(au format; 113 secs.; 1.82 mg)Frank Separetto [sp], president of the Derry Taxpayers Association, has a new baby, Frankie, Jr., who squalled and cooed from his father's lap as we talked in his kitchen with members of his group. Paul Hoffgarten [sp] says New Hampshire's motto `Live free or die,' summarizes a philosophy.
PAUL HOFFGARTEN: It's a different philosophy, I think, of how to spend the money. There's a feeling of taking care of oneself. I think that there's a tendency in some places to think that the government is supposed to be the mother of everything and take care of everybody's problems. I feel New Hampshire is probably the last place in the country where that's not the case.
SCOTT SIMON: Our conversations in Derry took place 12 days ago, before Prime Minister Rabin's assassination, before Colin Powell's announcement that he will not run for president. This group from the Derry Taxpayers Association were really the only voters to mention foreign policy. Mr. Hoffgarten for one said he favored U.S. support for Prime Minister Rabin's peace plan because stable oil prices in the Middle East give the U.S. a clear national interest there, an interest he does not see in helping police any peace agreement on the mass burial grounds now being uncovered in Bosnia.
PAUL HOFFGARTEN: At this point I don't think we should be sending troops to Bosnia. Frankly, we have to look, what are the U.S. interests in Bosnia versus the degree of our involvement.
SCOTT SIMON: It strikes me that you're relating a lot of foreign policy issues to what amounts tax issues.
PAUL HOFFGARTEN: It is related because it's all- every issue in the United States is related to taxes at the baseline, because how do you pay for anything the government does.
SCOTT SIMON: We could go to the South Bronx in New York City or the West Side of Chicago or South Central L.A. or Central City Detroit, and within five or six blocks you'd see as many or more people than live in Derry, New Hampshire, and many of them would be living in desperate blinding poverty. Do you think you, living here in this community, have some personal responsibility to help those communities.
PAUL HOFFGARTEN: Speaking as a resident of Derry, no, speaking as a resident of New Hampshire, no, speaking as a resident of the U.S., yes.
SCOTT SIMON: But urgent urban problems, he said, were hard to relate to his own experiences or concern.
PAUL HOFFGARTEN: I'll tell you how you could have avoided a lot of those problems: by not funding the welfare programs and a lot of the other programs that give money away. You have Massachusetts, a Democratic state that has a lot of these programs, they've got a lot of those problems. We don't have them here in New Hampshire. I don't know if it's too cold for the homeless up here or we don't have the programs to help support people, but it's a different mind set, they're brought up differently, But, again, you're talking about large urban areas and they're brought up in a different environment. It's a tough thing to fix. I don't have an answer for that.
SCOTT SIMON: If that sounds like self-responsibility at its most uncharitable, a kinder example may exist downtown, in the town's welfare office. Town welfare is distinct in New Hampshire. People don't enroll in a continuing mandated program like federal aid to dependent children, but instead they meet with the town official face to face. In Derry it's a woman named Jane Wilcollis [sp], to ask for what amounts to a favor, cash to help them through tight times, money for rent, school clothing and food.
JANE WILCOLLIS: We don't want to subsidize anybody. We want to be here for emergency, hopefully one-time assistance, and we expect repayment. It's not a gift, it's a loan and we tell them that and we make them sign a reimbursement agreement.
SCOTT SIMON: Do you have trouble collecting on that sometimes?
JANE WILCOLLIS: Always.
SCOTT SIMON: But many recipients work off the loans in jobs Jane Wilcollis helps them find. Still, she cautions that an appealing idea like town welfare is difficult to translate from a place like Derry into larger cities or the nation at large.
JANE WILCOLLIS: I think New Hampshire should not be the message for the country, because I don't think it's the right message. I think we are too Republican, we're too conservative, we're too stuck in our ways. I mean, we don't even have state tax.
SCOTT SIMON: Yet, to leave a town with the idea that voters want less government, lower taxes and fewer foreign involvements wouldn't seem to make Derry, New Hampshire markedly different from many other American communities. Maybe the rising property taxes here suggest to some that taxes are blob-like, pressed down on one spot, then the blob just rises somewhere else. There is no crisis overseas that seems to directly threaten Americans, and the urban crisis at home doesn't seem as daily and direct a threat as the taxes that seem to make Americans work more, but take home less and spend less time with their families.
Webb Palmer says he doesn't come downtown much anymore, because he doesn't see anyone he knows. We walk by the loan office that the father of Alan Shepherd, the astronaut, once ran. It's now a card shop. On another corner a place that used to be a family drugstore is now a Chinese take-out restaurant. But across the street from a garden store, Mr. Palmer saw a young man who was once his student and is now a farmer just outside of Derry. `Hey, Billy,' Mr. Palmer shouted across the street to Billy Cardocki[sp].
WEBB PALMER: How're you doing, Billy? Come here, come here. I just said on the radio you're a good guy, so-
SCOTT SIMON: We explained that while we tried to talk about issues to voters in Derry without mentioning a single candidate, maybe it was wise as we left to ask if these two men were moved to mention any one or two names. Webb Palmer volunteered-
WEBB PALMER: I don't know yet. It would be a Republican, obviously, I guess. But I really don't know. Right now I'm kind of pushing, you know, leaning Dole, but if Colin Powell comes along-
BILLY CARDOCKI: I'm not leaning to Dole, but if Colin Powell came along, I would be very interested in Colin Powell if he was to run, so- someone who is not in politics is the main thing for me, because I think they're all pretty bad.
SCOTT SIMON: But politics, I mean, this is the overwhelming qualification. Just someone who is not a politician. Do you feel anyone who has run for office has sort of been contaminated by being part of-
BILL CARDOCKI: It would be a relief.
WEBB PALMER: Yeah, it would be a relief not to have a real politician.
SCOTT SIMON: But after Colin Powell's announcement this week, it's the real politicians from whom Derry will likely be left to choose.
This is the first report of NPR's 1996 election project and is produced in conjunction with the People's Voice, a co-production with WBUR in Boston and reporter Tovia Smith. Our thanks to the Boston Globe and television station WABU in Boston.
