Note: The following transcript is a radio script. Therefore, it contains audio cues and other script conventions, as well as grammar and syntax errors some readers may find objectionable.
Stranglehold episode 1: The Guardian
JACK RODOLICO: There’s a story New Hampshire likes to tell about its famous presidential primary.
[HORNS]
The story goes, that this state makes better presidents.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: This is a state that asks candidates to come and look people in the eye and shake the hand and to share the heart. And I like that kind of campaigning.
JACK RODOLICO: That if you want to be president, you better spend a lot of time here.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think winning New Hampshire, to me, would be a tremendous honor.
JACK RODOLICO: That the New Hampshire primary is democracy at its finest.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Your voice can change the outcome of the New Hampshire election. Your choice can choose the next leader of the free world.
[MUSIC SLOWS]
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: That’s a nice story. But we’re gonna tell you a different one.
[DRUMBEATS]
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: This is a story about power, and what people will do to keep it. A story about how and why one small state has gotten the first crack at picking presidents for so long. Because here’s the secret: Here in New Hampshire, we know how valuable this primary is, how much power it gives us. Why would we give that up?
KATHY SULLIVAN: The most important thing that we can do is to save the New Hampshire primary, because without the primary, what is New Hampshire?
[GUITAR RIFFS]
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: The first-in-the-nation primary is New Hampshire’s most powerful institution. It gives a lot of people in this state an incredible amount of influence and access. There’s like an unspoken rule in politics around here — you don’t question the first-in-the-nation primary.
JACK RODOLICO: But that’s exactly what we are gonna do. This is Stranglehold, a podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio about what happens when one small state gets its hands around our presidential elections. And won’t let go.
[MORE GUITAR RIFFS]
JACK RODOLICO: I’m Jack Rodolico, and I’m an investigative reporter
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: I’m Lauren Chooljian, and I’m a political reporter. And we’re gonna do a thing with this podcast that a lot of people in this state don’t want us to do: examine this sacred institution with a healthy dose of skepticism.
JACK RODOLICO: And for our first episode, we are gonna take a hard look at a guy with a powerful reputation around here. He’s known as the guardian of the New Hampshire primary.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: But while some people consider him to be an icon, others consider him a problem.
HUGH GREGG: We would not have this primary today if it were not for Bill Gardner. He’s the savior, the guardian of what we have here in New Hampshire…
LIZ TENTARELLI: I like him as an ambassador for our first-in-the-nation primary much more than I like him as Secretary of State.
LARRY GORMLEY: Bill Gardner's passion comes from perpetuating the cult of personality of Bill Gardner.
MIKE COUTU: People know the Good Bill. People do not know the Bad Bill. […] Who's the real Bill Gardner?
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
TRUMP: Hi Bill.
BILL GARDNER: Hi.
JACK RODOLICO: Donald Trump is in New Hampshire. It’s late 2015, in the thick of a competitive presidential primary. And he’s bragging about the size of a crowd that’s turned out to see him.
TRUMP: Wow. That's some turnout, huh? This is a little different than most of them, huh? This is a little different than all of them. How are you? …
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Trump was riding high in the polls at this moment, but it’s still early in the campaign. So anything could happen. And Trump is in New Hampshire to do a thing that so many powerful people have done before him. He’s inside the state capitol building to drop off a check. And there are a lot of people —reporters, fans, photographers — who don’t want to miss it.
BILL GARDNER: So we have your check.
TRUMP: It's a cashier's check. I don't think they would have taken mine. They wanted a cashier's check. So this is from a bank that’s not actually as rich as we are, right?
JACK RODOLICO: Every four years, it’s voters in New Hampshire who cast the first ballots in a presidential campaign cycle. And the results of that election have altered history. No joke — if you win here, you could be on a fast track to the White House.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Which is why Trump is making a big deal about handing over a check for a thousand bucks to the state of New Hampshire. Because it’s this check that gets his name on the first-in-the-nation primary ballot.
TRUMP: Where do you want me to sign, Bill?
JACK RODOLICO: “Bill” is Secretary of State Bill Gardner. It’s his job to take these thousand dollar checks from wannabe presidents, making sure they sign the correct forms, often in front of a sea of cameras.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: That means Bill Gardner has stood shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of powerful people — senators, governors, congressmen, even a reality TV star. They all come to Gardner’s office. This is his show. And he’s been doing it for decades.
JACK RODOLICO: And these candidates, they must know that they’re more powerful than Bill Gardner. But that’s not how they act when they walk in here. Many are straight-up reverential to Gardner.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: For example, when Barack Obama walked in here, he bowed to Bill Gardner. It was a joke — but everyone got it.
[MUSICAL TRANSITION]
JACK RODOLICO: Secretary of State is a big job in New Hampshire. Gardner oversees things like elections, campaign finance, state archives and a lot more.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: But there’s one part of this job that’s earned Gardner his reputation as the guardian. He sets the date of the first-in-the-nation primary. That means the political world functions by his watch. Campaigns, reporters, voters — they all follow the calendar that he sets. And he can make that pronouncement anytime he wants.
BILL GARDNER: No one will take it away from us. They will only be the will of the people here not to have it anymore, because we're going to have it. We can — we do it.
JACK RODOLICO: We wanted to ask Gardner about this power, about his long career —more than 40 years in the same job. About how he’s kept New Hampshire first. But he wouldn’t sit down to do an interview with us. In fact, he told us he would only talk to us after he sets the date of the 2020 presidential primary.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: When will he set that date? Well, no one knows knows. He alone will make the call. So instead, we listened to hours of old interviews with Gardner, we read 40 years of news coverage about him and we relied on NHPR’s own reporting and interviews with the people who know him best.
People like Jim Normand, who was there for the beginning of Gardner’s long career. It was the early 1970s.
JIM NORMAND: Well, Secretary Gardner was Billy. So it was Billy Gardner.
JACK RODOLICO: Presidential elections were not on Gardner’s radar back then. Normand remembers that time, right after Watergate.
