Former New Hampshire governor Jeanne Shaheen is weighing a run for U.S. Senate, her husband said last night.

"She's thinking about it," Bill Shaheen told the Monitor at a Democratic fundraiser last night in Manchester. "She hasn't ruled it out."

Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat who served three terms as governor, previously ran for U.S. Senate in 2002, when she lost to then-U.S. Rep. John Sununu. Sununu is up for re-election in 2008.

Shaheen, 59, currently serves as director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Prior to becoming director of the institute, Shaheen was national chairwoman of the Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign in 2004.

Shaheen's nonpartisan post at Harvard kept her from attending last night's Democratic event in Manchester, a post-election celebration that drew 1,600 people to see Sen. Barack Obama, a potential 2008 presidential candidate.

Bill Shaheen, a lawyer and longtime Democratic activist, said his wife hasn't let him know when she'll make a decision regarding the Senate race - or what she'll decide.

"She won't even tell me that because she knows I'll tell you," said Bill Shaheen, who served as state chairman of John Kerry's 2004 presidential-primary campaign.

In 2002, Shaheen earned 46.4 percent of the vote to Sununu's 50.8 percent. (Third-party candidates claimed 2.8 percent.) The election climate in the state has grown considerably more favorable for Democrats since then, prompting early speculation about who will challenge Sununu.

Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat who won a second term last month with 74 percent of the vote, said after the election that he was not interested in running for U.S. Senate in 2008.

Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand is also rumored to be considering a run. Marchand, a 32-year-old Manchester native, met with Obama yesterday morning at the Sheraton Harborside Hotel in Portsmouth, according The Boston Globe.

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By ERIC MOSKOWITZ

Monitor staff