WASHINGTON, November 5 (RIA Novosti) – Democrat Jeanne Shaheen was able to overcome Republican challenger Scott Brown for the New Hampshire Senate seat by focusing on local economic issues as opposed to Brown who tried to center the campaign on national issues such as foreign policy, analysts told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
“[Senator] Shaheen’s victory shows that the race was more localized. It was about keeping manufacturing on US shores. There is a lot of shipping and shipbuilding in New Hampshire – a lot of union jobs. A lot of folks are affected by the outsourcing of jobs to China, India, Europe and Asia,” a political consultant from The Strategy Group, Bill Fuhry, said.
Brown was trying to nationalize the race by focusing on international issues and tried to argue that Shaheen was the proxy for President Obama and his failed foreign policy, Fuhry said. The US is fortunate that Shaheen prevailed, because Brown would have brought a more hawkish foreign policy to the Senate, Fuhry added.
“If Brown won, he would have called for a harsher stance against Islamic State [IS], a nationalist response instead of state by state response to Ebola, and tougher sanctions against Russia,” Fuhry maintained.
Celinda Lake, a leading Democratic political strategist, provided a similar analysis and pointed out that Democrats are doing better than predicted in several states because of this local focus.
“Democrats who ran on economic issues like Braley in Iowa, Shaheen in New Hampshire are doing better than predicted,” Lake said.
Congressional midterm elections are held in the middle of the president's four-year term. The Republicans have a majority in the House of Representatives and looking to take control of the Senate, where the Democrats currently have a 55- 45 majority.
