The Toughest Fight

DEMOCRATS have a chance this fall to build a majority in the Senate that is effectively filibuster-proof. To do it, they will have to defeat John Sununu, a Republican senator from New Hampshire. Pollster.com’s average of polls has Sununu eleven points below his opponent, former governor Jeanne Shaheen. No other Republican incumbent is in worse shape: not Ted Stevens of Alaska, who is mired in scandal; not Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who was appointed to the Senate a few months ago to fill a vacancy. If Democrats cannot beat Sununu, they are unlikely to achieve their goal.

The senator has been in tight spots before. In 1996, he won his party’s nomination for a House seat by getting 28 percent of the vote in a field of eight candidates. He was outspent by the Democratic candidate. In 2002, he launched a primary campaign against a sitting Republican senator, the erratic Bob Smith. He was again outspent, and some of the polls were close, but Sununu won. He then faced Shaheen. She outspent him, too, but he beat her by four points. Shaheen argues that it was the national climate a year after 9/11 that beat her; their rematch this year takes place under very different political circumstances.

About the Author

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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DEMOCRATS have a chance this fall to build a majority in the Senate that is effectively filibuster-proof. To do it, they will have to defeat John Sununu, a Republican senator from New Hampshire. Pollster.com’s average of polls has Sununu eleven points below his opponent, former governor Jeanne Shaheen. No other Republican incumbent is in worse shape: not Ted Stevens of Alaska, who is mired in scandal; not Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who was appointed to the Senate a few months ago to fill a vacancy. If Democrats cannot beat Sununu, they are unlikely to achieve their goal.

The senator has been in tight spots before. In 1996, he won his party’s nomination for a House seat by getting 28 percent of the vote in a field of eight candidates. He was outspent by the Democratic candidate. In 2002, he launched a primary campaign against a sitting Republican senator, the erratic Bob Smith. He was again outspent, and some of the polls were close, but Sununu won. He then faced Shaheen. She outspent him, too, but he beat her by four points. Shaheen argues that it was the national climate a year after 9/11 that beat her; their rematch this year takes place under very different political circumstances.