Late in his speech at a lucrative fundraiser for his 2018 re-election campaign, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu took aim at New Hampshire’s all Democratic congressional delegation.
Pushing back against criticism of his 10 trips to Washington, D.C. to meet with Trump administration officials, Sununu said he often travels to the nation’s capital because “no one from New Hampshire in Washington is doing their damn job.”
The state’s first GOP governor in a dozen years is known at political events to target the four Democrats who represent New Hampshire in Congress. But his comments at a recent fundraising dinner in Manchester headlined by Vice President Mike Pence were particularly biting.
And they came as Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, and U.S. Reps. Carol Shea-Porter and Annie Kuster voted in favor of a massive government spending bill that included a $3.3 billion infusion of new federal funding to address the heroin and opioid epidemic. New Hampshire’s congressional delegation teamed up with lawmakers from other states hit hard by the drug crisis to make sure increased spending on opioids was included in the bill to keep the federal government running through the end of September.
Sununu’s criticism of the delegation also came one day after he twice highlighted to reporters that his administration’s achievements were accomplished “in a very bipartisan, positive manner.”
His comments beg the question of whether the all-blue delegation from a purple state – which has opposed much of President Donald Trump’s agenda – is working across party lines.
Shaheen, who as the state’s governor for six years beginning in 1997 worked with an all-Republican congressional delegation, told the Monitor that, “it’s my job to represent the entire state and work across the aisle to break the logjam in Washington.”
“Bipartisanship has been key to our recent progress in providing additional funding for opioid response efforts, providing funding for the PFC water study, and providing financial help to our fishermen, as well as many other issues that are important to New Hampshire,” she added.
Data from GovTrack.us – a non-partisan organization that tracks voting records and other information about members of Congress – seems to back her up.
During last year’s session, Shaheen was only the 33rd most liberal senator in the 100-member chamber, which includes 51 Republicans, 47 Democrats, and two independents that caucus with the Democrats.
In the past couple of months, Shaheen teamed up with conservative Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa to lead the charge for a congressional investigation of the U.S. Olympic Committee over the sexual abuse of young female athletes. And she worked closely with her friend, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, as part of the Common Sense Coalition that helped reach a bipartisan compromise to end the recent government shutdown and find agreement on the government funding bill.
Hassan was also part of the bipartisan coalition, and – along with Shaheen – cosponsored a bipartisan bill to advance pediatric cancer research and treatments that last week was passed by the Senate.
According to the GovTrack.us data, Hassan was the 16th most liberal member of the chamber.
In the House of Representatives, Kuster – who represents the state’s Second District – is ranked as one of the more moderate of the 197 Democrats in the chamber. The three-term Kuster is co-founder and co-chairwoman of the Bipartisan Heroin Task Force. The ranking Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations is known to reach across the aisle when it comes to improving conditions at the VA.
In the First District, the retiring four-term Shea-Porter is ranked as the 45th most liberal member of the chamber.
So was Sununu’s criticism valid?
The Monitor asked two non-partisan political scientists.
“I’m not sure it’s a fair assessment, on the merits, anymore than a similar charge about Sununu would be,” Saint Anselm College politics professor Christopher Galdieri said. “The opioid funding in the recent budget, for instance, is the sort of thing the congressional delegation would point to as evidence of them doing their jobs.”
Dean Spiliotes, Civic Scholar in the School of Arts and Sciences at Southern New Hampshire University, wondered whether Sununu’s “partisan juices were flowing a bit stronger than usual, given the fundraiser. But it was not his typical calibrated response, and it struck an odd tone for Sununu.”