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Jeanne Shaheen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Jeanne Shaheen | |
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| In office January 9, 1997 – January 9, 2003 |
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| Preceded by | Steve Merrill |
| Succeeded by | Craig Benson |
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| Born | January 28, 1947 St. Charles, Missouri |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse | Bill Shaheen |
| Profession | Politician |
Jeanne Shaheen (born January 28, 1947) was the first woman to be elected governor of the U.S. state of New Hampshire. She has most recently served as Director of the Harvard Institute of Politics, before resigning to run for the United States Senate in the 2008 elections.
Shaheen was born Jeanne Bowers in Saint Charles, Missouri and received a bachelor's degree in English from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania and a master's degree from the University of Mississippi. She taught high school in Mississippi and moved to New Hampshire in 1973, where she taught school and owned a small business. A Democrat, she worked on several campaigns before running for office in 1990, when she was elected to the state Senate. In 1996, 1998, and 2000 she was elected governor of New Hampshire.
In April 2005, Shaheen was named director of Harvard's Institute of Politics, succeeding former U.S. Representative (and current MPAA head) Dan Glickman.
Shaheen and her husband Bill, a prominent New Hampshire lawyer and co-founder of the Shaheen & Gordon Law Firm, have three children.
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Shaheen's original decision to run for NH Governor came after the retirement of Republican Governor Steve Merrill. Her opponent in 1996 was Ovide P. Lamontagne, then chairman of the State Board of Education. Shaheen ran as a moderate. Her campaign centered on the problems of NH's schools and her pledge to expand kindergartens so that more children statewide could benefit from them. She defeated Lamontagne by 57 to 40 percent. [1]
In 1996, Shaheen was the first woman elected governor of New Hampshire. In 1998, she was overwhelmingly re-elected by a margin of 66 to 31 percent. [2]
In both 1996 and 1998, Shaheen pledged to veto any new broad-based taxes for NH, which taxes neither sales nor its residents' earned income. A school-funding crisis, however, challenged the state's reliance on property taxes. [3]
Running for a third term in 2000, Shaheen refused to renew that no-new-taxes pledge, becoming the first NH governor in 38 years to win election without making that pledge. Shaheen's preferred solution to the school-funding problem was not a broad-based tax but legalized video-gambling at state racetracks--a solution repeatedly rejected by the NH legislature. [4]
Shaheen's 2000 opponent, former U.S. Sen. Gordon Humphrey, also criticized Shaheen's record of support for abortion rights and civil rights for gay people.
During the 2000 Democratic presidential primary in NH, Governor Shaheen expressed support for Al Gore and her husband Bill Shaheen served as Gore's NH campaign manager. Gore won a narrow but critical victory in the NH primary over Bill Bradley. [5]
Gore named Jeanne Shaheen to his short list of potential vice presidential nominees, which also included Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, then-North Carolina Senator John Edwards, then-House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. [6] Shaheen quickly acknowledged that, while appreciative of the speculation, she would not be a candidate for vice president, and she urged the Gore campaign to withdraw her name from consideration. Gore went on to tap Lieberman as his running mate.
She served three two-year terms before stepping down to run for the U.S. Senate in 2002 when she was defeated by Republican John E. Sununu, by a 47% to 51% margin. In June 2004, former Republican consultant Allen Raymond pled guilty to jamming Democratic Party lines set up to get New Hampshire Democrats to the polls in 2002, an action that some (most notably former Senator Bob Smith, whom Sununu had defeated in the Republican primary [7]) believe may have contributed to Shaheen's narrow loss. A judge sentenced Raymond to five months in jail in February 2005. Chuck McGee, the former state GOP executive director, was sentenced to seven months for his role.
Raymond alleged that James Tobin, Northeast field director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, masterminded the plot. In December 2005, Tobin was convicted of two federal felonies arising from the phone-jamming and sentenced to ten months in prison. Tobin's lawyers are appealing the verdict.
After a short time teaching at Harvard University (and a fellowship in the Institute of Politics with former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift), she was named national chairperson of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign in September 2003. Kerry's campaign, stagnant at that point, won the nomination handily and Shaheen received much of the credit.
In late 2006, analysts looking ahead to the 2008 U.S. Senate races pointed to John E. Sununu's seat in New Hampshire as likely a competitive contest. Democratic Governor of New Hampshire John Lynch, who was re-elected with 74% of the vote in 2006, had ruled himself out of running against Sununu, leaving some to begin looking to Shaheen as the obvious candidate. On March 18th, the Nashua Telegraph announced that several Democratic polls showed Shaheen the best candidate to defeat Sununu, who trailed the former Governor in several polls, one putting Shaheen ahead of Sununu by nearly 30 points (57-29). [8]
In early July 2007 through UNH, CNN and WMUR put out a poll regarding the New Hampshire 2008 Senate race. The poll showed that Gov. Shaheen would beat Sen. Sununu in a race (54-38). Other Democratic candidates did not have this type of lead, which is left many to believe Gov. Shaheen would be the right choice to beat Sen. Sununu in 2008.
