered and logged three whole species of Dean sign: the common yellow-on-blue Dean, whose habitat ranged from private yards to roadside snow banks; the extremely rare blue-on-yellow Dean; and finally the hybrid “Hope Not Fear” Dean.

On this latter sign, the word “fear” was printed directly above Dean’s name. That was perhaps a poor design choice. Competing campaign signs often were clustered together, so portions of the signs were obscured. When the left side of this particular species of Dean sign was blocked, what passersby first saw was “Fear Dean.”

Fortunately for the Dean campaign, this species of sign only migrated into New Hampshire in the last few days before the primary, and didn’t find many niches left to occupy.

By primary day, the Gephardt sign, much like the passenger pigeon, was thought extinct. I spotted a single Gephardt while driving to work, but it disappeared the next time the snowplow went by.

Before I knew it, the primary was over. Almost all the signs vanished. Like migrating birds, they flew south for the winter — south to South Carolina, the next big primary on the election calendar. But they’ll be back. Any day now. Every four years the migration and stampede begin anew.

For now, though, New Hampshire sure seems quiet. Hardly any lawn signs are up, and my landline isn’t ringing 20 times an hour. I wonder what Joe is up to these days. For some reason, he never calls anymore.