JIM NORMAND: You know, the wounds were still so sore about our president lying to us, repeatedly, committing crimes […] There was a thought that,can't America do so much better than that.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Normand met Gardner at the State House. They were both recently-elected Democratic state representatives. Gardner was just a couple years out of college. And Normand says Gardner was a real serious guy — really nice, congenial, but very serious. He listened really intently. Gardner was fascinated by history and was into all kinds of different things, from hunting to chicken farming.
JIM NORMAND: Well, Bill’s a thinker. He’s not a glad-hander. He’s not a back-slapper. You're not going to necessarily have a lot of fun at a party with Bill, but you'll have a really good discussion.
JACK RODOLICO: There was a crew of young guys in the New Hampshire Legislature around this time, and they remember Gardner as idealistic. He believed politics and government were for the service of others.
BILL GARDNER: When I was in college, I wanted to vote desperately. I had two high school classmates killed in Vietnam. […] But I couldn't vote. I couldn't vote all through college, because you had to be 21. And I made that a major effort for me personally about reducing the age for people to vote, that if you can die for your country, you ought to be able to vote for the policies that make that happen.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: As a state rep, Gardner backed policies that made it easier to vote, easier for younger people to run for state senate. He started making a name for himself as a reformer.
JACK RODOLICO: But there was only so much he could do. He was new, and his party, the Democrats, were in the minority at the time.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And then, something happened. New Hampshire’s long-serving Secretary of State died.
JACK RODOLICO: The Secretary of State’s office oversees all state elections. It has a major influence over how the legislature drafts election bills. If Gardner wanted to reform election policies, this was the place to do it.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: But getting into that office? That would not be easy. In New Hampshire - the Secretary of State is elected by lawmakers. Republicans ran the state then, and Gardner was a Democrat.
JIM NORMAND: There was a big push in the Republican Party to just select Republicans. There was a big push to have a have a folks be locked in and being commanded to vote in the Republican Party for Republicans.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And Gardner, a relative rookie, was going up against an old, well-known Republican. It seemed like the deck was stacked against him.
JACK RODOLICO: But without many people noticing, Gardner found a path. He campaigned quietly, spending time with some of the older, Republican lawmakers. Gardner was genuinely interested in people’s backgrounds — their heritage, their history, what wars their family members fought in — and the older members ate that up.
JIM NORMAND: Some of them were country folks, and Bill was interested in chickens. He was interested in poultry. Some of them were hunters and Bill had an interest in hunting. […] Bill just does that he nurtures relationships with people.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Gardner drove all over the state, going door to door, making his pitch to all these Republican lawmakers.
JACK RODOLICO: Apparently he made his case to one guy while he milked cows at 5:30 in the morning.
BILL GARDNER: I said two things. I said that I would not use the position for a political stepping stone. A lot of states it's like that you just served for one year, but the whole time you're there you're looking at something else. And that that that it would be a neutral corner in state government, and that everyone would be treated the same way.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: So, Gardner secured the votes of the young reformers in the Legislature, and he leaned on his relationship with old guys. And it worked. He was elected New Hampshire’s Secretary of State. An office with no term limits.
JIM NORMAND: It was clear that Bill had an interest as this being his life work. It was almost like going into the monastery, I would say.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Gardner moved into a corner office in the State House. He was just up the hall from the Legislature, and a few doors down from the governor. That was in 1976, and he was 28 years old. Now, he’s 71.
JACK RODOLICO: And this is where Gardner’s destiny becomes intertwined with the New Hampshire primary. See, New Hampshire's primary has been first in the presidential nominating calendar since 1920. But it wasn't until the 1970s — right around the time Gardner came to power — that other states started trying to jump the line.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And that freaked out lawmakers here. You have to understand, the New Hampshire primary is powerful because it’s first. So having other states hold elections on the same day? That would mean the candidates, the reporters, they’d have to split time between all these states — totally draining New Hampshire’s influence.
JACK RODOLICO: So lawmakers were trying to figure out how to cement New Hampshire’s status as first-in-the-nation. And they decided to hand that authority to the Secretary of State. It was now Gardner’s job — by law — to keep an eye on other states who were thinking of jumping ahead. And a few years later, lawmakers would tighten up that law further. And still today, according to our state law, the New Hampshire primary must be a week before any similar election.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Now technically, this is a state law, so other states don’t have to follow it. But that doesn’t matter to Bill Gardner. To him, this law is everything. It helps him protect what so many people see as New Hampshire’s most important tradition. And over the years, Gardner would take that role very seriously
BILL GARDNER: We understand the concerns in other states… You might think it’s not fair that one state goes first all these times. Well, maybe it’s not fair that A is the first letter of the alphabet or Sunday’s the first day of the week or January is the first month — but it was something that was decided a long time ago before any of us alive today can remember.
JACK RODOLICO: This task — putting a date on the calendar every for years — it’s allowed Gardner to look like some kind of grand political puppeteer. He sets a date, and then history is made.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Now, it hasn’t always been easy to pin down that date. There were a few years when New Hampshire did have to fight hard to stay first-in-the-nation. And it was Gardner who would came out of those fights looking like he single-handedly saved the primary.
[MUSICAL TRANSITION]
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: 1999 was one of those years where people in New Hampshire genuinely believed this could be it — this could be the end of the New Hampshire primary as we know it. The 2000 primary was right around the corner. Republicans like George W. Bush and John McCain, Democrats like Al Gore and Bill Bradley were all out on the trail.
But behind the scenes, there was a problem with the state of Iowa — of all places. And people in New Hampshire were freaking out.
ROB TULLY: Holy buckets it was [laughs] It was, it was interesting.
Rob Tully lead the Iowa Democratic Party back in ‘99, and so he was deeply involved in this whole thing. He had to dig pretty deep for these memories.
ROB TULLY: And tell me who the Secretary of State was?
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Bill Gardner.
ROB TULLY: Oh, for God sakes. Is he still the Secretary of State?
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: You better believe it.
ROB TULLY: God bless him.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: If you’re listening to this podcast in Iowa — OK, we’ve reached your moment. Yes, it’s true that you guys are actually first. Iowa is the first caucus. Iowans gather in meetings in churches or halls based on their party affiliation to pick candidates.
