John DiStaso, a longtime New Hampshire political reporter who scrutinized a fresh crop of presidential candidates every four years, grilled them on the debate stage and analyzed their foibles and their prospects, died on April 21 in Manchester, N.H. He was 68.
The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, said his wife, Diane DiStaso.
Mr. DiStaso began his reporting career in 1980 with the New Hampshire Union Leader, the state’s largest newspaper. He was writing a weekly political column by 1982, rose to become the paper’s senior political reporter and before long was regarded — given his stature and the newspaper’s reach and influence — as the dean of the state’s political press corps. For the last seven years, he reported for WMUR, the only commercial television station in New Hampshire.
He covered 11 presidential campaigns and was preparing to cover his 12th. He often served as a panelist on nationally televised primary debates and was known for his tough questioning and for not letting candidates off the hook.
“For the last 40 years, anyone wanting to be president of the United States would have to face John DiStaso first,” Adam Sexton, the political director of WMUR, said in a televised tribute to him. WMUR is sometimes called the most influential local television outlet in the country because of the hours it devotes to presidential candidates, who in turn fuel the station with millions of dollars in spending on political ads.
Political reporters in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire are among the most immersed in the minutiae of the nation’s presidential selection process and help influence how voters perceive the candidates. Mr. DiStaso was an industrious participant in this quadrennial exercise.
“He really was exceptional at convincing people how important it was that he be the first to report something, no matter how trivial or incremental the ‘scoop’ was,” Kevin Landrigan, another longtime New Hampshire political reporter, said of Mr. DiStaso, who was a competitor but also a close friend.
Mr. DiStaso’s scoops included important turns of events. He was among the first to confirm that Donald J. Trump was running for president in 2015. And in 2007, when Senator John McCain of Arizona had run out of money and some reporters were writing that he was about to drop out, Mr. DiStaso snagged what Mr. Landrigan, in an email, called “the definitive interview” with Mr. McCain and confirmed that he was staying in the race. Mr. McCain went on to win the Republican nomination.
Mr. DiStaso is credited with popularizing the acronym RINO, meaning “Republican in Name Only,” to refer to Republicans who were viewed as insufficiently conservative. The phrase stemmed from the Theodore Roosevelt era, but according to political dictionaries, Mr. DiStaso was the first to use the acronym, in 1992.
He was born and bred in New Jersey, but he quickly understood and reflected the archetypal New Hampshire voter — a flinty independent who was unimpressed by star power and wanted to meet all candidates personally three or four times before deciding for whom to vote.
“John and his generation saw it as their duty to uphold and represent that image of New Hampshire to the nation,” Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire, said in an email. Mr. DiStaso treated all candidates alike, he said, whether they were incumbent presidents or business executives with no political experience.
Either way, Senator Maggie Hassen, Democrat of New Hampshire, said in a statement that she entered into the Congressional Record, “he took seriously his role of bringing political news directly to the voters.”
“Politics,” she said, “wasn’t a game to him.”
John Joseph DiStaso was born on Feb. 18, 1954, in Paterson, N.J., where he grew up. His father, Joseph, was a carpet layer. His mother, Helen (Walton) DiStaso, was a bank teller.
He studied English literature at Villanova University, graduating in 1975. He earned a master’s degree in communications at William Paterson College (now University) in Wayne, N.J., in 1979.
While at Villanova, he met Diane Randazza through her brother. Mr. DiStaso and Ms. Randazza married in 1979.
He began his New Hampshire journalism career as the seacoast-area correspondent for the Union Leader. He became a staff reporter in 1980 and stayed until 2014, when the Union Leader hit rocky financial times. He then stunned the political world by becoming the news editor at New Hampshire Journal, a moribund political website owned by Republican operatives, who hired him to bring credibility to their venture. He left a year later for WMUR.
In addition to his wife, Mr. DiStaso is survived by their sons, Dante and Nicholas, and his sister, Doris DiStaso. He lived in New Boston, N.H.
One thing that set him apart from the political pack, Mr. Landrigan said, was his generosity toward other reporters.
“He didn’t hesitate to lend his vast institutional memory and contacts to someone else working on a story he had done,” he said. “Many young reporters sought him out, and he was always accommodating.”
