MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Sen. Richard G. Lugar is going to church over in Nashua tomorrow and will make a speech Monday in Wolfeboro. Lamar Alexander is holding a series of meetings with Republican ward leaders here. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole is speaking at "town meetings" in Keene, Lebanon, Gorham, North Conway, Dover, Nashua, Concord and Laconia over the next three days.
All three of them -- along with Sen. Phil Gramm, Sen. Arlen Specter, television commentator Patrick J. Buchanan and three other Republicans who would like to be president -- will speak at a party dinner here tomorrow night.
The message, of course, is that although the New Hampshire presidential primary is still a year away, the campaigning already is intense because -- as has been the case so often in the past -- the political stakes are enormous.
"It's a higher level of activity and intensity than I've ever seen," said Steve Duprey, the Republican state chairman.
The prime event of the weekend is a dinner here tomorrow night for which 1,400 tickets at $100 apiece have been sold. It should net the party $80,000 to $100,000, which is what another party official, Charles McGee, called "a lot of money in New Hampshire."
Anyone with any interest in the nomination seems to have been (( given an opportunity to make a 15-minute speech. The list includes such longest of the long shots as former Cabinet secretary and Rep. Lynn Martin, conservative Rep. Robert K. Dornan of California and Alan L. Keyes, a black Republican whose only political credential seems to be that he ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in Maryland.
The history of Republican primaries in New Hampshire is a rich one.
It was here in 1964 that the flaws of the two leading GOP candidates, Barry Goldwater and Nelson A. Rockefeller, were exposed when they were defeated by a write-in campaign for Henry Cabot Lodge, a former senator from neighboring Massachusetts, at the time U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam.
It was here in 1968 that George W. Romney realized his position on the war in Vietnam had fatally compromised his campaign to the point that he withdrew as a candidate and, in effect, gave the nomination to Richard M. Nixon.
It was in Nashua in 1980 that Ronald Reagan confronted and visibly unsettled George Bush in a debate dispute in which Mr. Reagan countermanded the moderator's orders to turn off his microphone by declaring, "I paid for this microphone, Mr. Green." Although the moderator's name was John Breen, Mr. Reagan's display of assertiveness helped lift him to a runaway triumph in the primary a few days later.
And it was here in 1988 that then-Vice President Bush recovered from a defeat in Iowa by upsetting Mr. Dole and evoking an angry reaction -- "Stop lying about my record," Mr. Dole told Mr. Bush over a national television network -- that fatally compromised the Kansas Republican's campaign.
As a political exercise, the primary has changed significantly over the years. Although there is an enduring myth that no candidate can win until he meets most of the voters face to face, television commercials carried on Boston and Manchester outlets have become increasingly important.
In 1988, for instance, Mr. Bush overtook Mr. Dole with a heavy buy of 30-second spots hammering his opponent on his refusal to declare himself against all tax increases anytime, anywhere -- a requirement for survival in New Hampshire Republican primaries.
Since Democrat Jimmy Carter showed the way in 1976, it has also been obvious that the Iowa precinct caucuses, held eight days before the primary here -- the dates next year are Feb. 12 and Feb. 20 -- have an effect on the outcome by giving the national news media a standard for deciding who the "serious" players may be.
Until that time, the New Hampshire primary was one in which a pecking order would be established for a field of six or seven candidates, leaving two or three to continue the fight elsewhere. Now that winnowing process takes place in Iowa; once the votes are counted there, the field of serious contenders here is reduced to two or three.
Qualifying for that "first tier" here involves not only the Iowa results and the candidates' relative standing in national opinion polls, but also the degree of strength they can display on the ground. The vote in the Republican primary probably will not exceed 175,000, and voters here enjoy the spectacle and pay reasonably close attention to what is going on.
That is one of the reasons the campaign has reached a relatively fevered pitch a full year ahead of the primary. Although only the party activists -- perhaps 3,000 to 4,000 statewide -- are involved now, they are the ones who will make up the candidates' volunteer committees charged with spreading the gospel.
The conventional wisdom is that organization usually makes a difference of only 4 or 5 percentage points, at best, when compared with television advertising and news media attention, but the local support is a basic credential. Thus, for instance, Mr. Dole is planning to announce this weekend that former Sen. Warren B. Rudman will be one of the co-chairmen of his national campaign.
The candidate who has driven the process here most vigorously, however, has been Mr. Alexander, the former governor of Tennessee and secretary of education in the Bush administration. His satellite television "neighborhood meetings" have been reaching about 200 sites within the state over the last year, giving him monthly exposure to 500 to 700 Republican activists.
Mr. Gramm, who has developed perhaps the most advanced organization nationally, seems to be a step behind here. But, as Chairman Duprey observed, the conservative Texas Republican "is talking about issues New Hampshire likes."
There are many segments of the party electorate, however.
Mr. Specter, the liberal in the field, was given a rousing reception when he spoke in clear terms about his support for abortion rights at North Conway last week.
Mr. Buchanan still has remnants of the "Buchanan's Brigade" organization formed behind him when he challenged President Bush here in 1992.
And there are moderate Republicans, particularly around Concord and on the sea coast, who might welcome other candidates supporting abortion rights such as Govs. Pete Wilson of California and William F. Weld of Massachusetts.
The primary is still a year away and, as New Hampshire voters have demonstrated in the past, anything is possible.
And voters in both parties have demonstrated that success in New Hampshire earns the kind of attention that pays dividends farther down the primary trail.