New Hampshire

Grist talks to New Hampshire Senate candidate Jeanne Shaheen

“We can’t depend just on oil,” says Democratic Senate candidate Jeanne Shaheen. “I think people want choices. They understand that we’ve got to address this issue and they want some leadership to get it done.” Shaheen is taking a second shot at beating New Hampshire’s first-term Sen. John Sununu, a Republican with a mediocre record […]

Talking with voters in Nashua about the environment and the election

This is part of a series of dispatches from Melinda Henneberger, who's talking to voters around the U.S. about their views on the environment and the election.

Nashua, N.H. -- Suziana Moriera does not see soaring gas prices as all bad: "It's still not hurting enough. People complain, but it's got to hurt more" before Americans will start driving appreciably less. It's got to hurt more, she thinks, before her hometown of Nashua will ever come up with public transportation that doesn't involve "waiting an hour for a bus that still doesn't take you where you need to go."

That's why Moriera, a music teacher and registered independent whose daughter makes her living as an environmental consultant, puts green issues near the very top on the list of concerns she'll be voting on in November -- right below getting the troops out of Iraq and putting the economy back on track after what she sees as the disaster of the Bush years. ("I've had enough of the Republicans!") Yet she may well vote for John McCain for president, "even though he is in the Bush camp, and they have been terrible on the environment." Why? Essentially, because she suspects Barack Obama of being a little bit too nice a guy, a possible pushover.

Though a lot of us do seem to want a president we'd enjoy grilling out with, the less-discussed fine print on the wish list is that we want him to be the kind of good-bud neighbor who is also capable of acting like a jerk sometimes -- the dad next door who'd have no problem yelling at the kids in the party house to turn the music down, and no problem calling the cops.

"He's very much a gentleman," Moriera says of Obama -- and not at all responsible for what she saw as the sexist treatment of her first-choice candidate, Hillary Clinton. But could he be too gentlemanly? She wonders: "Does he have the backbone to deal with the huge problems he'll have to face?" So far, he has just not filled her with confidence on that score. "Obama has been flip-flopping so much, I'm not sure about him. On eavesdropping, I was shocked," she says, referring to his recent Senate vote in support of the new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Obama had promised he would help filibuster any FISA bill that gave immunity to telecommunications companies that had cooperated with the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. But then, he went ahead and voted for just such a bill. "And if he did that," Moriera reasons, "he could do other things." Come November, she may reluctantly conclude that what she sees as McCain's strength is more important than his specific stands, many of which she disagrees with: "I'll have to see."

McCain and Clinton win

I go get my hair cut and look what happens. McCain has won the NH primary with 37 percent to Romney’s 30 percent. That’s roughly what was expected. The huge news, though, is that Clinton is ahead, with 39 percent to Obama’s 36 percent. If Clinton pulls out a win in NH it’s going to […]

Turnout in NH

High.

New Hampshire prediction, guaranteed accurate to the tenth decimal

Obama by 8, McCain by 3. Clinton in second, Edwards in third. Romney in second, Huckabee in third.

Clinton lobbied for tire burning near Granite State

With the New Hampshire primaries approaching, I thought I'd share this article about how Hillary Clinton's political style has directly affected New Hampshire voters in a way that might shed light on the kind of president she would be. The article was co-written with Friends of the Earth Action president Brent Blackwelder.

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New Hampshire has for decades struggled to keep its air clean. But during 2005 and 2006, Hillary Clinton's ambitions collided with New Hampshire's air quality, putting thousands of Granite Staters, and particularly children, directly in the line of a deadly cloud of toxic pollution.

At the time, of course, Clinton was hotly engaged in a campaign to increase her margin of victory in her bid for reelection in her New York Senate race. Her triumph was never in question: she faced only token Republican opposition in a heavily Democratic state. But she was desperate to prove that she could win with a big margin in more conservative areas of upstate New York so she could prove to Democrats that she would be viable in similar conservative areas around the country during her presidential bid.

That understandable political aspiration came head to head with New Hampshire children's health in 2005, when the International Paper logging company unveiled a proposal to burn tires at its Ticonderoga paper mill in upstate New York on the border with Vermont. Burning tires to power its operations would save IP money on its electricity bills, but it came with a heavy price.

Marching for climate action in the Granite State

Remember all that hubbub about Step it Up? Though we haven’t heard much about it since the successful event back in April, in many communities across America, the momentum continues. As part of the fallout, groups are working to “reenergize” communities with more actions and events, especially in states that will play a big role […]

EPA attempts to defuse MTBE issue in New Hampshire

Folks who paid close attention to the speeches of New Hampshire primary victor John Kerry in recent weeks would have noticed an emphasis on MTBE — a gasoline additive that makes fuel burn more efficiently and cleanly, but is suspected to be carcinogenic* and widely known to contaminate groundwater. To outsiders, this may have seemed […]

On With the No-Show

Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) may have said it best at a rally Sunday afternoon in the postcard-perfect New Hampshire town of Peterborough. Asked what he planned to do to improve the environment, McCain mused briefly about convening a panel of scientists to figure out once and for all whether global warming exists, and then […]