But we’re first, too. We’re the first primary. New Hampshire is the first moment in the presidential nominating calendar where voters actually go into a voting booth and cast a ballot for a candidate.
All this to say, being first means a lot to us, and it means a lot to them. We both jealousy protect that status. We both have laws meant to keep other states away from us. And that’s because it seems that every four years, someone tries to kick one or both of us out of the spotlight. And that’s what was happening in 1999. Iowa and New Hampshire both felt threatened.
Some other states were trying to move their elections earlier, and there were rumors the national political parties wanted to take more control over the whole nomination calendar. So party leaders in Iowa and New Hampshire decided to form a pact — they held a press conference and everything — because they figured it would be harder for anyone to take them both down.
ROB TULLY: You can't have infighting in the family, because then other people are going to start coming in and taking the kids.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: But despite this alliance, the rumors were getting to Bill Gardner. Gardner’s now in his early fifties. He’d overseen five New Hampshire primaries.
And without consulting Iowa — or, frankly, any New Hampshire politicians — Gardner announced that the 2000 New Hampshire primary would be held the day after the Iowa caucus.
This blew up the image of a so-called alliance. It totally ignored Iowa’s law, which keeps New Hampshire eight days away from them. People in both parties, in both states, were stunned. They started pleading with Gardner immediately, like, You’ve got to be kidding me, Bill, can’t you just pick another date?
But Gardner wouldn’t budge. And now, that all important Iowa-New Hampshire alliance was on the line — and so was the primary.
Kathy Sullivan was the head of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, and she started imagining disaster scenarios at the Democratic National Committee.
KATHY SULLIVAN: At the time, Iowa’s saying this is a disaster, we're going to go before you know go to the DNC. They're going to say what's the matter with you people, you can't agree on a date. You know, here you are, you have this privilege of being first-in-the-nation primary, first-in-the-nation caucus, you guys can't even agree on that?
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: It was decided that the only way out of this was to meet face to face, Iowa and New Hampshire — in secret.
Joe Keefe represented New Hampshire at the DNC at the time. (He’s also on the NHPR board, by the way.) He offered up his house. And the Iowa guys? They booked their plane tickets.
JOE KEEFE: Everyone sat in my living room, and I think at one point in time we had sandwiches brought in, and they were put out on my dining room table.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: This room was packed with political heavyweights. Heads of both parties from both states, both secretaries of state, even a former New Hampshire Republican governor. They were all sitting around Keefe’s living room. And most people in the room wanted the same thing. They wanted Gardner to pick a new date.
ROB TULLY: Right, so we get there. We have some pleasantries, et cetera, and then — boom — we get into it.
Steve Duprey, then head of the New Hampshire Republican party, remembers the Iowa argument.
STEVE DUPREY: Basically their pitch was, we can't move the date because the Iowa Pork Producers convention has this big arena booked in Des Moines, I think, and they can't possibly move.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: OK, so 20 years later, there is a dispute about just how big of a sticking point this pork thing was. But pork — clearly — is a big deal in Iowa.
ROB TULLY: Yeah, no this thing is huge. [...] You know, you got to remember the National Pork Producers is here in Des Moines. […] And so we’re the innovators around the world. They bring, you know, people from fucking China and all these places.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: This big pig situation was going to take up a lot of hotel and meeting space that they’d need for the caucus. And they’d already done so much work — to do that all over again? Tully was exasperated. Towns and cities oversee voting locations in New Hampshire, so most of the work here is done. Gardner just picks a date, and the world turns.
ROB TULLY: Bill had no idea how much work there goes into what we have to do. And to do a caucus? It’s hard work. Primary, you just fucking pick a date. Excuse my French there. I mean, you just pick a date. That's it!
STEVE DUPREY: Gardner listened and listened[…] Bill just said no, I'm not moving it.
KATHY SULLIVAN: Bill Gardner, when he sets the date, that's it. He does not change. And I did not understand how important that was to him.
JOE KEEFE: It seemed like no argument, no appeal to reason, no openness to compromise would work.
ROB TULLY: Basically it came down to this. I'm just going to cut to the chase. This is bullshit. We're New Hampshire. And God damn it, you should move. This is, you know, I don't give a shit about Iowa…
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Patience was wearing thin. Gardner was really getting the best of one person in particular. Chet Culver, his Iowa counterpart.
JOE KEEFE: I don't think Chet Culver — Secretary of State, someone who wanted to run for governor someday and he did — wanted to be the person who lost the Iowa caucuses. So I think he was very, very frustrated.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And just so you can get an image of this. Bill Gardner is kind of a bookish guy, thin, favors cardigan sweater vests. Chet Culver? He was a tight end for Virginia Tech.
JOE KEEFE: Some tempers flaring. I remember Secretary of State Culver, at one point, getting pretty hot under the collar. And he's a big guy. When he starts yelling, you notice. And he started to yell.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: OK, this is so funny you say that because […] there's a bit in Bill Gardner's book where it says, The meeting lasted over two and a half hours with a friendly exchange of views, except at one point the tension in the room became so great Joe Keefe nearly had to restrain one of the visiting out-of-state house guests. Is that true?
JOE KEEFE: That would be Chet Culver.
ROB TULLY: I don't know if he insulted Chet, or, or, or what. But yeah. Chet was just beside himself. […] He can get angry. That's right, Joe, I remember Joe literally you had to put his arms around him. Oh God.
[MUSICAL TRANSITION]
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: The meeting ended pretty soon after that. People in New Hampshire kept trying to push Gardner — there was even talk of the Legislature stripping some of his power to set the date — but it didn’t happen. Gardner wouldn’t budge. And in the end, it was Iowa who backed down.
And even though Gardner started this whole problem in the first place, one of the New Hampshire Republicans in the room, Steve Duprey, he says this story shows just why Gardner is such an effective guardian of the primary.
STEVE DUPREY: There was a lot of pressure on Bill, and he didn't, he really didn’t even blink. […] Some will say he’s a curmudgeon, he’s inflexible. He was doing what he thought was right to defend the supremacy of the primary. It turned out, he was right.
