"A sad day for New Hampshire"

Gov. John Lynch came to the Monitor for an editorial board interview yesterday. His visit was a reminder of an important role for a governor – a role often overlooked during a political campaign.

The governor had gone that morning to Salem for the funeral of Corporal Nicholas Arvanitis of the 82nd Airborne Division. Arvanitis was killed by enemy fire in Iraq.

Before we began the interview, Lynch said in a quiet, apologetic tone that he had to leave his cell phone on vibrate. He expected a call at any time, he said, with news of the death of Michael Briggs, the critically wounded Manchester police officer.

We launched into the interview, and the governor was his usual self. He argued with conviction on school funding, the issue at the heart of the political campaign. In my opinion, his position doesn’t compute, but if anyone can sell it, it is Lynch. He has already sold it to a group of Democratic Senate candidates, whose position on school funding boils down to four words: whatever Gov. Lynch says. Since Lynch is headed for a landslide re-election, why not grab those coattails?

<>Maybe 45 minutes into the interview, there was a knock at the conference room door. One of Lynch’s aides, sober-faced and soft-spoken, stuck his head in and nodded to the governor. We all knew what had happened.

<>Two minutes later, the governor returned to the conference room and said he had to leave. Then he was off to represent the state, as he had that morning in Salem, on a most somber occasion.

<>I am on the press e-mail list for the governor, so I glance at least once a week at where he is going and what he is doing. Lynch gets around. Much of his travel is in the ribbon-cutting mode. But even when he is visiting schools, riding in parades and speaking at beanhole suppers, the governor listens to people. Thus when he spoke during our interview about the value of alternative learning styles, he supported his position with anecdotes from people who had not thrived in traditional classrooms.

But sometimes this job of being the face of the state becomes difficult to the point of heartbreaking. Lynch is such an earnest man, such a straight arrow, that even when terrible things happen, he is good at doing what a governor must do.

<>At around 7 last night, Lynch called and said he was sorry for having to leave the editorial board interview early. I told him he had nothing to apologize for. We chatted a few moments about how grim the front page of today’s newspaper was going to be.

<>In a weary voice, John Lynch summed things up from the perspective of one who had lived close to events: “It’s a sad day for New Hampshire.”