Just think, only five more days...

[jducoeur]

... to the end of the NH senatorial campaign. Yeah, the Presidential race has gotten pretty nasty. But for sheer viciousness and ubiquity (on both sides), nothing I've seen this year has topped the Sununu / Shaheen battle, which has been blanketing the TV airwaves. The desire to lock both of them in a chest and drop it out over the Atlantic is remarkably strong.

Usually, I don't notice the fact that we share a media market with New Hampshire, but this year it has pretty well sucked. The one advantage of living in a virtually one-party state is that MA's internal politics have been all but invisible this election season, save for a few nasty-but-funny Barney Frank ads...

Comments

[lady-guenievre.livejournal.com]

Just be glad you're not in NC. The Dole/Hagen battle is stupidly brutal.

[aishabintjamil.livejournal.com]

Cheer up. At least they're not calling you on the phone too.

[jducoeur]

There is that, yes. It's a little strange living in a largely Republican town (I'd say that McCain lawn signs dominate 3-1), but I can mostly ignore that, especially knowing that there is no chance of the Republicans carrying the state.

And curiously, it makes it much easier for me to figure out the local races. The hardcore Republican signs cluster very tightly, with the (I suspect) unintentional effect of tarring the local candidates with the national Republican brush...

[mr-teem.livejournal.com]

I've been having an enormous amount of fun with callers warning me about Gov. Shaheen, but then I go and ruin it by telling them that if and when I ever move back to NH, I'll be sure to be interested.

Freedoms Watch has been stuffing my mailbox, in CT, with crap, too.

[fitzw.livejournal.com]

Just got back from a trip to Florida. While waiting in the train station for the return trip, we were watching a local channel. Almost every commercial was some kind of political ad, of the form, "'so-and-so', wrong for your town/county/state", accompanied by some explanation of why the opponent should really be in jail, or at least deported.

The only other ad I can remember was some guy dressed up as Uncle Sam, selling cars...

[editrx.livejournal.com]

Oh, we're getting all of your MA "Prop 1" ads here in NH. Without knowing what the heck it is. Just that it would apparently be bad for schools.

The Sununu ads are vile. I'm sick of them.

[jducoeur]

The Sununu ads are vile. I'm sick of them.

I agree, but in this particular case I think the Shaheen ads (or at least, the DNC ads on Shaheen's behalf) are about as bad. Perhaps slightly less smarmy than some of Sununu's, but I don't think I've seen a single *positive* TV ad out of the Shaheen campaign, whereas Sununu has at least made a token effort in that regard.

Looking at this particular race from the outside, it's been unrelentingly unpleasant. Regardless of who I might agree with or support, I've disliked both campaigns intensely.

Oh, we're getting all of your MA "Prop 1" ads here in NH. Without knowing what the heck it is. Just that it would apparently be bad for schools.

Which is probably true. It's the anti-tax-extremist measure: it would entirely eliminate the MA income tax over the next two years.

IMO, they've over-reached badly -- while a slow and gradual reduction might well have gotten a sympathetic hearing, I expect Prop 1 to go down in flames. They make the usual claims that no cuts in services would be required, but by now nobody especially believes that line: it's easy to talk about cutting waste, but actually much easier to pare back real services. So it's a safe assumption that eliminating the income tax would wind up causing big service cuts *and* almost certainly cause property taxes to skyrocket. Even in solidly-Republican Burlington I'm not seeing nearly as much support for Prop 1 as I do for McCain.

But at least those ads have mostly been in the past few weeks. By now, it feels like Shaheen and Sununu have been locked in their cage fight for-bloody-ever...

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

"IMO, they've over-reached badly"

Badly enough that it wakes up my inner conspiracy theorist. Maybe that was the *point*, and they're really just trying to poison the ideas of cutting state taxes for the next few years.