But to others in that room, especially the guys from Iowa, it felt like Gardner’s stubbornness was more about pride than doing what was best for everyone.
ROB TULLY: It was, and I gotta tell you I have never — literally have never had a weirder encounter than that. […] But it's a beautiful story for the Granite State. See? We didn't flinch.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: I have to tell you one more thing about this fight that makes this whole thing just so Gardner. Remember the pigs? And how Iowa said they couldn’t move the caucus because it would conflict with this big pork convention? Well, Gardner to this day says Iowa made the whole thing up. Oh yes. Iowa deliberately mislead him. He called it a hoax. But he’s wrong about that. There was a pork conference.
[MUSICAL TRANSITION]
JACK RODOLICO: None of this is about how to pick the best president. But these squabbles keep the New Hampshire primary first-in-the-nation. Gardner comes out on top after fights, and that gives him a lot of power.
But when the primary is over and the confetti is swept away, Gardner is still Secretary of State. And his critics around here say his reputation as protector of the primary gives him cover for some puzzling decisions.
LARRY GORMLEY: When you’ve got someone basically standing naked on an island and you ask him to […] address these issues. He can’t. And he couldn’t.
JACK RODOLICO: We’ll get to that in a moment.
[BREAK]
JACK RODOLICO: Let me tell you about the closest we got to an interview with Bill Gardner for this podcast. I dropped by the State House a few months ago. I caught him right after he had spoken at a forum for state election official. And at first, it was clear he didn’t want to talk.
BILL GARDNER: You don't need anything, else do you?
JACK RODOLICO: I had heard about Bill Gardner from other reporters. Anyone can just walk into his office, and members of the public often do. But I’ve also been told that once you’re in there, anything can happen. Gardner could refuse to talk — or let you way in. Like, he’ll keep you for hours talking about the Magna Carta or Jackie Robinson. And during my visit, I thought for sure I was gonna be shut out. And then, he starts questions me, asking me why I think Americans don’t trust the election process.
BILL GARDNER: Why? Why did people have that negative feeling about it before the election?
JACK RODOLICO: Why? I don't know.
BILL GARDNER: That's what they heard from people.
JACK RODOLICO: So it's a perception problem.
BILL GARDNER: Obviously, it's what they heard. Maybe from you.
JACK RODOLICO: From me, you mean the media?
BILL GARDNER: From, from you.
JACK RODOLICO: What do you mean me? I'm not sure what you mean.
BILL GARDNER: I'd just say, maybe you. It wasn't from any of us.
JACK RODOLICO: OK. OK. I’m a little confused by that, but I take it that’s important to you.
JACK RODOLICO: I don’t know what Gardner was trying to tell me that day in his office. But I think I understand where it came from. For Gardner, voting is not just about the New Hampshire primary. It’s about the sanctity of the ballot box.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And here’s a guy who learned the hard way how seriously Gardner takes that belief.
ANDY LANGLOIS: I was disgusted with the whole process.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: This is Andy Langlois. His story begins in a voting booth during a state election in 2014.
JACK RODOLICO: Basically, Langlois didn’t like his choices for the U.S. Senate. So he decided to write-in a candidate. Someone he knew.
ANDY LANGLOIS: And when I came to the Senator portion, I really didn’t have a good choice there. So I just wrote in my dog’s name, Akira.
JACK RODOLICO: Andy voted for his dog. And to put a finer point on his disgust, you should know something about Akira.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: She was dead.
ANDY LANGLOIS: You know how you only have one good pet in your life? You know, one really good, stunning pet? It was her, for me.
JACK RODOLICO: She sounds like she’d make a great Senator.
ANDY LANGLOIS: She was that dog that always gave you her toy. Always. Even right up to the end. She’d bring you her toy.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: So when Langlois went into the ballot box and voted for a dead German shepherd for the United States Senate, he took a picture of his ballot. Then, he posted it to Facebook, with a note.
JACK RODOLICO: Quote, “Because all of the candidates suck, I did a write-in of Akira (my now deceased dog)”…
ANDY LANGLOIS: It was absolutely nothing to me. I didn't think anything about it. Why wouldn’t you be able to take a picture of it?
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And then, he got a phone call.
JACK RODOLICO: On the other end of the line was someone from the New Hampshire Attorney General’s office. Andy was being investigated.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Not for voting for a dead dog. That was perfectly legal. His crime was taking a picture of his ballot and posting it. A ballot selfie. And it made national news.
GAYLE KING ON CBS: Most of the laws were written before social media came around. They are rarely enforced, but if you live in the state of New Hampshire, you better pay attention to this. The Secretary of State’s Office is reportedly investigating violations from last month’s primary. I say puh-leeze.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: The New Hampshire Legislature had recently passed the selfie ban, and that ban had Gardner’s blessing. At this point in his career, Gardner was almost 40 years into his tenure— well established as the state’s top election official.
JACK RODOLICO: And he was deeply opposed to selfies in the voting booth.
BILL GARDNER: The whole point is to let people vote their conscience. That's the point.
JACK RODOLICO: The way Gardner saw it, this law protected people from voter intimidation.
BILL GARDNER: The little person who wants to just be able to go in, and whether it's a domineering spouse or someone who has some influence in their life […] And someone says, you've got to vote this way and, and if you don't show me, because I know you can show me now, it's legal, I'm going to know that you didn't vote that way. So, what does that person do?
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Now, bear in mind, there was zero — zero — evidence of anyone using ballot selfies to intimidate voters in New Hampshire. But either way, Langlois and a few others were facing fines. The ACLU caught wind of all this, they felt there was a clear free speech case here. And they determined that New Hampshire was the first state to explicitly and intentionally ban online ballot selfies. And Gardner, as the state’s top election official, he was the face of it. So they took him to federal court.
[MUSICAL TRANSITION]
JACK RODOLICO: Let's talk about Hitler and Saddam Hussein.
BILL CHRISTIE: All right.
JACK RODOLICO: Attorney Bill Christie worked on this case. It was his job to sit in a windowless conference room with Gardner and to drill down on what motivated him to enforce this law.
