If you’re going to hold a love-fest for the New Hampshire presidential primary, you couldn’t do much better than Wednesday night’s session at St. Anselm College.

For 90 minutes John Lynch, a Democrat, and John Sununu Sr., a Republican, who between them sat in the governor’s chair for seven terms, traded stories about past campaigns with Bill Gardner, generally regarded as the man who kept the primary alive during his 46 years as New Hampshire Secretary of State.

Long-gone politicians like Robert Taft and journalists like Roger Mudd were remembered, while Granite State moments like Ronald Reagan’s “I paid for this microphone, Mr. Green” and Gary Hart’s ax-throwing prowess were recalled in detail. Anecdotes galore were brought out to emphasize the primary’s value in letting everyday voters bypass campaign machinery to connect directly with presidential hopefuls, including a survey decades ago that found one in five New Hampshire voters had shaken the hand of a serious candidate.

And for those who need numerical support to our claim of importance, there is voter turnout, which typically hits or exceeds 50%, an astonishing number for a party primary.

“There’s not another place in the country that has turnout like we have. For the last 50 years, we have typically been the highest turnout by double-digits. The next state below us is way below us,” Gardner said.

So when a Q&A session raised the possibility that this year’s unusual primary signaled the beginning of the end of our special status, with local Democrats reduced to a write-in campaign for Joe Biden while Republicans are already dropping out and canceling debates, the response was quick.

“I certainly don’t think so. Every primary is different …. I don’t think it’s any less special than it has been or any less special than it’s going to be in the future,” Lynch said firmly.

For his part, Sununu pointed to politicians’ favorite villain. “I think the problem is an ignorant press that assumes that it’s over,” he said. “I think that’s what you are seeing reflected in the vibrations you are or are not feeling in the process.”

Then, perhaps recalling who made up most of the audience in the small West Wing room of the Institute for Politics, he added: “I’m not talking about our local press, I’m talking about the national press. Our local press is much smarter.”

Wednesday’s session was put together by Secretary of State Dave Scanlan, Gardner’s successor, who noted that Gardner had held a similar public discussion before the primary exactly 24 years earlier.

New Hampshire has had a presidential primary for a century. Gardner, famous for bringing detailed historical information into any conversation, took the audience back to 1920 when the leading GOP hopeful was New Hampshire-born Leonard Wood, who was famous for helping lead Teddy Roosevelt’s charge up San Juan Hill.

The state’s primary didn’t become important until changes to political party procedures in the 1950s moved it to the start and only became vital to hopefuls after a comparatively poor showing in 1968 led Lyndon Johnson to drop his re-election bid.

In the past three decades the primary has been cited for bringing tens of millions of dollars into the state every four years in spending by campaigns and political tourists, aside from the indirect value of drawing global attention. That’s the main reason the legislature has enshrined our first-in-the-nation status in state law.

This status as the first presidential primary – Iowa being a caucus – has been repeatedly challenged by those saying New Hampshire is too small, too white, too rural and too well-off to reflect American voters’ views, but until this year the challenges had gone nowhere. But the Democratic National Committee isn’t counting this year’s New Hampshire primary when appointing delegates after declaring South Carolina as their official first primary, so it’s possible that the half-century run may be winding down.

If so, said two of the longest-serving governors in state history, it would be a shame.

“It is not like here, anywhere else. People don’t understand how special what we have really is,” said Sununu. “People sometimes take it for granted.”