Portsmouth Herald RAN 2/11/96, Pg. A1 Herald staff EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the eighth in a series of profiles on the major candidates for the Republican nomination for president. The remaining two candidate profiles on Texas Sen. Phil Gramm and Kansas Sen. Bob Dole will run Thursday and Saturday, respectively. Also look for our voters guide, which will run in our Sunday Feb. 18 edition. By Barbara Metzler, Herald Staff Say what you will about Steve Forbes. He has given life to New Hampshire's 1996 presidential primary. In a race where the tried-and-trues and lesser-knowns have failed to galvanize voters, Forbes, his flat tax, and bundles of money have captured the attention of New Hampshire and the nation. A poll released Feb. 1 by The Boston Globe and WBZ-TV shows Forbes with 31 percent of voter support in New Hampshire and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole with 22 percent. Other polls show Dole in front. Regardless of whether he's trailing, Forbes is far closer than any other of the challengers with their broader political backgrounds, big newspaper endorsements, kitchen-table chats, and flannel-clad walks across New Hampshire. ``It's startling,'' said Bob Craig, associate professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire, ``and it's ertainly teaching us a lesson about the New Hampshire primary.'' Political analysts say the success of Forbes' media campaign is rewriting the book on the New Hampshire primary, where candidates long depended on shaking hands across the state for winning votes. TV effective ``We thought it was a people-to-people-type campaign state ... but now, this Forbes fellow has proven that by spending a lot on TV, you can also do very well,'' Craig said. New Hampshire voters have been romanticized as the flinty, common-sense core of the nation's electorate. ``The fact is they're just as swayed by TV as everyone,'' said Tom Mann, director of governmental studies at the Brookings Institution, a political think tank in Washington, D.C. They are swayed by TV and, like many voters this decade who are fed up with politicians who promise change but effect little, they are swayed by something new. ``He's a fresh face into the campaign. He's not bogged down by a lot of the political weights of Washington, and the flat tax is certainly something that's caught a lot of people's attention,'' said Bob Winn, who is running Forbes' Seacoast campaign. Winn organized Pete Wilson's campaign in Rockingham County before the California governor withdrew from the race, and he was somewhat reluctant to jump in again with someone else. But he met Forbes and was impressed. The vision thing ``He just had a lot of ideas that I thought created a vision of the future,'' Winn said. ``Once people get to know him they find he's certainly a multidimensional candidate. He is not a one-issue candidate. He has an extremely strong command of the issues and, more importantly, he doesn't equivocate. What he said a week ago is what he says next week.'' Those virtues have won Forbes the endorsements of New Hampshire's former U.S. Sen. Gordon Humphrey and former senator and state Republican Party Chairwoman Rhona Charbonneau. Humphrey, former Wyoming Sen. Malcolm Wallop, and former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger are co-chairmen of Forbes' national campaign. The fact that the other Republican candidates have limited appeal, and that Dole is seen by many voters as lacking in vision or simply as too old for the job, also helps Forbes, Mann said. That, combined with his seemingly unlimited advertising budget - estimates are he will spend $25 million on the campaign - have driven him to the top of the polls. ``I think of Steve Forbes as a genre of candidate - the citizen anti-politician who uses his personal wealth to rescue a country from its travails,'' Mann said. Limited knowledge The public's support for Forbes results from its limited knowledge of him, Mann said. ``All they know about Forbes is what he's told them himself. My guess is they'll change as they start hearing about him from other sources.'' Those sources are multiplying as the primary draws near. Forbes made the cover of Time and Newsweek in January and his own magazine's competitor, Fortune, devoted a 12-page spread to his candidacy. It has not all been pretty. Fortune questioned Forbes family land deals that leave potential buyers making payments for 10 years before earning a deed (and holding nothing if they miss the last payment in the tenth year). The Fortune article also suggested the stories in Forbes' magazine are changed to please advertisers, a breach of journalistic ethics that may call into question how Forbes would deal with special interests in the White House, Fortune claimed. It concluded that Forbes was running to advance his own celebrity and thus, the fortunes of Forbes Inc. Forbes has called the story ``full of lies.'' Other reports indicate that while Forbes was chairman of the International Board of Broadcasting, which oversees Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, the operation's budget doubled, and an audit showed the operation's president spent $250,000 in taxpayer money to redecorate his apartments in Germany. Reagan caused increase Forbes told the Associated Press the money the auditors ``talked about over a seven-year period was infinitesimal,'' and that corrective actions were taken for each problem. Sen. Wallop, in