Off the Record

Big Bad John. One of the surprising casualties of Election Tuesday was the defeat of Representative Chuck Douglas (R., N.H.), in one of the most Republican districts in the nation. Well, a surprise to some. Inside the Beltway, fingers are being pointed at Chief of Staff John Sununu, whose wife, Nancy, once said she was thinking of running against Mr. Douglas.

The two men have feuded for a long time, dating back to some rulings Mr. Douglas made while a New Hampshire Supreme Court justice that didn’t sit well with then-Governor Sununu. Complaints in GOP circles are that the governor has been conducting something of a whispering campaign against Mr. Douglas, revolving around his three divorces and suchlike. Indeed, Mr. Douglas’s Democratic opponent, Dick Swett, dropped a direct-mail piece four or five days before the election featuring a prominent quotation from Mrs. Sununu saying: “I have known Chuck Douglas for over 15 years and I’ve never appreciated his values and his morals and that hasn’t changed.” Isn’t this taking bipartisanship a tad too far?

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Big Bad John. One of the surprising casualties of Election Tuesday was the defeat of Representative Chuck Douglas (R., N.H.), in one of the most Republican districts in the nation. Well, a surprise to some. Inside the Beltway, fingers are being pointed at Chief of Staff John Sununu, whose wife, Nancy, once said she was thinking of running against Mr. Douglas.

The two men have feuded for a long time, dating back to some rulings Mr. Douglas made while a New Hampshire Supreme Court justice that didn’t sit well with then-Governor Sununu. Complaints in GOP circles are that the governor has been conducting something of a whispering campaign against Mr. Douglas, revolving around his three divorces and suchlike. Indeed, Mr. Douglas’s Democratic opponent, Dick Swett, dropped a direct-mail piece four or five days before the election featuring a prominent quotation from Mrs. Sununu saying: “I have known Chuck Douglas for over 15 years and I’ve never appreciated his values and his morals and that hasn’t changed.” Isn’t this taking bipartisanship a tad too far?