Norman Boudreau, a 72-year-old retired policeman, is sitting at The D.W. Diner pondering his options for the Republican nominee — he likes Donald Trump for his verve, but he also thinks that Marco Rubio better says what Trump is actually thinking.
“He’s right in what he’s saying, he just doesn’t know how to say it,” Boudreau says of Trump.
This former Nashua police officer — who was the leader of New Hampshire’s first SWAT team — is emblematic of the unsettled base of Republican voters.
CNN traveled here just after the New Year, to this bedroom town and Republican stronghold nestled between Manchester and Nashua, to take the pulse of Republican voters.
The broad mood, among 24 voters who identified as independent or Republican, is anger with President Barack Obama and an “anyone but Hillary (Clinton)” mentality. But who goes head-to-head with the Democrats’ pick later this year seems like anyone’s game.
The one constant: Republican voters in New Hampshire are tired of losing.
“The last two didn’t have what it takes to get their point across — McCain and Romney. We need somebody that’s going to do what he says,” said Bill Mackie, 73 of Merrimack. “I don’t want another weak candidate.”
Some discoveries were consistent with most polling — Republicans tend to like the way Trump talks about issues, but are not yet sold on him. Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and Rubio are all getting serious looks.
The most recent CNN/WMUR poll of New Hampshire Republicans found Trump with a clear lead in the field — 34% support — followed by Cruz (14%), Rubio and Bush (10%) and then Christie, Kasich and Rand Paul (6%). But beyond the top-line numbers, there is a lot of uncertainty. That’s reflected deeper in the poll — Trump is the first pick for 34%, but the second choice for only 8%.
The voters themselves give the best idea why: They love how Trump talks and how he’s passionate and unabashed. And they love what he’s saying. But they’re not completely sold that he’s presidential material — which is how you end up with voters who support both Trump and Bush — two candidates who have been at each others’ throats for months.
The Bush message has penetrated. His version of his time as Florida governor is well known to most voters here. They’ve gotten stacks of mailers from him and see his commercials on TV regularly, but they’re still not hot on him. And Trump’s history of liberal positions and Democratic support is also well-known, but voters either dismiss it or it’s another piece driving them elsewhere.
The Dunkin’ Donuts Roundtable
At the Dunkin Donuts next to the Merrimack post office, Bill Mackie and a rotating group of four or five other Merrimack residents — many of them retired, all of them supporting Republicans this year — are discussing the stacks of mailers from other candidates. But perched in the middle of the table this Tuesday morning is the Christmas card Trump sent to his fans.
Mackie worked as an electrical engineer at defense contractor BAE Systems in Merrimack, a major employer here before retiring. He’s skeptical of Trump and wanted someone who would talk tough and had experience. Mackie is going with Cruz.
“He’s been exposed to more classified meetings and other things like that, and yet he’s independent enough to stand up in front of us and filibuster if he needs to get his point across,” Mackie says. “Trump, I don’t know anything about him. I know he used to be a liberal. So is he real? I don’t know.”
But Mackie is the lone Cruz supporter in this gaggle — as either a first or second pick.
Dick Peters, 69, used to work sales for Moore Business Forms in Merrimack. He’s planning to vote for Bush, if he doesn’t vote for Trump.
“I just like the way he speaks out,” Peters says of Trump. “That’s the one thing I think I like the best about him. He’s saying like I’ve been saying it, like we’ve all been saying it, for the last eight years.”
At that mention, Mackie jumps in with a warning about Trump, “Is he gonna go back to his old ways?”
But Peters says that Bush has experience and a good pedigree.
“I think the reason I’d go with Bush is because I think he has good family values and I look at the way his brother there still interacts with the troops coming home and still goes out to the hospitals to visit. But yet he has kept his nose out of everybody’s business,” Peters says.
Peters then says he would also consider Cruz, but only as a third choice. Lance Ford, 68, a retired computer designer and former cook in the U.S. Navy, says he would probably pick the same way, in that order: Trump first, then Bush, then Cruz.
“I like Trump a lot because he’s open-minded. I like Jeb Bush because of his family. The only thing I don’t like about Jeb Bush is his order on immigration. He hasn’t come out on that. If he comes out and says, ‘I would close the borders down,’ I would vote for him in a minute. But he won’t do that,” Ford says.
The American Legion bar
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is chatting to residents packed into the Merrimack American Legion hall. It’s a brisk 25 degrees outside. But it’s hot up in the second-floor hall — so hot that a few windows are cracked open.
One floor below them is the Legion bar, members-only with old ’70s-style fake wood paneling on the walls and a thin haze of cigarette smoke, mixed with the smell of pipe tobacco.
