When Sen. John McCainspoke at a breakfast held by the New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women last week, one attendee asked if he would support higher gas taxes, a la Europe, to break Americans of their pump habit.

McCain responded that he supports cutting some subsidies to the oil and gas industry and removing the tariff on imported ethanol. Then he answered the question: He doesn't support higher gas taxes, because the U.S. geography and population density require Americans to use more fuel than their European counterparts. Higher taxes would hurt working families, he said.

The question came from Seacoast resident Mary Lou Wollmar. The man sitting next to her at the time? GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Coburn, who has called repeatedly for the state's gas tax to be relaxed as a temporary reprieve for consumers.

Gov. John Lynch does not support lifting the state's 18.3-cent gas tax. The state uses the tax, the lowest in New England, to pay for highway projects.

Coburn said afterward that he didn't know Wollmar. He also said that while he supports lowering the gas tax now, he would favor raising it in the future: "Raising gas taxes should be a last recourse, but I think a better recourse is sort of a burst of energy and economic development, and then transfer money into the highway fund. But if we can't do it, we should raise the tax to discourage people from burning so much gas. That's not a good solid Republican position, but it's a pragmatic position."

Elaborating, Coburn said he wanted to lower the gas tax now to ease the pain at the pump this summer. In the long run, he hopes to develop a "comprehensive energy plan" that might lower the wholesale price of gas. If that happened, a higher gas tax could be imposed without making gas more expensive at the pump, he said.

Straight talk?

McCain said he prizes New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary status and foresees no challenges to the state on the Republican side, despite potential Democratic movements.

McCain said he was more worried about front-loading, the bunching of other primaries after New Hampshire as states continue to creep closer to the front of the process in an attempt to gain influence.

Conventional wisdom says front-loading favors the winner of the New Hampshire primary because it leaves less time for campaigning elsewhere afterward. McCain cited the 1984 Democratic calendar, when Walter Mondale had time after New Hampshire to come back and beat Gary Hart, as an example of the value of a spread-out cycle.

"What bothers me is the compression of the primaries," McCain said. "That doesn't give people an adequate chance to examine the politicians and the candidates."

Still, McCain won in New Hampshire in 2000, and George W. Bushcame back to win the Republican presidential nomination.

We asked McCain if a truly front-loaded system would have benefited him that year. "Ummm, no," he said, pondering it. "Because President Bush had the money and the establishment to go in all of those states that were in Super Tuesday. I mean, all of them.

"We had the assets to go into only a very few of them. So we would've profited, I think, by an extended primary process. But in a little 'Straight Talk': I think he'd have beaten me anyway."

Table for two

House Speaker Doug Scamman may celebrate the end of the 2006 session with brunch at Richard's Bistro in Manchester.

It's not quite Judd Gregg hitting the lottery, but Scamman won a gift certificate for brunch in a raffle at the McCain breakfast.

Expect him to take his wife, fellow Rep. StellaScamman. "I can't afford not to," he said.

A Sununu visit

Sen. John Sununu will work from New Hampshire this week, including a stop in Concord.

The senator, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations and Terrorism, will hold a field hearing for the subcommittee at New Hampshire Technical Institute. The hearing, on the regional impact of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, is open to the public and will be held Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. in the school's Sweeney Hall auditorium. (next page »)