NH-02: Swett Preparing a Run

Like Punxsutawney Phil yesterday, Katrina Swett emerges:

With U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., ready to announce his candidacy for Judd Gregg’s U.S. Senate seat within a week, veteran Democratic activist Katrina Swett will become a candidate for his 2nd District U.S. House seat, Democratic sources say.

Swett briefly ran for senate last cycle, but dropped out when Jeanne Shaheen got into the race. Afterwards, as Dean says, she made nary a peep for the whole campaign. And as far as I can tell, she didn’t make any donations to Paul Hodes, who currently holds the seat she now seeks. Mind you, at no point was Swett hurting for cash. She raised $1.5 million before bailing in 2007 and still has $900K in the kitty.

I have several other problems with a Swett candidacy, among them the fact that she’s wobbly on reproductive choice. Worse still, she was a national co-chair of Joe Lieberman’s campaign for president in 2004, and she supported him to the end against Ned Lamont in 2006. But I’ll let her own words do the talking:

Swett believes Lieberman lost because of three perceived Democratic “sins”: the sin of supporting the Iraq war and being tough on defense, the sin of being bipartisan and the sin of displaying religious faith. Swett said those traits might make Lieberman undesirable to many Democrats but they could be key for Democrats in winning future national elections.

“Round two in Connecticut is going to be a battle between two Democrats: Joe Lieberman, a centrist Democrat, and Ned Lamont, a pretty-far-left-of-center Democrat,” said Swett. “I’m convinced that Joe Lieberman is the better leader… and I’m also convinced that he’s the better positioned politically for the future of the party that I love.”

That’s not the sort of person I’d like to see fill a blue-leaning open seat. Hopefully some other challengers, undeterred by Swett’s warchest, will emerge. Some possible names include: Jay Buckey, an astronaut and professor of medicine at Dartmouth who also briefly sought the senate nomination in 2007; state Sen. Molly Kelly; Stonyfield Farm CEO Gary Hirshberg; and retired Adm. John Hutson, dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center (who shot down speculation that he might run for this seat two years ago). I’m sure we’ll see how the field shakes out soon enough.

47 thoughts on “NH-02: Swett Preparing a Run”

  1. I mean, seriously.  If DailyKos can contend with her, you think they’d choose NH-02 to rise to the occasion and stop her from being a congresswoman.  Unless of course enough people run to split the blog into factions.

  2. And go Gary Hirshberg! He could hand out organic yogurt on the House floor. How cool would that be?

  3. It sounds like Swett would be a strong general election candidate since she’s moderate.  Ya, I think we can do better too.  But do we have anyone well known who’d have a better shot at holding that seat?

  6. We need more scientists in Congress. An astronaut and professor of medicine is an extremely impressive resume.

  7. The strangest item in Katrina Swett’s resume is a PhD from the University of Southern Denmark.  Husband Dick was the US Ambassador to Denmark although Katrina’s PhD dates to about 6 years after that period.  She must have done the course work while Dick was in Denmark and finished the dissertation later.  Were the courses in Danish?

    Swett is a faculty member at Tufts in suburban Boston.  Her faculty photo makes her look ten years younger than the political photos from the campaign trail.

  9. While NH-02 is considered a bit of a swing seat, the district is taking a cue from neighboring Vermont and is rapidly trending Democratic, even more so than NH-01. Several of its key counties have seen big swings towards Democrats. For example in Grafton County, Gore took 47 percent of the vote in 2000, while Obama carried the county by 63 percent last year. It’s a similiar story in Cheshire and Coos Counties which saw 11 and 13 point swings towards Dems from 2000 to 2008. So I think the district could easily support a progressive Democrat like Hirshberg, who is very well regarded in the region. And as mentioned, Buckey and Kelly would also make excellent candidates.

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