The opening of N.H. Governor and U.S. Senate candidate Jeanne Shaheen's campaign office in Lebanon yesterday brought together a number of prominent New Hampshire Democrats and also gave Shaheen an opportunity to clarify her position on several critical campaign issues, including the environment, the economy and reproductive rights.
Shaheen said that she is concerned that neither of her Republican opponents, incumbent Senator Bob Smith and Representative John Sununu, have strong voting records of defending the environment.
Rather, Sununu has said that such measures as forbidding drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are "extreme," and Smith will sponsor Bush's Clear Skies Initiative, which seeks to loosen, rather than tighten, existing controls on air and water pollution, Shaheen said.
Shaheen also spoke about recent problems with the mismanagement of corporate funds.
"It's not coincidental that corporate fraud and mismanagement are happening," she said. "There needs to be swift, decisive action taken to restore investor confidence."
Specifically, Shaheen called for legislation forbidding analysts from owning the stocks that they analyze and making CEOs sign their own financial statements.
Shaheen also said that she is a firm supporter of "a woman's right to choose" and that she is dismayed by her opponents' unwillingness to support stem-cell research.
Expressing her commitment to education, Shaheen noted that she hopes to expand federal programs for the funding of higher education, such as the Pell Grant program.
Shaheen's Director of Communications, Colin Van Ostern, also cited a program that she has developed as governor to fund kindergarten programs in towns across New Hampshire as an example of her commitment to education.
Throughout her speech, Shaheen underlined the importance of the New Hampshire senate election in a year when the Senate is so evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.
According to Shaheen, the Bush White House recently leaked a list of the Senate seats they thought the Republicans were most likely to lose. New Hampshire and Arkansas headed the list.
She also noted the importance that any senator's single vote might have in deciding whether or not particular judges rise to the Supreme Court bench.
A number of local Democratic politicians present spoke about the importance of developing better means of funding public education in New Hampshire.
Currently, public education in New Hampshire is funded solely through property taxes.
Gubernatorial candidate Mark Fernald described the problems with this approach, as some New Hampshire citizens pay as much as 15 to 20 percent of their income in property taxes. As a result, regardless of how much such people want to improve their local public education systems, they will never support any program that might cause their taxes to be raised.
"The people who are most overtaxed wind up voting no on everything because these people are up to their necks," he said.
As an alternative, Fernald is proposing that an income tax instead be used to fund public schools. He added that his tax proposal is designed so that middle-class families would pay less in income tax than they currently do in property tax.
New Hampshire State Senator Clifton Below '78 voiced similar concerns about finding equitable and sustainable ways to pay for public education.
