NH Reuters Issues Fuel Race 10-16-02

Issues Fuel Key New Hampshire Race for Senate

By Greg Frost
October 16, 2002

DOVER, N.H. (Reuters) - A flock of silver-haired heads nods quietly as New Hampshire Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen accuses her Republican rival, Rep. John Sununu, of wanting to invest Social Security funds on Wall Street.

"Just imagine if you had to depend on the stock market for the last year and a half. Where would you be?" Shaheen says before asking the elderly audience in this southern New Hampshire city to help elect her to the U.S. Senate.

Later, Sununu attacks Shaheen for brazenly trying to frighten voters and grossly distorting his position.

"Intentionally scaring senior citizens is the lowest form of politics there is," the 38-year-old congressman says. "It shows her campaign is bankrupt of ideas."

Yet ideas are very much in vogue in New Hampshire this fall, with the back-and-forth over Social Security typical of a Senate campaign in which issues, not personalities, have played a central role.

Given that the race could help decide if Democrats keep their one-seat majority in the Senate, it is no surprise New Hampshire has become a microcosm of the national political debate, says J. Mark Wrighton, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire.

"This race isn't just about who's going to represent New Hampshire in the Senate. It's about who's going to be Senate majority leader next year," Wrighton said.

Sununu, son of a former New Hampshire governor and White House chief of staff under former President George Bush, the current president's father, reminds supporters that a vote for him is a vote against the Democratic Senate majority.

After ousting Republican Sen. Bob Smith last month in a primary, Sununu asked voters who they preferred as chairman of the Senate Education Committee: Edward Kennedy, the liberal Democratic icon from Massachusetts, or New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg.

Shaheen flips the argument, declaring her election would be a safeguard against efforts by the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to chip away at a woman's right to choose an abortion.

The Senate could be asked in the next two years to approve a nominee to the Supreme Court, which could at some time reconsider its landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling guaranteeing the right to an abortion.

"I do not believe that we should appoint judges who seek to overturn that right," the 55-year-old Shaheen says.

RACE TOO CLOSE TO CALL

Shaheen and Sununu stand together on some issues. Both favor capital punishment, and both supported the congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq if needed.

But they are ideological opposites on issues like abortion. Sununu supports abortion only in the case of rape, incest or if the mother's life is in danger. Shaheen supports the right to abortion in all cases. In 1997 she signed a bill that repealed 149-year-old New Hampshire laws making abortion a felony.

The latest polls show Shaheen has erased an earlier deficit and the race is now too close to call.

Shaheen, a former schoolteacher serving her third term as governor, faces tough odds in the Granite State, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by nearly three to two. The last time New Hampshire voters sent a Democrat to the Senate was 1975.

While Shaheen has arguably been the state's most popular Democrat in a generation, she faced heavy criticism for failing to resolve the state's school-funding crisis.

But Sununu faces trouble within his own party. Republican supporters of Smith, who briefly abandoned the party for a failed presidential bid as an independent in 1999, are angry at Sununu for unseating the conservative veteran last month. Smith was the first sitting senator to lose a primary in a decade.

Some Republicans have vowed to write in Smith's name on the ballot. Others have said they will vote for Shaheen or are threatening to simply stay home on Nov. 5.

With the race deadlocked, Sununu will need every vote he can get, and at least one pollster estimated the disgruntled Smith backers could represent up to 5 percent of the voters.

Sununu dismisses talk of a rift within his party.

"I have strong and deep support across the entire spectrum of Republican voters. Many of the activists who supported Bob Smith are now working on my campaign," he says.