While we’ve been hearing about various state primaries over the past couple of months, said primaries to select who will be running for various state and national offices, I have found that much of it has been “all hat, no cowboy” to borrow a phrase from Texas.
We’ve seen the disaster in Maine where that state’s Democrats can’t seem to find a candidate without a lot of baggage to run against Republican Susan Collins for the US Senate. We’ve seen Democrats in Wisconsin working hard to successfully kill off Francesca Hong’s run for governor there. There’s also been so many revelations about ineligible voters on voting rolls in too many states, with some having been dead for a long time and others not being US citizens.
This and many other stories leading up to the mid-term elections in November make what’s happening here in New Hampshire look tame by comparison.
We’re seeing and hearing lots of TV and radio ads aimed mostly as the Congressional races with New Hampshire’s two House District races slowly warming up and the race for the open US Senate seat starting to gain a little traction. On the GOP side we have two former US Senators running against each other – John E. Sununu and Scott Brown. Sununu served in the House for six years starting in 1997 and for one term in the US Senate after that. Scott Brown was US Senator from Massachusetts, filling the seat left vacant after the death of Ted Kennedy in 2009 after a special election. The different histories of these two men certainly make for interesting reading. At this point I think either one would serve my home state well. One of them will likely be running against present House Representative Chris Pappas (D-NH1) who is seen to be the Democrat favorite.
The race for the two House Districts is where the fun is going to be as there are a lot of people from both parties running. Only one incumbent - Maggie Goodlander (D-NH2) - is running to retain her seat. But that doesn’t mean she won’t be facing challengers. With the First District seat open there are plenty of candidates from both parties working to run in November. It is here that we’re seeing a lot of ads that seem to split time touting the qualifications of a candidate or castigating an opposing candidate for “This, That, and the Other Thing.” Seeing as the state primaries are taking place the day after Labor Day I expect the ad intensity and numbers to climb precipitously over the next three weeks. They will also be out glad-handing the voters and giving interviews and showing up at town events (like my town’s Old Home Day). I expect there will also be a few more debates.
Even with that coming up, I expect the rhetoric will really crank up once we get past the primaries and the silly season will go from being tame (and a bit bland) to full on Thunderdome-like campaigning and attack ads and “Ain’t I Frickin’ Great?” ads and so on. If nothing else, the debates will certainly be interesting.
I have no doubt it will be much the same in other states, be it for local races or Congressional or gubernatorial races.
And so it goes.
