US Senate candidates differences over energy, the economy, and perhaps most of all most of all, the degree to which Sununu has supported President Bush.
When observers talk of the Sununu/Shaheen senate rematch, they say it’s hotly contested; they say it’s one of the most-watched races in the country, and they may even say it’s a bellwether of the national political mood. What they never say is that it lacks for message discipline. And that’s for good reason.
“When I’ve differed with my party, or differed with the President, it’s not enough to just vote with your conscience, or vote with NH -- and I vote with NH 100 percent of the time -- I’ve lead the effort.”
That was Senator Sununu moments after clinching the GOP nomination. Here’s Jeanne Shaheen speaking at her general election kick off in Manchester.
“John Sununu votes with George Bush 90 percent of the time and New Hampshire pays the price 100 percent of the time.”
How well both candidates expand those central claims could determine this race’s outcome. So far, neither has strayed far from what you might find in any 2008 Congressional race: plenty of talk on energy -- Sununu touting immediate offshore drilling; Shaheen calling for a crack down on energy speculators -- and plenty on taxes and spending.
“The kind of economic change that Jeanne Shaheen and Barack Obama have proposed would be to increase capital gains taxes, increase income tax rates, and bring back the death tax.”
Shaheen actually opposes hiking the capital gains tax but would roll back some of Bush tax cuts and impose an estate tax with a 7 million dollar exemption. She’s also pushing a pay-as-you go budgeting. And arguing that Sununu’s support of Bush administration budgets is one reason that national debt now expected to 407 billion dollars by year’s end.
“Today the average NH family owes over 86,000 towards the debt increase of the Bush/Sununu years.”
Shaheen invoked the President 17 times in her 24 minute speech. Not subtle, but it clearly makes republicans anxious. When asked whether being tied to Bush worries him Sununu says NH voters are smart, and steered the conversation back to how he differs from Bush. When asked to name anything positive about the President, he changed the subject. When asked again, he said taxes and left it at that. State GOP chairman Fergus Cullen says voter dissatisfaction with the President Bush won’t decide this race, but declined to offer any complement at all.
-Do you have anything nice to say about President Bush?
“We’re getting change in this election one way of the other. I think the pick of Governor Palin underscores this.”
Cullen added that as voters make their decisions in the Senate race, Jeanne Shaheen’s record, on the issues and otherwise, will give them cause for skepticism.
“Those of us what remember Jeanne Shaheen’s days as a radical community organizer of the Clamshell Alliance, have to smile when she say she’s now in favor of nuclear.”
Cullen called Jeanne Shaheen a “radical community organizer” three times as he spoke to reporters. That repetition was not an accident. The phrase has become popular GOP epithet to describe Barack Obama. But Jeanne Shaheen’s campaign says the former Governor was never a member of the Clamshell Alliance, and that her community organizing experience was limited to helping to launch the International Children’s Festival in Somersworth, in 1981.
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