The New Hampshire Union Leader has this article about Gardner Goldsmith, the Libertarian Party’s nominee for U.S. Senate from New Hampshire. The article talks about why minor party candidates run for important office. The article is also notable because generally the Union Leader, the largest newspaper in New Hampshire, does not carry news about minor party candidates.
Most famously, in 1992, on the day of the presidential primary, the Union Leader had prepared a front page with a banner headline announcing that Patrick Buchanan had carried Dixville Notch. Dixville Notch is famous for opening its polls at 12:01 a.m. on election day and closing them an hour later. Inhabitants cooperate, knowing that the town’s election results will then be reported nationwide (in presidential election years, both for the general and the primaries) on election day. The Manchester Union had reasons to assume that Pat Buchanan would defeat President George H. W. Bush in Dixville Notch and expected to make that the front page story. But, in reality, Libertarian Andre Marrou carried Dixville Notch, suprising the newspaper’s editors and just about everyone else. The paper then scrapped the proposed Buchanan story, and confined the story that Marrou had carried the hamlet to a tiny article a few sentences long. At the time, the Libertarian Party had its own presidential primary, and more Dixville Notch voters chose to vote in the Libertarian presidential primary than the presidential primary of either major party. Because 1992 was the Libertarian Party’s first primary, New Hampshire election law let members of any party choose the Libertarian primary ballot.