BILL CHRISTIE: And we expected an answer along the lines of, you know, people's privacy or people might be uncomfortable in the polling place if there's cameras.
JACK RODOLICO: But that’s not what Gardner wanted to talk about.
BILL GARDNER: I have a copy of the last ballot that was used when Saddam Hussein was elected, and that ballot identified who the person was.
JACK RODOLICO: In public, and in his deposition too, Gardner kept name-dropping dictators. Hitler, Hussein, Stalin — again and again and again. How they all used ballots to track down voters and intimidate them. Because Gardner worries that the slightest puncture in the sanctity of the ballot box — that could be the first step down a slippery slope towards dictatorship. Right here, in New Hampshire.
BILL GARDNER: Hitler did the same thing in Austria. There’s been a struggle over the years to intimidate voters in different ways.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Gardner’s dictator defense doesn’t get very far in court. First, the District Court strikes it down. There’s an appeal, so the case goes to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. And there, a judge was like, Why is the state bothering to prosecute a guy who just voted for his dog?
JUDGE: The guy who says vote for my dog.
GILLES BISSONETTE: Yes, exactly.
JUDGE: That's sort of self-evident that that's political dissatisfaction speech, and yet they choose to investigate that.
JACK RODOLICO: So the second court dismisses the case, too. But Gardner and the state’s lawyers weren’t done yet. They take ballot selfies to the United States Supreme Court.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And the Supreme Court said, yeah, we’re not taking this case.
ANDY LANGLOIS: To spend any amount of taxpayer money on any investigation for a dude that posted a ballot about his dog seems, to me, a little bit of a waste. And taxpayers should probably be a little upset, maybe even ask for a refund.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: These court fights aren’t cheap. It costs the state a lot of money to defend Gardner’s argument.
JACK RODOLICO: If voters feel like a politician wasted a bunch of money, they have the option of voting him or her out of office. But Bill Gardner doesn’t answer directly to the public. He answers to 424 legislators who’ve worked just down the hall from him for the past 43 years. And state lawmakers, they’ve been confronted with evidence that he isn’t running his office in the most efficient and accountable way.
REP. MARJORIE SMITH: I was aware, and not surprised, that the Secretary of State's position was that this was his kingdom — and no one else had the right to tell him what to do or how to do it.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Marjorie Smith is a Democrat, like Gardner. She’s a long-time representative in the State House. And in 2008, she was on a panel of lawmakers responsible for digging through an audit of Gardner’s office.
Here’s just a sampling of the problems the audit found: Gardner’s office had hired the family members of senior management. His IT systems were highly vulnerable to a systemic breakdown. There were problems with money — how the department tracked it, protected it, stored it and spent it. For example, Gardner’s office was given a big pot of federal money meant to help people with disabilities vote. His office spent one million of those dollars to build an addition to the state archives building.
JACK RODOLICO: And this audit came 10 years after another one found other problems with how Gardner’s office managed money. Gardner shrugged it all off. He called the audits “unqualified.”
REP. MARJORIE SMITH: Well I think that the Secretary of State saw these questions as challenges to him, as an insult to him that anyone would think to challenge him.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Marjorie Smith sees a larger problem here. Audits are a normal part of holding a government office accountable. It’s not personal. And the lawmakers who put Gardner in office, they seem to ignore the evidence that there are some real problems with how Gardner fulfills his duties as Secretary of State.
REP. MARJORIE SMITH: One seems to be able to tolerate all kinds of things as long as New Hampshire continues to be the first-in-the-nation.
[MUSICAL TRANSITION]
LARRY GORMLEY: State your name for the record.
BILL GARDNER: William Gardner.
LARRY GORMLEY: You are the Secretary of State, Mr. Gardner?
BILL GARDNER: Yes.
LARRY GORMLEY: Take an oath of office?
JACK RODOLICO: It’s 2017, and Bill Gardner is back in court. In this case, Gardner was accused of exerting his influence against someone who he thinks has wronged him.
LARRY GORMLEY: You took an oath of office, correct?
BILL GARDNER: That's correct.
LARRY GORMLEY: OK.
JACK RODOLICO: And he is going to have an uncomfortable time explaining his actions under oath.
BILL GARDNER: We work for the people, period. That's what we do. That's our role as public servants.
JACK RODOLICO: Gardner’s office hired a consultant, and at a certain point, Gardner ordered his department to stop paying that consultant for work he had done. So the consultant is suing to get the money he says the state owes him.
The bigger situation that started all this is a bit more complicated. Remember, Gardner’s powers are broad, and his office had been at odds with this particular company that provided insurance to public employees. Gardner and this company had been battling on and on, and he had mostly prevailed in court.
MIKE COUTU: It wasn't enough for Bill.
JACK RODOLICO: This is Mike Coutu, the consultant who Gardner was accused of stiffing. Coutu is an insurance and financial expert. And Gardner’s office hired him to make sure the company in question was making changes to how it did business. But Coutu says behind the scenes, essentially, Gardner was turning a legal battle into a vindictive, personal grievance.
MIKE COUTU: And then when I challenged Bill, he directed his vindictiveness to me. I became the subject matter of his ill feelings.
JACK RODOLICO: Early on, Coutu realized he didn’t like the way Gardner operated. For example, Gardner apparently didn’t read emails. To be clear, Gardner has an email address. It was just that Coutu would send emails to Gardner and get no response. So Coutu changed his tactics. He would write an email, print it and then hand deliver it to Gardner.
MIKE COUTU: A couple times he instructed me to rip up the email. He read it, but then instructed to rip it up. Didn’t want a record that he’d received it.
JACK RODOLICO: An important part of Gardner’s job is to archive and track important state records. But I’ve spoken with three attorneys who have taken Gardner to court. And they all say when they try to get records from Gardner — specifically his records, like emails — they can’t. That he doesn’t leave a paper trail. And Larry Gormley, Coutu’s attorney, thinks that’s a deliberate tactic on Gardner’s part.
LARRY GORMLEY: So he is a guy that doesn't want his finger — he wants to run everything, but doesn't want his fingerprints on anything.
