Posted on 07/18/2002 3:19:33 PM PDT by Drumbo
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By JOHN DiSTASO
And, although a son of Meldrim Thomson may think that Benson is “just like my dad,” the former governor’s own words from a decade ago echo differently. Taken together, the two issues show that Benson’s Republican primary rivals, in an unwitting tag team, are trying their darndest this week to have the frontrunner’s past haunt him. ITEM ONE: CLINTON’S TAX HIKE. Bruce Keough‘s campaign produced a Wall Street Journal article dated Feb. 19, 1993, soon after the new Democratic President proposed a tax hike to stimulate the economy and lower the deficit. Benson, one of nine CEOs interviewed by the Journal, is quoted as saying: “To be honest with you, I thought it would be worse than it came out. I think he should have gone for more taxes. Personally, I don’t like taxes, but it would be OK to go for more and tie it into deficit reduction dollar-for-dollar.” In the same story, Benson criticized Clinton for the family leave bill, an investment tax credit more beneficial to small than large companies and a higher tax rate on profits over $10 million. Still, Keough says Benson’s call for more taxes baffles him. “I’m just looking for some consistent philosophy to figure out where this guy is coming from,” he said. “In 1993, he talked about the biggest tax increase in history not being enough and now he’s spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy TV ads saying higher taxes are never the answer. I can’t figure out what he believes in.” ITEM TWO: THE THOMSON SEQUEL. Gordon Humphrey‘s campaign has been doing its research, too. Benson unveiled a TV ad last week featuring Tom Thomson, a son of the anti-tax legend, saying that when it comes to trust, Benson is “just like my dad.” This week, Humphrey pointed out a 10-year-old opinion column by Tom’s dad in The Union Leader, in which the former governor questioned the way the chairman of Cabletron Systems did business. Benson had written two letters to Cabletron vendors asking and then urging them to donate to a friend, Ed Dupont, who was in a tough gubernatorial primary with Steve Merrill, the eventual winner. Benson’s second letter made headlines. He told vendors their lack of response to his first letter “is truly disappointing. Cabletron as a company cannot be successful with suppliers who only want a one-way relationship. Your immediate response is essential, no later than July 16 . . . Sometimes, it’s difficult as a buyer to determine if a vendor really does want to build a relationship or if they are there to collect orders. It’s hard only because there can be a few instances when a vendor has to go beyond the call of duty.” Gov. Thomson chastised Benson’s tactics. “Perhaps in the course of his discomfiture,” the former governor wrote, “he found out what others have learned the hard way on the New Hampshire political scene, namely, that the people of the Granite State like to raise their political contributions the old-fashioned way — honestly.” Gov. Thomson continued: “Whether Benson and his pals at the office believe in the basic fundamental principles of good government is immaterial. Benson will find if he stays in New Hampshire for much longer that most New Hampshire voters believe that good business is predicated upon honesty. “Benson will also find that these ways of doing business will not only hurt his vendors, but, if continued, will also, in the long run, wreak havoc on him and his associates when they seek future considerations at the marketplace,” Thomson prophesied. It was the only time that the elder Thomson commented in The Union Leader on Benson. Tom Thomson chuckled at his late father’s way with words, but said the decade-old scolding won’t change his mind. He noted his father “thought the world of Steve Merrill.” Tom said more importantly, “Gordon Humphrey is spending time trying to dig something up on Craig Benson when he should be talking about the important issues. Two years ago, the race for governor was Humphrey’s to win but he lost it because he ran a negative campaign and he’s now repeating the same mistake. We should just stick to the issues.” But Humphrey said the op-ed speaks for itself. “I knew Mel Thomson,” he said. “He was a courageous conservative and there’s no way on earth he would have supported Craig Benson, any more than he would have supported Benedict Arnold for commander-in-chief.” DESPERATION? Benson campaign manager Michael Dennehy responded swiftly. “It is pathetic that Gordon Humphrey has resorted to making an issue of a very respected deceased governor. He should be embarrassed,” he said. As for the Keough and the Clinton tax hike, Dennehy said, “He was simply saying he expected Clinton to raise more taxes and said that personally, he would be willing to pay more of his fair share to reduce the deficit. It has nothing to do with how he would approach being governor or what he would propose as governor. “And let’s remember,” Dennehy said, “Bruce Keough is the one who believes that senior citizens should be forced out of their homes by high taxes because he won’t cap their property taxes.” SAME PLACE, SAME TIME. Democratic 1st