(au format; 130 secs.; 2.09 mg)
(au format; 113 secs.; 1.83 mg)BILL PETCH, Broadway Books: I usually tell the advance people that if he is going to tell us how keen he is on small business, you know, buy something on the way out. [laughs] This is the acid test. They usually smile and-
SCOTT SIMON: That's not a New Hampshire accent, incidentally. Mr. Petch is originally from England, perhaps old England here. But he says he, too, can resent outsiders moving into New Hampshire, which in Derry usually means settlers who arrive over Interstate 93, people from Massachusetts where taxes are high and local datelines carry the news of poverty, crime and social turmoil. Derry hopes these headlines aren't carried along in their luggage. Webb Palmer, a lifelong Derry resident who teaches agriculture at the local high school says the arrivals have a nickname.
WEBB PALMER, Teacher: We call them low-landers.
SCOTT SIMON: From Massachusetts.
WEBB PALMER: That's correct. Low-landers come from Massachusetts.
SCOTT SIMON: Derry's population has almost doubled since 1980, transforming the town from a species of small town America into a slice of suburban sprawl. Try to get some fix on what some New Hampshire voters may be weighing in the choice they have to make in these months running up to the nation's first presidential primary. Weekend Edition and station WBUR in Boston took a trip to Derry, a town of about 30,000 people, about 15 minutes over the low-lander border. Thirty-eight percent of the town's registered voters are Republican, 25 percent Democratic, 37 percent independent.
[sound of church organ]
Two Sundays ago, the Reverend Richard Gustafson [sp] followed his sermon by reading a request for help.
Rev. RICHARD GUSTAFSON: Steve Musante who has been attending our church with his wife, his wife is now in Arizona and he'll be moving this weekend, so if a few of you strong men could give me a hand to help him move this coming Saturday, that would be greatly appreciated.
SCOTT SIMON: After social hour, the Reverend Gustafson pulled together a group to speak with us. Many among this group of committed Christians said they felt federal government policies promote what they consider to be immoral behavior. Victor Todd, a 36-year-old electrical engineer, found President Clinton's toleration of gays in the U.S. military an example.
VICTOR TODD: When you try to discuss with people the issue of homosexuality, they want to bring people and individuals into it and, actually, every individual is going to be a person that you have pity and heart for. But for a nation, for a country, for a people, is homosexuality a type of lifestyle that we would want to foster and say is equal and adequate for everyone and that should even be advanced?
SCOTT SIMON: Hank Gaworski [sp], a 45-year-old father of five, says even the popular federal school lunch program displays what he sees as moral obscurity.
HANK GAWORKSI: Students need the ability to eat, but the school lunch program is just another example of the federal government spoon-feeding individuals into the belief that the government will supply for you all your needs. I firmly believe my children should have a good school lunch and that's why I work.
SCOTT SIMON: Karen Gaskin [sp] is a federal bank regulator who moved to New Hampshire from Florida, though, like about 40 percent of Derry's work force, she works in the lowlands of Massachusetts.
KAREN GASKIN: I didn't expect the government to feed my children. I didn't expect the government to clothe my children. I didn't expect them to provide health care for my children.
SCOTT SIMON: Miss Gaskin says her religious beliefs are the basis of her politics.
KAREN GASKIN: And I'm tired of being painted as something ugly and something that is trying to destroy everything that everybody else believes in, because I have a certain set of values and a certain set of morals, and I want to voice it and I don't want to be condemned for it.
SCOTT SIMON: For example, there is one candidate, at least one candidate for president at the moment, who is not a Christian, a member of a religious organization that is not Christian. Would you vote for a non-Christian candidate?
KAREN GASKIN: No, I would not.
SCOTT SIMON: This is America and all that, but you would-
KAREN GASKIN: This is America and all that, and that's my belief. That's what I believe. I believe that I have that God-given right to make that judgment.
SCOTT SIMON: But you don't think you're exercising the same kind of, if I may use the word, bigotry that you feel has been directed toward you as a professing Christian.
