WASHINGTON: The presidential race is taking a toll on New Hampshire’s Senate race.
New Hampshire was the battleground state that resurrected John McCain in the Republican primary, but in the general election it now appears to be leaning toward Democratic rival Barack Obama.
The latest poll shows Obama with a 53 percent to 40 percent lead - built largely on the strength of his support among women voters in the state.
This is significant for Obama since these are the same voters who helped put former Democratic primary rival Hillary Clinton over the top in the Jan. 8 primary.
The spoils of a New Hampshire victory are relatively small as the state just has four electoral votes. But in an election where every Electoral College vote may decide America’s future president, these four are hotly contested.
Women’s vote could also provide Democrats a boost down the ballot, where former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen leads Republican Sen. John Sununu 48 percent to 39 percent. The two Senate candidates are likewise tied among men, but Shaheen leads 54 percent to 35 percent among women.
This is the first time two candidates with Arab-American families have squared off in a Senate race. And it’s quite a showdown, as both candidates have strong name recognition and plenty of money, and they are both tough, hard-working campaigners. Rep. John E. Sununu, the Republican nominee, is part Palestinian and part Lebanese. Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic nominee, is the wife of Lebanese-American attorney and political operative Bill Shaheen. Together they have three children.
Even if Shaheen isn’t of Arab descent, her husband doesn’t want anyone to get the idea her lineage is boring. “Her 11th great-grandmother was Pocahontas,” he tells reporters, adding there might be 5,000 Arab-Americans in the whole state.
One can’t help but wonder how New Hampshire ended up with a Sununu dynasty and a governor married to a Shaheen. And how did neighboring Maine produce the country’s most prominent Arab-American politician, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell? And, while we’re at it, why local towns in the state called Canaan, Bethlehem, and Lebanon?
Bill Shaheen knows the community’s history. Three of his grandparents immigrated from Lebanon. Some Lebanese, he says, came here because others had already settled around the area and could help the newcomers adjust to a new country and language.
Shaheen says the Lebanese who settled here wanted to blend in, and adopt American success and American values. He said the Arab-Americans got to their positions by not presenting themselves as Arab-Americans.
And, the established Arab-American community of New Hampshire isn’t Muslim. It’s Catholic. That eliminates the principal distinction by which most Christian Americans view Arabs as foreign.
And this is a big piece in the puzzle as to why all six members of Congress of Arab descent are Christian.
Also, Arab-Americans aren’t identified with one party or the other. The Shaheens and Sununus are in the Senate race because they’re successful families. They don’t advertise their ethnicity.
Most New Hampshire voters didn’t even know Sununu’s father, former Gov. John H. Sununu, was Lebanese. “He told everybody he was from Cuba,” says Brenda Elias, a former mayor and Arab-American activist.
Arab-Americans got to where they are by not standing out as Arab-Americans, and they want to keep it that way. They aren’t eager to give any impression that Shaheen or Sununu might vote differently from other politicians on Middle Eastern issues by virtue of their background.
Sununu has already had meetings with the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, to discuss their differences. Both candidates are hawkish on Iraq and on President Bush’s demands for Palestinian reform.