Portsmouth on Feb. 1 to campaign for Forbes, said the budget doubled because Ronald Reagan wanted Radio Free Europe to become a strong force behind the ``Iron Curtain.'' Forbes' rise in the polls has united his Republican primary opponents against him. Dole, Phil Gramm and Lamar Alexander all have spent campaign dollars to deflect Forbes' rise by ridiculing his flat tax (then offering their own), making mountains out of his millions, while always mentioning that other M-word - Malcolm, his first name and a reminder of Forbes' blueblood lines. (The Steve is short for Stevenson.) His father, who served as a state senator in New Jersey, was better known as a wealthy gadabout, Harley Davidson motorcycle rider, collector of Faberge eggs, and squire to Elizabeth Taylor. For his 70th birthday party, he hired 600 belly dancers. Forbes Jr. is said to have inherited none of that flamboyance. Friends call him a family man. They say he shops for his own groceries and favors the $2.22 breakfast special at his local Friendly's. Family empire He started magazine work in college, where he founded his own publication, then joined the family empire and worked his way up. With his nose to the grindstone since, he stopped last spring to consider a change: a run for the White House. Forbes was urged to consider the presidency by a small band of supply-side economists whose first champion was Jack Kemp. Kemp aside, Forbes said he found the idea of running for president intriguing. He said he chose to run because there were no other ``pro-growth, pro-hope'' contenders among the Republican candidates. His message is all about growth - economic growth that will be unleashed when the federal tax code is dead and buried, never to rise again. At the heart of his campaign is the flat tax: No tax for a family of four making $36,000, a 17 percent tax on all income above that. The 17 percent is just the beginning, Forbes said. ``As America takes off, we're going to reduce that rate further and further,'' he said. His program, nearly identical to one floated by House Majority Leader Dick Armey, would eliminate those cherished deductions for property tax and mortgage interest, as well as write-offs for charitable giving. Hurt in New Hampshire ``I think that will hurt him in a state like ours where the property tax is so high,'' said Professor Craig. Forbes' critics say his flat tax will make the rich richer while making the middle class poorer. They say it will devastate property values and diminish donations. Forbes says the plan would drive mortgage rates down, give middle-income families more money, and prompt an economic boom. ``America has the capacity to grow far, far faster,'' he said. ``The energy is there, the fundamentals are there to move ahead.'' The reason the flat tax is under attack, he said, ``is because it is a knife in the heart of Washington political class.'' The tax code, he said, is ``simply a form of legalized corruption.'' The Forbes plan would exempt the first $13,000 in annual income per individual and give a $5,000 credit per dependent. There would be no tax on personal savings, pensions or Social Security. A family of four with an annual income of $36,000 pays as much as $3,000 in federal income tax currently, Forbes said. The tax code is one reason why two incomes in a family can't match the needs that one once met, he said. Less taxes A Price Waterhouse study, published in The Boston Globe Jan. 28, found a family of four with income of $50,000 would pay 37 percent less in federal taxes under Forbes' plan. ``A typical family of four comes out way ahead of the game,'' Winn said. Some estimates have Forbes ahead too - saving $200,000 under the flat tax, a large sum to the middle class, but small change for a multimillionaire, especially one who already has invested millions to seek the presidency. ``Steve Forbes has been blessed in life,'' he told one group of Republicans. ``I will do all right if you don't change the tax code. I will do all right if you do change the tax code.'' Forbes' much-mentioned wealth is estimated at $440 million. His assets include a 151-foot, 14-bathroom yacht called The Highlander, a South Pacific island, a Boeing 727, castles in England, France and Morocco, and a 520-acre estate in New Jersey where his wife Sabina raises show cattle. That activity reclassifies a large portion of the New Jersey estate as a farm and qualifies the land for a large property tax credit, according to Fortune. Forbes spent $15 million on his campaign by the end of December. He told a WTSN radio audience on a Jan. 22 call-in show, that he is spending less than Dole or Gramm, but is spending more on media ads that take his message ``directly to the people.'' Advertising helped ``He probably understands his money is likely to pay off best by broadcasting,'' Mann said. Forbes could have spent the money financing visits around New Hampshire, Mann said, but ``had he not advertised, I predict he would be at 1 percent in the polls now.'' While Washington outsiders appeal to voters initially, over time ``they don't wear particularly well,'' Mann said. No president has come out of the ranks of the political unknown to win the White House, although neophytes have won seats in the House and Senate. Forbes' supporters believe he has what it takes to change history and win. ``If nothing else, he has vastly energized the Republican primary campaign,'' Wallop said. The Associated Press contributed to this report.