About a dozen veterans and their friends sit at the bar on a Sunday evening, shooting the bull, talking about the New England Patriots’ loss that day. Paula Castranova, 57, is tending bar.
Between the three jobs she’s holding down, she hasn’t given much thought to the February 9 primary just yet.
“I really, to be honest with you, haven’t paid attention. I know who I don’t like. It’s not Christie, I like him so far. I don’t know, it’s just really (I) don’t like to air my feelings about politics. But I do like Christie, he’s the front-runner in my mind,” Castranova says.
So who’s the one she won’t vote for? Trump.
“He scares me,” she says. “I like some of the stuff that he says, but then I don’t like other stuff that he says. He scares me. He scares me. That’s all I can say.”
Christie held court for about two hours upstairs, then stuck around shaking hands and taking photos with anyone who didn’t want to go home on a Sunday night.
Donna Sadof, 68, from neighboring Bedford, asked Christie about curbing government spending. Afterward, she says she liked his answer, but she’s still all-in for Trump, an answer reflecting a desire for change from the usual in Washington.
“I said in there, I’m angry, I’m frustrated, and we elected a Republican Senate and a Republican House and they’ve done nothing. It’s time to look maybe outside the box at someone who’s saying they will do something. Now whether he will or not, I don’t know,” Sadof says.
Her husband, Michael Sadof, 66, said he looked at Trump but settled on Christie after listening to him Sunday night.
“I was about Trump and I think we need somebody to shake this thing up and I think we have to have a Republican otherwise we’re in very big trouble in this country,” Michael Sadof said. “We’ve both worked all of our lives, saved enough money and now don’t have enough money to live on because there’s no interest and there’s a whole bunch of issues. However, I think he seems to have very good ideas and a balance between compassion and force. And I think that that’s what we need, as a leader.”
Leslie Goodwin, 43, a cashier at the Dunkin’ Donuts, liked Christie after hearing him speak. But she’s not all-in for him, just yet.
“I think Christie’s a very strong person,” Goodwin said. “He reminds me a little bit of Ronald Reagan. There are certain things he says, it reminds me of Reagan in how he connects with the people and what his policies are. I think he would be a good president.”
Goodwin is getting a nudge toward the New Jersey governor from her friend Richard Maloon, 75, a retired underwater acoustics engineer who worked at BAE. Maloon, who is organizing with Christie, urged Goodwin to sit in for Christie’s Merrimack town hall.
Maloon shuffled through a handful of favorites last spring and summer. He liked Rubio near the start. But he also liked Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (who he joined for a motorcycle ride when Walker held his Labor Day rally there) before settling on Christie.
Maloon said he is flat-out against Ben Carson because he just can’t vote for someone who doesn’t believe in evolution.
“Anyone who believes in intelligent design is going to make us the laughingstock of the world and they’ll call us the second (Scopes) Monkey Trial. So he’s not on my radar,” Maloon says.
The Trump base
Maloon and Goodwin aren’t Trump fans, but Trump has his supporters in Merrimack, many of them working-class white men.
“He’s not going to take any bulls*** from anybody,” Charles DiFranco, 74, a retiree from neighboring Bedford, explained bluntly.
Mike Malzone, 54, a ceramic and tiling contractor and one-time tea party congressional candidate from Merrimack, has been locked in for Trump almost from the beginning.
“He’s the one who can beat the media! The media lie!” Malzone says. “Look at what they did to Mitt Romney.”
Malzone is at the D.W. Diner, just off Daniel Webster Highway in the center of Merrimack, with a group talking politics and the Republicans. Like many of the other voters interviewed, he moved here from Massachusetts. In his case, it was 25 years ago from Stoneham, but others moved north to get away from deep-blue Massachusetts in the ’60s and ’70s.
Dick Peterson, 70, is an Army veteran active with the American Legion and one of the Merrimack originals.
Peterson, behind the wheel of his SUV, took me on a tour of Merrimack — past the stables where Anheuser-Busch keeps its iconic Clydesdales and the campus of Fidelity Investments, where he taught his children to drive in the parking lots. He ponders what he wants from his next president.
He’s considering Christie, who he met just a few days earlier. He liked Lindsey Graham, because of his military service, and has also been pondering Cruz and Rubio. But he’s not sure he’s ready to pick between candidates that are still a little green.
“They’re both very, very smart men, but I don’t think the time is right for them,” Peterson says as he drives through Merrimack. “Next time around, I think you’re going to see a lot more power out of them, a lot more. You know they’ll have a lot more experience.”