JACK RODOLICO: Gormley grilled Gardner in court.
BILL GARDNER: I only have what I've told you.
LARRY GORMLEY: You don't have one shred of paper? [...]
BILL GARDNER: No.
LARRY GORMLEY: You didn't communicate with anyone, send anyone an email?
LARRY GORMLEY: It's remarkable. I've never seen any public official with absolutely no written trail.
JACK RODOLICO: Coutu believed Gardner was in the wrong — not just about the way he conducted business, but the way he was trying, in Coutu’s eyes, to take down this company. So in March 2015, Coutu decided he had to deliver some tough news to his boss. But Gardner wasn’t having it.
MIKE COUTU: I had all the projections. All the work was done, and Bill would not even look at it. [...] It was apparent he just wasn't interested.
JACK RODOLICO: And now, Coutu was losing his patience. He confronted Bill Gardner. He told the Secretary of State, “You are not acting in good faith.”
MIKE COUTU: Bill got very red-faced, very heated, pointed to me, and said, You, you, you — multiple times — you, you, you, you, you, you tell me I'm not acting in good faith? You're not acting in good faith. Meaning, Mike Coutu’s not acting in good faith, which is absurd. Absolutely absurd.
JACK RODOLICO: This would become the central point of Coutu’s lawsuit against Gardner. Gardner insisted that in that moment, Coutu stood up and quit. But Mike Coutu says he didn’t quit, he kept working for months after this. And another witness in the room said Coutu didn’t quit. But in court, Gardner said he felt like Coutu quit. Gardner repeated this again and again on the witness stand.
BILL GARDNER: I felt that he quit.
BILL GARDNER: I believed that he had quit.
BILL GARDNER: To me that meant he quit. And I acted accordingly.
LARRY GORMLEY: And it was just this circular, almost idiotic response. It was, it was [...] inexplicable. It was gibberish. [...] So frankly, it became fairly easy because when you’ve got someone basically standing naked on an island, and you ask him to address these issues, he can’t. And he couldn’t.
LARRY GORMLEY: You’re sure, Mr. Gardner, it's not that you devised a way to punish Coutu, that you could get work from him, and you knew you weren't going to pay him for it, right?
BILL GARDNER: That is absolutely not true. Absolutely not true. I would never do something like that. I never have.
JACK RODOLICO: Gardner, under oath, would admit that he was the one who ordered the state not to pay Coutu. But he rejected that he did it as some form of punishment.
BILL GARDNER I have respect for people who challenge me. I like having people around me who challenge me. That's not the way I operate.
JACK RODOLICO: In the end, Gardner lost this case. The state was forced to pay Coutu the $23,000 Gardner had refused him, plus the state had to reimburse Coutu’s attorney’s fees — that cost another $154,000 dollars. And according to the attorney general’s office, state lawyers spent a lot of time on this case: 1,494 hours.
MIKE COUTU: That kind of behavior says to me that this is a man that does not believe he’s ever stepped out of line or over the line. And therefore should not be questioned.
JACK RODOLICO: If any lawmaker raised an eyebrow about this case, or what it said about Gardner’s fitness to do his job, they didn’t say it loudly. But just a few months later, Gardner would do something that Democrats around here just couldn’t ignore. And it would lead to the biggest political challenge of Gardner’s career.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner. Thank you.
JACK RODOLICO: We’ll be right back.
[BREAK]
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Please be seated
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: After he got elected, President Donald Trump seemed to be obsessed with voter fraud. He’d bring it up a lot — on Twitter, in a private meeting on Capitol Hill — and he’d claim, without evidence, that millions of illegal votes were cast for Hilary Clinton, his opponent. He even singled out New Hampshire, he claimed — again, with no evidence — that buses of people from Massachusetts would drive up here to vote. Trump was so concerned about this, he decided to pull together a commission to investigate voter fraud.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: We wanna make America great again? We have to protect the integrity of the vote and our voters.
JACK RODOLICO: It was called the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Everyone just calls it the Trump Voter Fraud Commission. And President Trump asked Secretary of State Bill Gardner to be on it. Gardner said yes. The first meeting was held in D.C, and it had all the trappings of official White House business. Presidential seal, lots of dark suits. And there’s Bill Gardner, a few seats away from Vice President Mike Pence.
VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: With that it would be my my privilege to recognize the longest serving Secretary of State in American history, New Hampshire's Secretary of State Bill Gardner. Secretary Gardner, you're recognized for five minutes.
BILL GARDNER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Vice Chairman. I look forward to the work we have ahead...
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: So, consider what this looks like. Voter fraud is a hugely partisan issue. This panel is formed by a Republican White House. So what will Gardner — a registered Democrat, who for 40 years has overseen every New Hampshire election — what will he say to the world?
BILL GARDNER: But it has been my belief over many years of administering elections that we will see an increase in voter turnout only when we, when ease of voting is balanced with security and integrity. Making voting easier by itself does not result in higher turnout.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: The point Gardner makes, in front of CSPAN cameras, is one that Democrats have been fighting against for years. People back home in New Hampshire were watching all this unfold, and many Democrats around here were furious.
PETER BURLING: When the Republican Party began this utterly fraudulent notion that voter fraud was affecting New Hampshire's balloting and the outcome of our elections, he should have stood up and said no, there is absolutely no evidence for that.
JACK RODOLICO: Peter Burling was a long time New Hampshire lawmaker. He felt by just being on this panel, Gardner — and thus the state of New Hampshire — was endorsing Trump’s unfounded claims about voter fraud.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: This wasn’t the first time Gardner pissed off some Democrats. Burling says they had for years grumbled in private that Gardner seemed to take the GOP’s side on a lot of election issues.
JACK RODOLICO: And remember, Republicans were in the majority at the State House for most of Gardner’s tenure, so he couldn’t get re-elected without their support.
