The headline from the Concord Monitor struck me like a thunderbolt:
Shaheen considers another Senate run
The December 11th article reports
Former New Hampshire governor Jeanne Shaheen is weighing a run for U.S. Senate, her husband said last night.."She’s thinking about it," Bill Shaheen told the Monitor at a Democratic fundraiser last night in Manchester. "She hasn’t ruled it out."
Back in November in this post, I reported that the American Spectator’s David Hogman fingered NH’s Senator John E. Sununu as being among the most vulnerable Republicans in 2008. I agree. Furthermore, I have long believed that Shaheen would take another crack at this seat. And what better time than now?
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Given the realities of the current political landscape here in the Granite State, if I were Sununu, I would be afraid. Very afraid. Just look at the condition of the state GOP. Following their worst drubbing in the last 100 years, there is not currently one leader figure that appears ready to pick up the pieces. Where is a shining star of the party espousing any sort of ANYTHING to rouse the passions and energy of ordinary people? Will they have reason to vote Republican in ’08 if they didn’t in ’06?
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A party bereft of leadership would naturally lack any coherent direction. Multiple groups and factions each doing their "own thing." Let’s face it- the NH Republicans have a weak foundational structure for Sununu to build upon. Given the newfound strength of the NH Democrats through their control of all the levers of power within the state, Sununu will surely start his re-election from a handicapped position.
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Unless something goes dramatically wrong for the ruling Dems and the GOP gets their collective acts together and drastically changes course, I don’t see a climate favorable to John E. Sununu in a rematch between him and the popular former Governor Jeanne Shaheen– A Jeanne Shaheen heartily endorsed and campaigned for by John Lynch- New Hampshire’s most popular governor since Meldrim Thomson.