Posted on 09/05/2002 8:42:22 AM PDT by Gothmog
The incumbent senator offers his party more than his rival.
On Tuesday, Republican primary voters will place their bets in a gamble of national importance to their party. The Democrats now hold a one-vote majority in the U.S. Senate. One man, either veteran Senator Bob Smith or three-term Rep. John Sununu, will emerge next week to face Democrat Jeanne Shaheen. The other will have to leave Congress.
Of the two, Smith offers his party its best hope of retaining the seat. Not incidentally, Smith would also make the better senator.
The candidates differ little in philosophy. Both have strong conservative credentials. Their contest has consisted largely of quibbling over small differences rather than substantive ones.
But Smith has many points in his favor. He is far and away the better campaigner, a person who warms to people and understands their needs. Sununu is a lecturer, comfortable on the podium talking down to people. His priorities - tax reform and trade policy, for example - read like chapter headings in an economics textbook.
Smith is independent, as he proved a couple of years back with his ballyhooed bolt from his party. That quality is not only admirable but also critical when the interests of a politician's party and his constituents diverge. Sununu, by contrast, has served as another foot soldier for the GOP.
On no issue has Smith's independence come more into play than the environment, where he has emerged as a leader able to forge bipartisan compromise. Smith, broke with the administration over oil drilling in the Arctic wilderness. Sununu supports drilling, and while he offered amendments to limit its impact on the pristine area and to help pay for conservation programs, they were done less to protect the environment than to protect the chances that a bad bill would become law.
Smith has grown considerably greener over the years, but that does not put him at odds with his party's tradition. After all, conservative and conservation share the same root word.
Smith authored a bill to clean up the nation's contaminated brownfields so they can be returned to productivity. He worked to improve clean-air standards to eliminate the smog that chokes hikers atop the White Mountains. As chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, he was instrumental in the effort to reclaim the Florida Everglades, a national treasure.
Sununu, meanwhile, has largely moved in lockstep with the administration on energy and the environment. These positions are not often in accord with the interests of a downwind state that caters to tourists.
Despite the quirky positions Smith sometimes espouses, he has had his share of success in Congress. In their recent debate, for example, Sununu was forced to admit that he had sponsored only a few bills since he took office in 1996. Smith could lay claim to 60 in the same period. True, it is much easier to win notice in the Senate, and Smith probably did no better in his three terms in the House. Nonetheless, seniority has advantages that should not be given up lightly.
Throughout Smith's long career, we have struggled to find points on which to agree with him and rarely, save on environmental matters, found them. But we have found qualities to admire.
Even when he's on the precipice of a hopeless position, voters always know where Smith stands. He genuinely likes people, and they like him, which is why he hasn't lost an election in 18 years.
He shouldn't lose the one on Tuesday either.
The CONCORD MONITOR doesn't want Smith to continue in the Senate; it wants Shaheen to be the new Senator, and this editorial proves it.
This rag is the New Hampshire New York Times.
How Smith can object to opening ANWR is beyond me. Alaskans overwhelmingly want it. Why is some two-bit supposedly conservative Senator from the other side of the continent trying to block it?
BINGO... you win the Cupie Doll. This liberal rag is supporting Smith because they know he will loose to the soper liberal Shaheen.
I haave lived in NH since 82 and up till now have supported Smith, but I am voting SUNUNU because he is going to whip her bottom in the election.
BINGO... you win the Cupie Doll. This liberal rag is supporting Smith because they know he will loose to the soper liberal Shaheen.
I haave lived in NH since 82 and up till now have supported Smith, but I am voting SUNUNU because he is going to whip her bottom in the election.
Now, you figure why the Monitor is endorsing Smith!
That is not a term I would use to describe Bob Smith. Very incorrect.
If Smith is a two-bit conservative, I shudder to think of your other political views.
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