PETER BURLING: I believe, I now believe that what Bill was trying to do was not say anything that would offend his Republican electors. And he was very good at doing that.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Control of the State House has flipped between the parties recently, but the 2016 election brought the first Republican governor in more than a decade. That meant Republicans now had the power they needed to go ahead and change the state’s voting laws. So they got to work. Republicans backed a bill to tighten voter registration rules — something that, according to them, would ensure integrity in elections. But Democrats argued that bill would block college students from voting. And Gardner? He testified at the State House in favor of the Republican position.
STATE REPRESENTATIVE: So, yeah, just to rephrase, you don't view this as an attempt to supress or control a certain voting segment for the benefit of one party?
BILL GARDNER: No, I don't.
JACK RODOLICO: Now this — this is a striking moment in the arc of Bill Gardner’s career. He started in the Vietnam era as a guy who wanted young people to be able to vote. And now college students are showing up at the State House to protest a bill he supports. And Gardner, he seems bewildered.
BILL GARDNER: It's amazing to me some of the passion that somehow this is this terrible thing to do to the people. But I just don't see it.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: The list of people who are frustrated with Gardner is starting to grow.
JACK RODOLICO: Like Liz Tentarelli, the president of the New Hampshire chapter of the League of Women Voters, a 100-year-old, nonpartisan voting rights organization.
LIZ TENTARELLI: My league colleagues in other states talk about, we're going to have more early voting. [...] We have online voting. We have mail-in voting. And I just drool, and I say there is no way this is going to happen while Mr. Gardner is there. They say, well, which one of those isn't going to happen? I say, none of them are going to happen while Mr. Gardner is there.
JACK RODOLICO: As an elections watchdog, Liz Tentarelli has kept an eye on Gardner for a long time, and she’s observed one important change in him over the years. There may have been a time when he didn’t take a partisan stand on election laws — at least not publicly. A time when, as he promised when he first ran for the Secretary of State’s office, he kept that office “a neutral corner in state government.” But Tentarelli says that time is over. There’s no doubt in her mind that Gardner — a Democrat — now supports Republican positions on voting rights.
LIZ TENTARELLI: I like him as an ambassador for our first-in-the-nation primary much more than I like him as a Secretary of State, frankly.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: All this frustration that had been building up privately over the years, the moment Gardner announced he would join Trump’s voter fraud commission? It started spilling out in public.
PETER BURLING: What was Bill doing on that? I have no idea. And the hard part, is I don't think he had an idea of what he was doing.
JACK RODOLICO: The White House decided to hold the second meeting of the voter fraud commission here in New Hampshire, in a room at a college that is famous around here for hosting presidential candidates. Protestors swarmed outside.
PROTESTOR: Shame on you, Bill Gardner. He’s our Secretary of State, at least that’s what I’m led to believe. And he should not be involved in this charade.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Up until this point in his career, national coverage about Gardner is almost exclusively about the New Hampshire primary. It’s often fawning, it’s positive, it’s kitschy. He’s the charming master of ceremonies of our famous tradition.
But the Trump commission was a big story about a hyper-partisan controversy — so reporters around the country were watching. Jessica Huseman is a ProPublica reporter who covers election law. She’s something of a Secretary of State expert. She called up Gardner to interview him about the commission.
JESSICA HUSEMAN: And I said something like, you know it doesn't really seem like you guys have achieved that much. And he just flew off the handle. He started screaming at me. At one point he referenced Mussolini — like he talked about Mussolini for maybe five minutes. [...] And it was just like, it was completely bonkers. I was not able to use a single thing that he said in the hour long interview, because none of it made any sense at all.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: When questioned about why he joined this thing, Gardner insisted that it’s better to be at the table than on the menu. Meaning, he wanted New Hampshire to be included. But before long, there was nothing to be included in. The voter fraud commission was bogged down in lawsuits and was disbanded.
JACK RODOLICO: And when Gardner’s already on his heels, something unprecedented happens. Two Democrats, members of his own party, announce they’ll run against Gardner for the office he’s held since 1976. One challenger’s a long shot who eventually drops out, but the other is a real threat. He recently ran for governor. He’s much younger than Gardner — well-funded and well-known in the party.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Democrats are now in a jam. They’re torn between two options, two people from their own party. But you know who comes out for Gardner in force? The Republicans.
STEVE STEPANEK: This will be the only time that you will ever hear me endorsing a Democrat. Bill Gardner is the guardian of the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation primary.
JACK RODOLICO: Gardner’s fate would be decided where it all began, on the floor of the New Hampshire State House. December of last year, the Legislature gathered again, like they do every two years, to vote on the office of Secretary of State.
REP. STEVE SHURTLEFF: The Joint Convention will come to order. The Joint Convention has been formed for the purpose of electing the constitutional officers of Secretary of State and State Treasurer...
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Over the last four decades, the Secretary of State election has been pro-forma. Gardner mostly ran unopposed, and the few times he was seriously challenged, he won.
JACK RODOLICO: But today, there’s tension in this room.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Most Republicans seem to be backing Gardner. But Democrats, who are in the majority in the Legislature now, they’re really split. Some are Gardner diehards. Others have been turned off by the Trump commission. So the outcome of how they’ll vote for Gardner is far from certain. Lawmakers take turns stepping up to the mic to make their pitch.
LAWMAKERS SPEAKING: Thank you Mr. Speaker. [...] Thank you Mr. Speaker. [...] Thank you Mr. Speaker and members of the Joint Convention.
REP. MARY HEATH: I deeply respect and regard Secretary Bill Gardner, and he will always, always hold a place in New Hampshire history, and I also know it's time for new leadership.
SEN. DAVID WATTERS: I know we all feel the weight of history in this vote, and for many of us, the weight of friendship.
JACK RODOLICO: A lot of Democrats are stepping up, explaining why they just can’t back Gardner anymore.
REP. PAUL BERGERON: I've known Bill Gardner for 45 years. [...] I attended his wedding reception. [...] However, I will not be voting to re-elect Bill Gardner as Secretary of State.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: But he’s not losing all Democrats.
SEN. LOU D’ALLESANDRO: Life’s about one thing, guys. It’s about relationships, and those last a lifetime. [...] No term limit on relationships. [...] No term limit on relationships. You make ‘em. You keep ‘em, and for the rest of your life, you work together.
