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September 12, 2002, 9:15 a.m. Bob Smith, Long Gone The man conservatives loved left the Senate a few years ago. By Bernadette Malone

ew Hampshire politics turned September 11, 2002, into an even-sadder-than-anticipated occasion in Washington, D.C. On the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, conservatives were forced to digest the news that come January, Senator Bob Smith will not hold a seat in the U.S. Capitol for the first time in 18 years. New Hampshire Republican primary voters handed the once-great leader his walking papers the night before. That Smith brought this unusually harsh fate for an incumbent onto himself made the news even sadder.

Despite his aggressive campaigning, a well-earned reputation for winning close races, and a huge war chest, Smith lost to Rep. John Sununu decisively, 54 percent to 46 percent. Philosophically similar to Smith, Sununu is a bright three-term congressman favored by pollsters to defeat liberal Democratic governor Jeanne Shaheen in November's U.S. Senate race. But Smith — a 6'6 lumberjack-style schoolteacher and one-time revolutionary figure in the culture wars — was a beloved folk hero to the Right.

Even if voters disagreed with his politics, they respected his principled stands and "outsider" appeal. The nation's capital will be worse off without the Mr. Smith who came to Washington as a freshman House member in 1984 and refused to play ball with liberal Democrats and establishment Republicans.

But that Mr. Smith was not the one rejected by voters on Tuesday. That Mr. Smith was last seen sometime in 1998. It was then that he began to worry about upward mobility and political self-preservation, and — as they say — began to "grow in office." To understand how Granite State conservatives could have rejected Smith for the lesser-known Sununu so easily, consider these key turns in his political career:

1976: Smith begins his political life, working for Ronald Reagan against incumbent President Gerald Ford in New Hampshire's Republican presidential primary.
1984: Running on a Reaganesque platform, Smith is elected to Congress from New Hampshire's first congressional district, currently represented Sununu.
1990: Smith is elected to the Senate and earns the admiration and gratitude of national conservatives for working to ban partial-birth abortions, defending gun owners, and shrinking the size of government.
1996: Smith narrowly defeats Dick Swett, 49-46, for a second Senate term.
1999: Despite his unimpressive margin of victory three years before, Smith begins competing for the Republican presidential nomination in the New Hampshire primary. By July, Smith decides to leave the Republican party and run for president as an independent, in large part because the GOP accommodates politicians who support partial-birth abortion — such as New Jersey governor Christie Whitman and New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. Foreshadowing his political "evolution," Smith accepts $250 from militant animal-rights activist Ingrid Newkirk, the president of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). But his presidential campaign attracts little interest, and Smith returns to the Republican party the week after Environment and Public Works Committee chairman John Chafee dies. Smith reclaims his Republican seniority, assumes the chairmanship, and spreads the word that environmentalists will be surprised by his willingness to work with them.
2000: Smith starts using his chairmanship for pork-barrel-spending projects in New Hampshire: "This is giving some of that money back to you....We're bringing your money back to you," he tells New Hampshire residents about the new federal dollars coming into the state.
2001: Smith announces he's opposed to President George W. Bush's plan to expand oil drilling in Alaska, and hints that he favors regulating carbon-dioxide emissions as the Kyoto global-warming treaty demands. After inviting a primary challenge from Sununu, Smith criticizes New Hampshire Rep. Charlie Bass and Sen. Judd Gregg for remaining neutral. They ought to support "Republican incumbents," he says, obviously forgetting his anti-Ford activities in 1976.
2002: Smith campaigns against Sununu with help from — get this — Christie Whitman and Rudy Giuliani. He promises voters his Senate seniority will mean more federal money for New Hampshire, insinuates John Sununu is "disloyal" for primarying a fellow Republican, and suggests Miss New Hampshire return the politically incorrect gift of a fur coat presented to her by pageant sponsors.

When New Hampshire Republicans rejected Bob Smith on Tuesday, they clearly weren't rejecting the Reaganesque conservative they first elected in 1984. Conservatives in Washington will mourn Bob Smith's absence when the 108th Congress begins next year, but they will be mourning a Bob Smith New Hampshire voters hadn't seen in four years.

— Bernadette Malone is a columnist for the (Manchester, N.H.) Union Leader and an editor at Regnery Publishing in Washington, D.C.