In April 2007, Shaheen met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Chuck Schumer (D-New York) about a possible US Senate run. The Senators both said that she would have strong support from the DSCC if she ran. The move came as a sign that Shaheen was more than likely to seek a rematch against Sununu. Two months later, in June 2007, the Rothenburg Political Report stated that Shaheen was then "likely to run" for the US Senate. In addition, at the New Hampshire Democratic Convention, former New Hampshire Democratic Chairwoman Kathy Sullivan announced that she was forming a draft movement of several legislators, activists, and party organizers to convince Shaheen to run for the US Senate. Some of the announced candidates said that they would yield to Shaheen if she announced plans to run, while Shaheen's husband, Bill, said that Shaheen would make an announcement in September regarding her plans.
In 2004 and 2006 New Hampshire moved towards the Democrats at the national and local level. In 2004 it was the only one of George W. Bush's 2000 states that did not vote for him again, and in 2006 the Democrats captured the State Legislature for the first time since 1911.
On September 14, 2007, Shaheen announced that she intended to run for the Senate against Sununu.[9]. On September 15, 2007, she formally launched her US Senate bid at her home in Madbury, New Hampshire. Six days later, on September 21, Emily's List endorsed her campaign.
In 2007, with the Iraq War increasingly unpopular in NH and elsewhere, Shaheen's support in 2002 for Iraq "regime change" has become controversial. [10]
Shaheen said that she came to supporting the policy of removing Saddam Hussien from power after meeting with former Clinton-administration National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. According to the Concord Monitor and Associated Press, the issue was a minor one in the race.
Shaheen later challenged George W. Bush's handling of the situation in Iraq. In September, 2004 she said
“George Bush has taken us in the wrong direction. He misled us into war in Iraq. That war has not made us safer and more secure at home… You know, we have not stabilized Afghanistan. We have not stabilized Iraq. There is no plan to win the peace.”
On July 28th 2004, while serving as Chair of the Kerry-Edwards Campaign, Gov. Shaheen answered questions about her prior support of the Iraq war during an interview on [11]C-SPAN.
"George Bush said that the reason we needed to go to war in Iraq, the reason we needed to remove Saddam Hussein was because he had weapons of mass destruction, weapons that could be used against this country, because he had ties to al Qaeda and the terrorists who were responsible for the Sept 11 tragedy. What we know now and what George Bush and Dick Cheney have admitted is that in fact Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction….The links to al Qaeda that the president talked about were not there….While I appreciate that there was an effort to make people in this county think that [there was a connection]…the fact is that’s not true."
When Shaheen first ran for Governor of NH in 1996, she took the traditional NH "pledge" to veto any proposal for broad based taxes, as had every successful candidate for NH Governor over the past 30 years. In 1998, she renewed that pledge.
In 2000, during her third campaign for Governor, Shaheen told voters that she could no longer make that promise due to a crisis in school funding, "whatever the political cost." [12]
This proposal during her third term has been described by Shaheen critics as breaking the tax pledge she made in 1996. [13]
| Preceded by Stephen Merrill |
Governor of New Hampshire 1997–2003 |
Succeeded by Craig Benson |
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| Weare • Langdon • Sullivan • Langdon • Sullivan • J. Bartlett • Gilman • Langdon • J. Smith • Langdon • Plumer • Gilman • Plumer • S. Bell • Woodbury • Morril • Pierce • J. Bell • Pierce • Harvey • Dinsmoor • Badger • Hill • Page • Hubbard • Steele • Colby • Williams • Dinsmoor Jr. • Martin • Baker • Metcalf • Haile • Goodwin • Berry • Gilmore • Smyth • Harriman • Stearns • Weston • Straw • Weston • Cheney • Prescott • Head • C. Bell • Hale • Currier • Sawyer • Goodell • Tuttle • J. B. Smith • Busiel • Ramsdell • Rollins • Jordan • Bachelder • McLane • Floyd • Quinby • Bass • Felker • R. Spaulding • Keyes • J. H. Bartlett • A. Brown • F. Brown • Winant • H. Spaulding • Tobey • Winant • Bridges • Murphy • Blood • Dale • Adams • H. Gregg • Dwinell • Powell • King • Peterson • Thomson • Gallen • Roy • Sununu • J. Gregg • Merrill • Shaheen • Benson • Lynch |