Sununu: Shaheen twisting in 'winds'
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Lauren R. Dorgan
Concord Monitor
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Debate in Henniker is latest clash in U.S. Senate race
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Republican U.S. Sen. John Sununu attacked Democratic challenger Jeanne Shaheen repeatedly at their first televised debate last night, saying she's shifted with "political winds" on issues ranging from tax policy to the war in Iraq to the recent Wall Street bailout bill.
Shaheen, a former three-term governor, fired back hard at Sununu, a first-term senator, saying that he'd sided with his party and with President Bush too often. "I've acknowledged that John Sununu has voted 10 percent of the time independently," she said. "He's voted 90 percent of the time with President Bush."
At one point, asked to name a stance she's taken that's unpopular in the polls, Shaheen took a seven-second pause before launching into her discussion of her desire to curb global warming and stop deficit spending. Questioned on whether those are actually unpopular stances, Shaheen said, "You know, I don't pay a lot of attention to polls."
Shaheen argued that Sununu hadn't backed up his positions on global warming and tax subsidies for alternative energy. As Sununu detailed the politics of a wide-ranging energy bill, Shaheen cut in: "That's so much Washington mumbo jumbo," she said. "Take responsibility for what you voted for."
Sununu and Shaheen are old rivals. Sununu beat Shaheen in 2002 after a close-fought race. That history was revisited time and again at last night's debate at New England College in Henniker, as it has been in television advertisements.
Sununu's latest commercial features 6-year-old clips of Shaheen promoting her support for the war in Iraq and the Bush tax cuts, while Democrats have made ample use of footage and photographs from 2002, when Bush, then a popular president, came to New Hampshire to rally support for Sununu.
On the $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill that passed Congress this month, Sununu said he'd taken a bold stance in supporting something that wasn't popular because he thought it was needed to rescue the nation's ailing financial system. On the other hand, Sununu said, Shaheen declined to take a position and made comments seemingly in
support of the bailout before finally coming out against it.
"What was she doing? She was worrying about the polls and the political winds," he said. "Just like she was when she said she would stand with President Bush on national security and support the Bush tax cuts. It was popular at the time, so that's what she said. I will always take a stand for what I think is right for New Hampshire."
But Shaheen, who has said that she wasn't against a rescue package, said that she had specific objections to the plan that passed, which she said lacked sufficient oversight.
"The taxpayer protections that John Sununu is talking about are the same taxpayer protections that have allowed AIG's executives to go on a spa weekend," she said. She added, "John Sununu and I have a fundamentally different approach to this issue because he wants to help Wall Street, he wants to help the big corporations, the top 1 percent, and that's what this bailout did."
Even though moderator Laura Knoy, of New Hampshire Public Radio, urged the old rivals to focus on describing their own platforms and not on attacking each other, they disregarded that instruction and at several points were so bent on disagreements that they talked over one another. On one question about party independence, Knoy readdressed Shaheen, asking: "You've addressed Sen. Sununu, but how about you?"
The pair traded barbs about Social Security, an issue that was also prominent in 2002. Sununu has been a prominent supporter of establishing private accounts within the system, a position that Democrats have highlighted recently, saying that the tanking national markets demonstrate the problem with that idea.
Sununu framed his position as an attempt to shore up an underfunded system and to stimulate debate on a controversial topic. "Jeanne Shaheen's program is this," Sununu said, holding up his fingers in a zero shape. "No ideas, no thoughts, no proposals at all."
But Shaheen said Sununu's plan does nothing to shore up the system and is too risky. "Leadership that would take seniors' retirement and gamble it on the stock market is not the kind of leadership we need in this country," Shaheen said.
The debate was co-sponsored by New Hampshire Public Television, New England Cable News, New Hampshire Public Radio and the website politickernh.com.
The second and final televised debate will air Oct. 30 on WMUR.
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