JACK RODOLICO: Gardner’s supporters keep fighting for him. They invoke his experience, his dedication, his longevity.
REP. NED GORDON: I would like to see Bill finish his career gracefully and be in office for the 100th anniversary of the New Hampshire primary, which he has worked so hard to preserve.
REP. STEVE SHURTLEFF: And now we come to the balloting process…
JACK RODOLICO: It takes a while, more than an hour. When the votes come in, the room gets quiet fast.
REP. STEVE SHURTLEFF: 416 votes were cast. 209 votes were needed to win the nomination. The results are as follows. There was one scattered vote. 207 votes for Colin Van Ostern. 208 votes for William Gardner. [APPLAUSE, GAVEL BANGING] No...
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Gardner got one more vote than his opponent. But he didn’t win, he needs a clear majority of all votes. And he was just one vote shy. This was unprecedented. For the first time in his career, Gardner’s future as Secretary of State is hanging by a thread. And now everyone is going to have to vote again.
JACK RODOLICO: Just a few lawmakers are allowed to speak this time. This is their final chance to make the cas, and one of the most powerful Republicans in the State House tells everyone in the room, it’s not just Gardner who is on the line here.
SEN. JEB BRADLEY: All right, my friends. Bill Gardner has preserved our first-in-the-nation status. An experiment with anyone else undermines that first-in-the-nation status, which is not only important to New Hampshire, but it's important to the United States of America.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: There are people in this room whose lives have been changed because of the access they have to presidential candidates. This is no exaggeration — there are Republicans in this room right now who joined the Trump campaign early, and they went from no-name lawmakers to being on a first name basis with the leader of the free world. Plenty of others in this room now brand themselves as ambassadors to the world for the New Hampshire primary. Everyone gets what’s at stake here.
JACK RODOLICO: Now, it’s time to vote again. More than 400 votes cast, one at a time. It takes so long.
REP. STEVE SHURTLEFF: The members from Division 1 and 5 may vote. Thank you.
JACK RODOLICO: All this time, during all this debating and wrangling, Bill Gardner is just down the hall, in the same office where he takes pictures with presidential candidates.
[SCENE FROM GARDNER’S OFFICE]
JACK RODOLICO: His supporters have been coming in and out. There’s a table with cookies and a punch bowl. The mood in there shifts throughout the day. Sometimes it’s like the moments before a surprise party. Others, it’s like a wake.
[GAVEL BANGING]
REP. STEVE SHURTLEFF: The House will come to order and will tend to the vote on the office of Secretary of State.
JACK RODOLICO: Gardner himself is stoic. He doesn’t say much. He just listens to a livestream of the proceedings from down the hall.
REP. STEVE SHURTLEFF: The vote is as follows. Scattered, 1. I got to meet that guy. For Colin Van Ostern, 205. For William Gardner, 209.
[CHEERS]
BILL GARDNER: I'm very, very grateful for those of you who let this happen.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Gardner takes the mike. He seems humbled.
BILL GARDNER: Thank you. I have, I'm anxious, and I'd like to ask all of you — particularly the new ones — I'm just down the hall, come in. I welcome any ideas, even modern ideas. So, thank you.
JACK RODOLICO: But just a few minutes later, he’s caught by a scrum of reporters. He’s got cameras in his face. He’s being peppered with questions.
REPORTER: What can you promise the people of New Hampshire going forward?
BILL GARDNER: Promise them what? I promised them that I'll do, I'll use the same judgment that I've used in the past.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Gardner is in the middle of serving his 22nd term in office.
JACK RODOLICO: And the political world — at this moment — is still waiting for him to announce the date of the 2020 primary.
JACK RODOLICO: Next week on Stranglehold, we tell you the story of the campaign that wrote the playbook for every New Hampshire primary that followed.
BILLY SHAHEEN: And I said to my wife, This guy has got some balls. I mean, he really got guts. I love this guy. I'm gonna watch him.
[GUITAR RIFFS]
JACK RODOLICO: To see a video of Barack Obama bowing to Bill Gardner, go to our website: StrangleholdPodcast-dot-com. While you’re there, look for the picture of Akira — the dog that could have been a senator — riding in the sidecar of a motorcycle.
ANDY LANGLOIS: If you check your email, you'll see a good photo of her in the sidecar that I built for her. She used to like to ride around on the motorcycle.
JACK RODOLICO: You sent me that photo?
ANDY LANGLOIS: Yeah, just now.
JACK RODOLICO: This episode was reported and produced by me Jack Rodolico
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And me, Lauren Chooljian. And we’re very thankful for all the help we’ve received as we put this podcast together.
JACK RODOLICO: This episode would not have been possible without reporting by Casey McDermott.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: And additional reporting help from Josh Rogers. Stranglehold is edited by NHPR’s Director of Content Maureen McMurray and News Director Dan Barrick.
JACK RODOLICO: We had additional editing and production help from Jason Moon. Tony Arnold and Natasha Haverty helped with editing. And sound mixing by Hannah McCarthy and Nick Capodice.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Jason Moon also created the dope original music in this episode, with help from Lucas Anderson. Jack Rodolico is a senior producer.
JACK RODOLICO: Lauren Chooljian is NHPR’s politics and policy reporter. Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Digital Director, and Sara Plourde made our beautifully aggressive podcast graphics.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Oh, and very special thanks to my dad, Barry Chooljian, who we are forever indebted to for helping us come up with the name of this podcast.
JACK RODOLICO: Additional thanks to Jim Laboe, Myron Steere III, Donna Sytek, Gilles Bissonette, Paul Twomey, Paula Hodges, Betsy McClain and Fendall Fulton.
LAUREN CHOOLJIAN: Also John DiStaso, Linda Wertheimer, Andrew Parrella, Eva Karchut Petersen, John Clayton, John H. Sununu, Tom Rath, Joe McQuaid, Ned Gordon, Lou D’Allesandro, Dee Stewart and James Pindell.
Stranglehold is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.
[ONE LAST GUITAR RIFF]
ROB TULLY: But you know what? They bring their pigs with them, and they had to cancel it this year because they had pig flu!