October 21, 2007

Primary priorities pit stop

Group drives home waste at Pentagon

The topsy-turvy PrioritiesNH bus has followed all the presidential candidates around New Hampshire and Iowa, including Democratic hopeful Barack Obama.

Where is the pigmobile?

That was my first question to Steven Varnum, and he couldn't help but laugh before quickly telling me the vehicle was back in New Hampshire (it was snouting its way to Keene to the annual Pumpkin Festival) after spending time in Iowa.

"You will see it (pigmobile) a lot in the next few months," said Varnum, the campaign director of PrioritiesNH, an issue group with an agenda and a serious sense of humor. "It's an opportunity to educate the community."

Oink, oink. In the sometimes serious, policy-laden and inside-baseball world of primary politics, it's not often I get a chance to ask earnestly about a pigmobile. But then PrioritiesNH, a nonpartisan, nonprofit offshoot of the group Business Leader for Sensible Priorities (founded more than a decade ago by Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream fame), combines fun and policy-wonk level advocacy — in this case, to take a look at the bloated and out-of-control Pentagon budget that is well, hogging so many of our national priorities and making us a weaker nation by the day.

And of course, Varnum, his three full-time staffers and scores of volunteers have spread out across the map here in first-in-the-solar-system primary land. In case you're wondering just what that double-decker, upside-down, topsy-turvy yellow bus contraption is you see on the streets and highways, it's an effective and colorful marketing tool to stamp a brand name on an issue that 99 percent of politicians are loath to address honestly — and most voters are confused about.

They want to talk policy on their terms and certainly not wander in the territory of PrioritiesNH or any of the other numerous issue groups stalking the candidates.

New Hampshire has, with its endless, super-charged primary magnet, become a major playground for issue groups of all types and sizes and agendas. As a reporter or just a curious voter, sooner or later you will run into the wonderful and weird and deadly serious who have become the campaign equivalent of the Verizon Wireless cell-phone guy: Can you hear me at all?

"We have attended at least 350 events intending to ask a question and we have asked more than 185 questions," said Varnum, the former director of the N.H. Children's Alliance and a press-savvy former reporter. In addition to questions, the organization has pigmobiles, the topsy-turvy bus, the pie charts showing our government priorities, and a cookie mom sharing cookies at campaign stops among other attention-grabbing tricks.

While I've managed to avoid attending 350 events myself, I've been watching the PrioritiesNH at work throughout the year at both Republican and Democratic events (PrioritiesNH is a bipartisan court jester) and even the candidates have taken notice and been forced to address the issues of Pentagon waste such as outdated Cold War weapons systems or, the biggest boondoggle in human history, hundreds of billions wasted on the unworkable corporate welfare program known as missile defense.

It isn't suggesting unilateral disarmament, but taking a close look into the black hole of accountability and priorities at the biggest government entity on Earth.

During a recent forum at Seacoast Media Group (the parent company of Seacoast Sunday), Democratic hopeful John Edwards fielded a question from a PrioritiesNH member and he knew where it was coming from.

And they are coming from all over the state. Varnum told me an original list of 3,000 members (taken from another offshoot, TrueMajority) has grown to 10,000 members in the state.

While working with a budget of under a $1 million, just getting the candidates to pay attention is considered a victory of sorts for PrioritiesNH.

"It's a huge win for us. We are getting them to address us in specific and substantial ways," Varnum told me. "We wondered if they would even get them to acknowledge this issue."

The issue could be upside-down government priorities, health care reform, eliminating world poverty, marijuana legal reform, prayer in schools, the war in Iraq, stopping torture or corporate governance reform.

Myron Kandel would like some of that attention. When I wrote last year about Kandel, the former CNN financial guru and president of the N.H. Initiative For Corporate Responsibility and Investor Protection, he had high hopes to elevate good corporate governance into a serious political issue here in primary land.

During the past 18 months, Kandel has moderated some interesting forums on these topics in the state, but he's had problems getting the candidates to pay attention.

He's invited all presidential candidates to sit down with him for a 30-minute discussion about issues such as business ethics and protecting investors. The bonus for candidates and voters is this: the discussions would be taped and run on N.H. Public Television. Given his stature in New York and Washington, Kandel was accustomed to a certain level of cooperation.

Ah, not so fast. So far only Republican Mike Huckabee has returned with an affirmative RSVP. Kandel knows there is no shortage of hot issues out there (Iraq, terrorism, health care, global warming), and he has learned so far that in the issues department, candidates would rather talk about the joys of root canals than the dirty work of business ethics and investor protection.

Of course, it could be a small conflict-of-interest matter.

"I'd hate to believe that some of the candidates are reluctant to discuss these issues publicly because so many campaign contributors are from the business sector," Kandel told me. "If that were true — and I hope it isn't — it would be a sad commentary on the integrity of the candidates themselves."

I wonder if the candidates will hear that.

Political columnist Michael McCord is the opinion page editor of Seacoast Sunday and the Portsmouth Herald. You can read his Primary Pundit blog at www.thenewhampshireprimary.com. You can reach him at mmccord@seacoastonline.com.