KAREN GASKIN: To me, a professing Christian has a certain set of values. When I go to the polls, that's what I look for.
SCOTT SIMON: Incidentally, the Reverend Gustafson and several other members of this group disagreed with Karen Gaskin on this.
In the basement of the Masonic Temple on Broadway we met with several voters who had a different concern, but some of the same complaints.
ROSALIND NUKOVSKY: Truthfully, I listen to some of these politicians talk. They say one thing and when they get into office they do absolutely reverse.
SCOTT SIMON: Rosalind Nukovsky [sp] has lived in New Hampshire for 45 years. She has 12 grandchildren, seven great grandchildren, and disdain for politicians.
What have they done?
ROSALIND NUKOVSKY: What have they done? Well, I can't pinpoint it, but you listen to them on the TV, saying how good they will be, how much they will do for us, and, frankly, I haven't seen them do anything.
SCOTT SIMON: The group in the basement were all members of the American Association of Retired Persons, and most were openly worried about how congressional cuts might diminish their ability to pay for continuing medical care. Mike Molnar [sp], now 81 years old, was widowed in May. His wife died after a long illness and her care was financed through federal medical programs.
MIKE MOLNAR: And now, if the federal government gets out of it, it's going to go all back to the states. They'll have to furnish all the Medicaid money if there will be any.
SCOTT SIMON: `And what will you do with all of these people,' Mr. Molnar asked, `euthanize them'? But the youngest member of the group, Fred Love, who is only recently retired, is worried but willing to endure such cuts to help subdue the growth of taxes.
FRED LOVE: I'm going to lose what I've worked all my life for. That ranch I was going to have out there on Amstead Road, I'm going to wind up losing. So, I don't want to see things go up any more than anybody else does. But if I understand what they're telling me, that they're not cutting Medicaid, per se, that what they're doing is cutting the rate of growth that they anticipate for the next seven years, I'm all for it.
SCOTT SIMON: For all the complaints in New Hampshire, it's important to remember the state has no personal income tax and no sales tax. Residents of, say, New York or California may not may be much moved by their grievances. The absence of taxes are one reason low-landers from Massachusetts and even New York and Pennsylvania, drive over to buy cars or refrigerators from New Hampshire merchants, and one reason why in recent years more than a few low-landers have moved in. But New Hampshire's property tax is high. It's the total support for the state's public schools. The tax on a $100,000 house and lot, for example, can amount to more than $4,000 a year. A man named Charles Frederick Morton plucked an object from a pocket to show us how dearly taxes can cost a retired person.
CHARLES FREDERICK MORTON: I got 10 cents in my pocket today. That's all. One dime.
SCOTT SIMON: Mike Molnar asks-
MIKE MOLNAR: Why should people, say, 65 and over, now, I'm 80 and he's almost 80, and he's about 80, and she's about 80, and he's the youngest one, but, anyway, we have no children in the school system, why are we paying school tax when we don't even have children going to the schools?
SCOTT SIMON: Because giving opportunity to a child who lives in the same community as you is a good thing to do. How about that one.
MIKE MOLNAR: If it was a dentist or a doctor, I'd say, good, but those that can't afford it I don't think they should have to.
SCOTT SIMON: We were in town for the Halloween haunted house that the Reverend John Benell [sp] and his parishioners set out in the basement of the Church of the Transfiguration. Under dim lights, Sunday school children jiggled steamed cauliflower in serving bowls to look like human brains. An adolescent spirit guide in a white sheet shroud showed us a path past silvery gray cardboard headstones, one of them inscribed, `Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.' The Reverend Benell, though, disagrees with the Christians at First Baptist who say they cannot vote for a non-Christian candidate.
Rev. JOHN BENELL: It's kind of un-Christian isn't it? Politics is to
paint yourself as perfect and the other guy as evil and that's crazy. The
country is kind of moving in that direction. We want everything clear. We
want villains and we want saints and that's absolutely bizarre, I mean,
it's crazy. We can't have a country with that.
A Visit to Derry,
New Hampshire Continued
