Nation: In New Hampshire, They're Off!

Bush speaks for them all when he says, "You can't escape "

Ronald Reagan: "It's nice to be liked, but it's more important to be respected."

George Bush: "A President we won't have to train."

Howard Baker: "A leader for the '80s."

President Carter: "For the truth."

Edward Kennedy: "I think we can make a difference and do it better."

Up and down the Main Streets and Elm Streets of New Hampshire, from Colebrook to Concord, from Dixville Notch to Laconia, banners, posters, TV and radio ads proclaim the slogans aimed at achieving victory or avoiding defeat in the nation's first primary, on Feb. 26. The Granite State was a bit upstaged this year when the Iowa and Maine caucuses took on greater prominence than ever before. But New Hampshire is still the first state where voters cast an actual ballot.

Adding to this year's political fever is the fact that the races in both parties are considered too close to call with any assurance. Carter and Kennedy, Reagan and Bush are battling fiercely for those few extra votes that may be decisive in their campaigns. A victory, however slight, in an early primary gives a candidate momentum going into subsequent contests. Carter clobbered Kennedy 2 to 1 in Iowa, but then won more narrowly last week in Maine, 43.6% to 40.2%, with California Governor Jerry Brown picking up a surprising 13.8%. Bush upset Reagan 32% to 29% in Iowa, though Republican results in Maine will not be known until March 15. Some 36,000 people participated in the Maine Democratic caucuses, five times the number that turned out in 1976, and a similar increase is expected in the New Hampshire primary.

There is no escaping the political onslaught—the price New Hampshirites pay for wanting to be first. They may be going fishing or to church or to lunch or to nowhere in particular, yet there is usually some candidate or at least some poster of a candidate staring them right in the eye. At a Ramada Inn in Manchester, where young workmen were taking down the WELCOME GOVERNOR REAGAN Sign and putting up GREETINGS AMBASSADOR BUSH, one of them groused, "As soon as he's through, we've got to get ready for John Anderson."

New Hampshire is sometimes disparaged as being too white, rural and conservative to reflect national opinion, but the state is fast changing. An influx of residents from Massachusetts into the southern part of the state is giving it, for better or worse, the look of much of the rest of the nation: the same kind of suburban sprawl. Its population has been growing faster than that of any other Eastern state except Florida—from 780,000 to 938,000 in the last decade. To reach these greater numbers, candidates are relying more than ever on TV. One pitch follows another in a dizzying succession of 30-second spot commercials. "President Carter—a man of resolve, a man of achievement," drones one typical effort. Soon after that comes the voice of Ted Kennedy intoning, "New Hampshire can make the difference."