Smith vs. Sununu: An intra-GOP war in New Hampshire - Rep. John E. Sununu - Sen. Bob Smith

Just wait: If Rep. John E. Sununu defeats two-term conservative incumbent Bob Smith in New Hampshire's Republican senatorial primary on September 10, the national media will prematurely cheer: "New England's rebel state is finally becoming more like its liberal neighbors."

But a Sununu victory would be no triumph for liberalism in New Hampshire, the only East Coast state north of Virginia that Al Gore lost in 2000. Just because Smith has one of the most right-wing voting records in the U.S. Senate doesn't mean Sununu is to his left. In fact, some of the people most eager to force Smith into retirement are conservatives who want the Granite State to retain its rock-ribbed Republican representation.

Why do they want to replace Smith with Sununu? Because Democratic governor Jeanne Shaheen -- running for the Senate -- will be a tough general-election opponent this November. And because Bob Smith has a Gary Bauer problem.

Remember Bauer? The former Family Research Council president ran to the right of George W. Bush on abortion in 2000. But he moved leftward on issues such as Social Security privatization and campaign-finance reform. After Bauer withdrew from the race, he endorsed the least pro- life of all the Republican presidential candidates: John McCain, who objects to overturning Roe v. Wade and who tagged the Christian Coalition as "evil." Bauer has been little heard from on national politics since.

Smith, who like Bauer ran to the right of Bush in the 2000 contest, has suffered a similar nosedive. After verbally eviscerating the GOP in July 1999 for tolerating pro-partial-birth-abortion Republicans such as former New Jersey governor Christie Whitman and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, Smith left the party to run for president as a right-wing independent. Four months later -- having barely registered in national polling -- he ended his bid and returned to the GOP.

His homecoming occurred the week after Rhode Island senator John Chafee's unexpected death opened up the Environment and Public Works Committee chairmanship. Smith's timing was a total coincidence, he told Granite Staters. But after Sen. Trent Lott reinstated Smith's seniority, he took over Chafee's chairmanship and began to position himself as a crowd-pleasing moderate -- perhaps hoping that Granite Staters would forget his embarrassing presidential stunt.

Observers were stunned by Smith's leftward lurch on environmental issues -- opposing Bush's Alaskan oil-drilling proposal and musing about carbon dioxide and global warming. Combine this with the senator's animal-rights stances -- accepting money from the militant head of PETA and even needling prospective Miss New Hampshires about accepting a fur coat as a pageant gift -- and you can see why many conservatives lost heart.

Oh, and now, three years later, Smith is campaigning for reelection, aided by Whitman fundraisers and Giuliani television commercials.

This kind of voter "outreach" hasn't helped Smith any more than it helped Gary Bauer. Most independent polls show him lagging behind Sununu in primary match-ups -- and more importantly, behind liberal Shaheen.

Concerned that Smith was no longer carrying water for the Right -- and instead was taking on water -- a coalition of grassroots and establishment Republicans quietly suggested he exit elective politics gracefully. Take a cabinet position in the Bush administration, they suggested. When Smith resisted, a "Draft Sununu" campaign was started by prominent state conservatives such as former governor Steve Merrill and former representative Chuck Douglas.

Some would never have guessed that a man named after George H. W. Bush's rough-edged chief of staff -- who tried to finesse the first Bush's tax hike -- would be the solution to a conservative's dilemma.

But John Sununu's eldest son (who is said to have inherited his mother's people skills) is both solid on policy and very electable. His image fits well with New Hampshire's growing high-tech population: a 38-year-old suburban husband and father with a degree in engineering and an MBA. Methodical but affable behind wire-framed glasses, Sununu has the kind of personality that promises no surprises or embarrassments. (Smith's blustering presence, on the other hand, suggests that at any moment he might break into a floor speech about the treatment of circus elephants or the need for retirement homes for monkeys. Yes, he has given soliloquies on both topics.)

"When you become that detached from reality, it's time to come back to New Hampshire from Washington," state representative Tony Soltani says of Smith and his quixotic presidential run. Soltani -- known for battling activist judges and partial-birth-abortion advocates in New Hampshire's 400-member state house -- endorsed Sununu in July. Some of his right-leaning colleagues in the legislature, he explains, are sticking with Smith because of their distaste for contentious primaries -- especially those that suck up Republican dollars.