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June 07, 2006
Win some, lose some
As state politics heads for its summer snooze, there are both good tidings and bad about what we’ll wake up to come fall.
The bad news first: It’s disheartening that Doug Scamman is stepping down as speaker of the New Hampshire House. Scamman wasn’t having as much fun in the job as he used to. That’s because he’s a throwback to a more bipartisan and compromising way of creating state law. Scamman didn’t say so, but a large bloc of Republican reps is rigid in its thinking, unyielding in its stances and unpleasant for a moderate Republican speaker to work with.
Scamman's departure does not bode well. His leadership helped make the House a progressive foil to the more conservative state Senate.
But events concerning the Senate’s possible future softened the blow of Scamman’s announcement.
The coverage of last weekend’s state Democratic Party convention focused mainly on the presidential candidates who spoke there. I found this worrisome. The downside to the primary is that national candidate star power can blot out more vital matters.
Specifically, I worried that when filing for the fall elections opened today, the Democrats would still be without strong candidates in many districts.
False worry. As you can read on tomorrow's Monitor front page, several good ones have signed up already, meaning that voters will have choices for a change. And perhaps the 2007-08 Senate will moderate as a result, with Democrats cutting into the lopsided GOP majority.
Posted by Mike Pride at June 7, 2006 07:00 PM
Comments
There is an ongoing debate at the Wikipedia page for the Concord Monitor concerning the fact that the Monitor will not print Gay and Lesbian personal ads in "THe Friendship Network"
Care to coment? See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord_Monitor
Posted by: Dolceedallineare at July 4, 2006 06:10 PM