District U.S. House candidate Martha Fuller Clark has spent years and lots of money promoting herself as pro-business and pro-worker, and as a fiscal conservative. Then, her name turns up on the Communist Party USA web site. Ouch. Clark and representatives of the Communist Party were among about 160 people who attended a Jan. 11 conference hosted by Northeast Action, a coalition of liberal activist groups including New Hampshire Citizens Alliance, labor unions and environmental and civil rights groups. The communist web site reported that Clark “played an active part in the conference.” No one is suggesting that because Clark and communists attended the same conference, Clark is in any way connected to the commies. But some wonder what the self-proclaimed “pro-business, anti-tax” Clark has in common with Northeast Action, anyway. Clark spokesman Ramsay McLauchlan noted that the title of the conference was “Fulfilling Democracy’s Promise — Voting Rights in the Northeast.” He said Clark spoke to the group about same-day voter registration efforts in New Hampshire, which she views as a key issue. Attendance at the same conference by Clark and the communists is simply coincidence, said McLauchlan. And he said that since Northeast Action is backed by unions and “supporters of state programs,” no one should be surprised that Clark attended. MANY POCKETS. One of the fattest line items in Gov. Jeanne Shaheen‘s campaign finance report showed $173,649 had been transferred to Shaheen for Senate from other political committees from April 1 to June 30. That brought the election-cycle total of such transfers to $291,697. We stand corrected on one point in our initial Wednesday report on Senate fundraising. None of that money was transferred from her Friends of Shaheen state election committee. We accurately reported that some of it came from other federally registered national Democratic Party committees. According to Robert Gibbs, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Washington, Shaheen is involved in three “joint fundraising agreements”:
How do these agreements work? Gibbs said a donor can give N.H. Senate 2002 both hard and unlimited soft money. But federal election law allows only the hard money, $1,000 for the primary and $1,000 for the general election, to be transferred to Shaheen for Senate. The rest is sent to the big DSCC pot for use in elections across the nation. Gibbs said one use will be so-called “issue advertising” and some of those ads may be bought and aired in New Hampshire, aiding Shaheen. But Gibbs said that no soft money sent to the DSCC can be earmarked for any particular candidate. “Donors should not think that any money they contribute to N.H. Senate 2002 in excess of $1,000 per election will go to Jeanne Shaheen’s campaign,” Gibbs clarified. The other two committees, said Gibbs and Shaheen spokesman Colin Van Ostern, take only hard money and were set up primarily to accept ticket purchases for joint fund-raisers that benefited Shaheen and the others. In those cases, the checks were allowed to be earmarked to the participating candidates, they said. On the GOP side, Sen. Bob Smith transferred $24,000 from the Warner-Nichols Victory Fund, a joint committee by GOP senators from Virginia and Oklahoma that held a fundraiser for a host of Senate candidates. PACKWOOD REMEMBERS. Five years ago, Smith, as a member of the Senate Ethics Committee, voted to expel then-Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon, a fellow Republican, after Packwood had been accused of sexual harassment by staffers. In April, Packwood’s political committee donated $1,000 to Smith challenger Rep. John E. Sununu’s campaign. COMMITMENT OR WORD GAMES? Nine months after Sununu announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, has incumbent Smith stated clearly whether he’d back his GOP challenger if Sununu beats him in the September primary? Sununu was clear when he said last Oct. 15 if “another is chosen, the nominee will have my full and unequivocal support.” On Nov. 1, we reported that Smith spokesman Lisa Harrison had told us, “Of course Senator Smith will endorse the nominee. But that will be easy because it will be him.” Then, last Sunday, on WMUR’s “Close-Up” program, Smith answered the question this way: “Well, good question, and you’re not going to accuse me of ducking it and I’m not going to duck it, but the simple reason why I’m not going to answer it is because I do not look beyond that curtain. I just will not look beyond that curtain, I will not put myself into a position of thinking, ‘What might happen if?’ I intend to win this election and because I’m going to win the election, then I don’t have to worry about that.” This week, we asked Harrison for a direct answer from Smith. She quoted him as saying, “Of course, I’ll endorse the nominee, because it will be me.” Smith’s camp says that clears the air, but Sununu campaign manager Paul Collins says it does anything but. “Bob Smith will not commit to supporting a Republican nominee,” he said, “That is certainly disheartening news to good Republicans all across New Hampshire, working hard to elect our candidates.”
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