The campaign for the U.S. Senate between incumbent Republican John Sununu and former Democratic governor Jeanne Shaheen, a rematch of their 2002 contest, pits two of the state's smartest, most effective politicians against each other. But without a little history you might never know it.

Campaign advertising, financed both by the candidates themselves and by outside interest groups, has portrayed Shaheen as a reckless taxer - a cartoon Democrat with little connection to her actual record. Sununu is seen as a clone of President Bush, personally responsible for all the nation's ills. And it's not just the ads. The candidates themselves appear to have developed a sincere dislike for each other. In face-to-face debates, they are peevish, condescending, negative. Tuesday's election can't come soon enough.

Our advice to voters: Turn off your television. Ignore the campaign mailers. Hang up on the robo-calls. Instead, consider the full record, history and philosophy of each candidate.

When you do, we hope you will decide to vote for Shaheen.

Jeanne Shaheen has been on New Hampshire's public stage for decades. As a legislator, she worked hard and sweated the details, earning the respect of both Democrats and Republicans in the state Senate. She led the debate on job creation, education and college affordability.

Her election as governor in 1996 was dramatic: She was the first Democrat to win the corner office in a generation and the state's first elected female chief executive. The historic nature of her ascendance made her seem larger than life. Two of her most high-profile acts - finally signing the Martin Luther King holiday into law and finally wiping the state's 19th-century anti-abortion statutes from the books - were powerful symbols of the change she brought to Concord.

But that early drama belied the true nature of the politician. Shaheen is, at heart, cautious, pragmatic, incrementalist. One of her most important achievements as governor was likely invisible to most voters: populating the agencies of state government with smart, forward-thinking, creative bureaucrats who knew how to get things done.

Shaheen picked her battles shrewdly and often with success. She championed an important health insurance program for needy children. She cajoled all but a dozen of holdout communities to create public kindergarten programs, bringing to a close a shameful chapter in the state's past. Unlike Gov. John Lynch, she had to do regular battle with Republican majorities intent on thwarting her wishes - and she was steady in the face of adversity.

In the race for the U.S. Senate, we are confident that her priorities are correct: making health care more accessible and affordable, ending the war, promoting alternative energy, fixing the worst excesses of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Significantly, Shaheen is pro-choice and sees a clear right to privacy in the Constitution; her opponent opposes abortion. That's not simply a philosophical distinction. The next president will likely get to nominate between one and three Supreme Court justices. We trust Shaheen to endorse those who would help steer a more moderate course.

Shaheen backs expanded federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research - a top agenda item in reversing what Democrats have rightly come to call the Bush administration's war on science. Sununu has opposed this position.

On health care, neither candidate is calling for dramatic change, but Shaheen's support for a series of small measures makes good sense: increasing access to preventive care, expanding the children's insurance program, allowing the importation of drugs from Canada, helping small businesses offer insurance to their workers.

To his credit, Sununu has dived into the debate over entitlement reform, although his prescription - a plan to partially privatize Social Security - remains problematic. If young workers divert part of their money to individual accounts - money that would otherwise fill the Social Security fund - how will we pay full benefits for current retirees? It's an expensive question, so far without a good answer.

Against a lesser opponent, our vote might have gone to Sununu. He has been an active, engaged senator and has sometimes taken stands that put him at odds with his party.

Sununu has stood up for civil rights: opposing both the Real ID program from the get-go and a federal marriage amendment. He was the first Republican senator to call for President Bush to fire former attorney general Alberto Gonzales. He, not Shaheen, had the right position in supporting the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. In this campaign, his views have been more sharply defined than his rival's.

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