Shaheen bothered me for almost the opposite reason. Being the daughter of Jeanne Shaheen, a former governor and three-term senator, is not exactly the political equivalent of starting in the mailroom. My suspicion was that Stefany Shaheen had inherited a candidacy.
Then I started digging, and some things changed.
Maura Sullivan’s military record is real and admirable. She served more than five years as a Marine officer and deployed to Fallujah during the Iraq War. Her Harvard degrees and government service are real too.
But some of the campaign language encourages a grander impression than the actual job descriptions support.
Her campaign says she helped lead the nation’s largest integrated health-care system while serving at Veterans Affairs. Her actual title was Assistant Secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs — a senior position involving communications, public affairs and relationships with other levels of government. That put her near the top of the department, but it did not put her in charge of VA hospitals or medical operations.
Her next major job, running public affairs for the Pentagon, really was senior, though she held it for only a few months before moving to another Navy Department position. Marine officer, Harvard graduate and senior federal official is already a formidable résumé. I’m not sure it benefits from wording that invites voters to infer responsibilities broader than the actual portfolio.
Then I followed the money and endorsements.
Sullivan has built an impressive fundraising operation and substantial small-donor support, so it would be unfair to portray her as a corporate-PAC creation. But she also has a powerful national network around her: veterans organizations, national-security Democrats, Obama-era connections and pro-Israel Democratic political organizations.
That helped answer a question that had been nagging at me: Who is behind Maura Sullivan?
There isn’t some sinister puppet master hiding behind a curtain. What there is, quite openly, is a national political network that identified Sullivan as a promising candidate before she had accumulated comparable political roots in New Hampshire.
She moved here in 2017 and almost immediately ran for Congress. Before that race, she reportedly considered running in other congressional districts, and much of her early financial support came from outside New Hampshire. She has now lived here for years, raised a family here and become part of state Democratic politics, so I don’t think “carpetbagger” is a particularly useful description anymore.
But hers still feels more like a candidacy that grew out of a national political and institutional network and then took root in New Hampshire than one that grew from New Hampshire politics itself.
Shaheen turned out to be almost the reverse.
The famous name is every bit the advantage I thought it was. If Stefany Shaheen were Stefany Smith, I doubt former governors, mayors, union leaders and much of the Democratic establishment would have lined up quite so quickly. Jeanne Shaheen spent decades building one of the strongest political networks in the state, and her daughter unquestionably benefits from it.
But I went looking for the hollow space behind the famous name and had trouble finding it.
Shaheen really did co-found a health-care company, Good Measures. It developed patented technology, operated for years and was ultimately acquired by another health-care company. Her diabetes advocacy is even harder to dismiss. Her daughter developed Type 1 diabetes, and Shaheen spent years working on the issue before running for Congress, serving in leadership positions with major diabetes organizations and at Joslin Diabetes Center.
When Shaheen talks about health care, there is some life behind the talking points.
Her Portsmouth political experience is real but shouldn’t be exaggerated.