MANCHESTER, N.H. — Senator John E. Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, one of the most vulnerable incumbents up for re-election this year, has trailed in polls for months. And a brutal new advertisement by his opponent literally puts Mr. Sununu in a hole — showing a man who resembles the senator shoveling dirt from deep inside a gaping ditch.
“George Bush put our economy in the hole,” the Democratic challenger, former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, says in the commercial as the pseudo-Sununu keeps shoveling behind her. “So why is John Sununu digging in the same failed direction?”
Mr. Sununu and his backers have their own spot just up deriding Mrs. Shaheen as a big spender who oversaw a doubling of the state budget in her six years as governor. “Jeanne Shaheen and big-spending Washington?” a voice-over grimly intones. “She’ll fit right in.”
With the fall campaign season now officially under way, Mr. Sununu and Mrs. Shaheen have come out slinging daggers. And like the presidential candidates, who are grappling for the mantle of change, the candidates down-ballot are doing so by clashing over practical kitchen-table issues — the price of gasoline and home heating oil, health care costs, job security — that make this race emblematic of Senate contests across the country.
The New Hampshire race reflects the national political climate that has many Republicans battling to keep their jobs as their opponents seek to tie them to President Bush and blame them for the ailing economy. It is an atmosphere so tough that several candidates, including Mr. Sununu, skipped the Republican convention in Minnesota last week to stay home and campaign.Continue reading the main story
“I am not a lawyer; I am not a career politician,” Mr. Sununu said in a speech last week that underscored his need to distance himself from Washington-as-usual. “I am an engineer by training. I have worked in small business.”
It was an interesting self-description by a man who worked in the private sector for about six years after graduate school but has spent twice as long — nearly 12 years — in Congress.
Still, the race here, a fierce rematch of a bruising contest six years ago, is also a near-perfect petri dish for how the issues, and the dynamics of the presidential contest, are shifting in ways that give Republicans hope. Mr. Sununu has already sought to seize the energy issue by portraying Mrs. Shaheen and the Democrats as obstacles to increased domestic oil drilling. He has also embraced the Republican nominee for president, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as the new, reform-minded faces of the party.
But Mr. Sununu is the incumbent, and as the race revved into high gear last week, there were also signs that Mrs. Shaheen’s message about the economy was likely to find some resonance, a point underscored by the release on Friday of another report showing worsening national unemployment.
Recent polls show Mrs. Shaheen leading by double digits, as she has for most of the last year. And political analysts in the state say that in large part because of the economic circumstances, the race seems hers to lose — a stark contrast from 2002, when Mr. Bush’s popularity and the focus on national security and the war on terrorism strongly favored Mr. Sununu.
“On the economy, the bad news just keeps on coming,” said Dante J. Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. “She doesn’t need to do much more than point to the hole, as she does in the ad, and say, ‘Do you want more of the same?’ ”
Mrs. Shaheen hammers the message in two new advertisements and at virtually every campaign stop, as she did last week when she accused Mr. Sununu of endorsing Bush economic policies, favoring big oil companies over the middle class, seeking to cut Medicare benefits for the elderly, opposing tax credits for renewable energy and blindly supporting the war in Iraq. Her second new commercial, with Carole King’s “Where You Lead, I Will Follow” in the background, shows pictures of Mr. Sununu in various settings with Mr. Bush.
On Friday, during a visit to the Stonyfield Farm yogurt factory in Londonderry for a tour of the company’s efforts to improve energy efficiency, Mrs. Shaheen sought to draw the contrasts even clearer.
“This is a critical race,” Mrs. Shaheen, 61, told a small gathering of employees. “It’s a race about whether the country is going to continue with the status quo, which is where John Sununu has been, voting with George Bush 90 percent of the time.”
But no one is counting out Mr. Sununu, who this week turns 44 and is the youngest member of the Senate. He has amassed a huge campaign war-chest of more than $5 million that he has only recently begun to tap, and he is campaigning with gusto, emphasizing achievements in the Senate that he says show how he stood up to the Bush administration, including his fight for changes to the Patriot Act to protect privacy rights.
“Energy, taxes, health care, national security — I feel very comfortable debating any of these issues,” Mr. Sununu said in an interview in Plymouth, where he attended a spaghetti dinner for the local Republican club.
The New Hampshire race is a huge priority for both parties and an array of outside advocacy groups.
Democrats view Mr. Sununu as a chief target in the effort to expand their 51-to-49 control of the Senate. They hope to capitalize on a remarkable demographic shift in New Hampshire that has erased a longtime Republican advantage. Each party can now claim roughly 31 percent of voters, with 38 percent unaffiliated.
Republicans, meanwhile, see Mr. Sununu’s race as an acid test: If he can hold on in this toughest of years and turn the issues of energy and taxes to his advantage, it would bode well for Republican incumbents in Maine, Minnesota, Oregon and other states whose opponents are typically not as well known or well financed as Mrs. Shaheen.
Mr. Sununu sought to do just that in a speech to supporters at a restaurant in Wolfeboro, where his audience munched on Goldfish crackers and shrimp. “Barack Obama and Jeanne Shaheen, when they talk about an energy policy, they begin by listing all the things they won’t do,” Mr. Sununu said. “They won’t do nuclear. They won’t lift the ban on offshore drilling. They won’t pursue oil shale. That’s wrong.”
Mrs. Shaheen says that she supports some additional drilling but that it is not a longterm solution.
It is not clear yet what effect Ms. Palin’s selection as the Republican nominee for vice president might have on the Senate race. Even if she drives Republican turnout, it may not help Mr. Sununu, who needs to attract independent voters.
Mr. Sununu said he was happy to share the Republican ticket with Ms. Palin and Mr. McCain, who won the presidential primary in New Hampshire this year and in 2000.
Some state political analysts say the pro-drilling position on energy offers Mr. Sununu his best policy argument, in a state where residents are dreading home heating costs this winter — even as Mrs. Shaheen tries to blunt his efforts by urging that the federal government triple its spending on home heating subsidies.
“Energy is big,” said Andy Seale, a software engineer from Milford who is supporting Mr. Sununu. “Iraq has kind of dropped from the forefront.”
And though the unemployment rate in New Hampshire, at just under 4 percent, is the lowest in New England, economic unease is palpable. “It’s hard to tell people it’s a shallow recession,” said Grant Bosse, a Republican candidate for Congress. “People are still hurting.”
Linda L. Fowler, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, said the overall climate, including the rise of Democrats throughout New England, seemed to favor Mrs. Shaheen even though Mr. Sununu had some basis for claiming independence. “I just don’t know how effective he is going to be at separating himself from Bush,” Dr. Fowler said. “Sununu is probably smart to stay home and tend his own garden.”Continue reading the main story