New Hampshire Republicans say there’s a lot to like about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Senator McCain’s running mate.
New Hampshire Democrats like the pick too, although for entirely different reasons.
The question in New Hampshire- a swing state- is whether selecting a female Vice Presidential candidate will help tilt the election to Republicans.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Dan Gorenstein reports.
A number of Republicans in New Hampshire believe Arizona Senator John McCain’s VP selection helps him in multiple ways.
State GOP Party Chairman Fergus Cullen keeps calling her a reformer.
He calls her a break from the spending policies of the past eight years.
TAPE:
Cullen says picking someone who isn’t afraid to criticize her own party, whether that’s on policy or ethics- reinforces McCain’s ‘maverick’ image.
State Republican Representative Fran Wendelboe says she also is a full spectrum conservative.
2:22 she’s a man’s type of woman. She hunts, she fishes, but yet she is the ultimate soccer mom. She’s prolife. She had this child recently, down syndrome, knew the child was going to be born with some handicaps and said, ‘I don’t care. I will love this child anyway.’...she’s been tested on faith...I can’t say enough about her, she’s a life time member of the NRA.
Former House Speaker Donna Syteck says she’s a lot more excited about John McCain today, than she was yesterday.
The one-time Mitt Romney supporter thinks Palin’s story, her life experience, will attract independents and even conservative Democrats.
TAPE: I mean her husband was a commercial fisherman, a union member, she can reach out to the same people that Regan reached out to. The people in the state’s that we have to win.
Syteck adds that it was no accident that the McCain campaign picked Dayton, Ohio to unveil Palin.
Syteck says she wouldn’t be surprised to see the pick motivate female voters, especially New Hampshire Republican women.
TAPE: women have, we’ve never had a nominee of our party for a state-wide or Congressional office that was a woman. They have been in the primary, but we’ve never had a nominee. So this is a real milestone.
UNH Political Scientist Dante Scala sees Palin’s nomination as a risky move.
He says whether it was a good pick or not, will come down to her learning curve, how she fares under the media’s glare, and her debate performance.
But he says targeting female votes makes good sense.
TAPE: despite the unity of the Democratic Convention this past week, there is still a lot of cautions Hillary Clinton supporters out there, and this will muddy the waters even more...the fact that McCain picked a woman and Obama when having an eminently qualified woman, at least in their eyes, went with a white man instead.
State Democratic Party chair Ray Buckley doesn’t buy that argument.
TAPE: when he selected a woman who stood in stark contrast to supporting woman’s rights, I think that makes it so much easier for the Democrats to attract not only Democratic women, but independents...in NH.
Katie Merrow doesn’t know how women will respond to McCain’s pick.
Merrow heads up the non-partisan Women’s Policy Institute.
In general, she thinks women- both Republicans and Democrats- will like that for only the second time a female will be part of a major party’s presidential ticket.
But beyond that, she cautions people from making too many generalizations.
TAPE: all women are not going to vote the same way... they are going to evaluate the campaign about issues that are important to them.
For NHPR News, I’m DG.
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