Cynthia Jeanne Shaheen (/ˈdʒiːn ʃəˈhiːn/ JEEN shə-HEEN; née Bowers, born January 28, 1947) is an American politician and former educator serving since 2009 as the senior United States senator from New Hampshire.
She served as director of the Harvard Institute of Politics before resigning to run for the U.S. Senate again in the 2008 election, defeating Sununu in a rematch.
[7] In April 2005, Shaheen was named director of Harvard's Institute of Politics,[8] succeeding former U.S. Representative and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman.
According to the New York Observer, the Shaheens were critical in helping Gore win a narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary over Bill Bradley.
[22] After a short time teaching at Harvard University (and a fellowship in the Institute of Politics with former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift), Shaheen was named national chairperson of John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign in September 2003.
At that time, early Republican advertisements slammed her support for putting a sales tax on the ballot or faulted her for failing schools.
[citation needed] Raymond alleged that James Tobin, Northeast field director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, masterminded the plot.
In October 2008, prosecutors filed two new felony indictments charging that Tobin lied to an FBI agent when he was interviewed in 2003 about his role in the phone-jamming case.
[25] These charges were summarily dismissed in 2009 after the federal judge in Maine's District Court found them motivated by "vindictive prosecution".
[26] In early July 2007 through UNH, CNN and WMUR put out a poll[27] showing that Shaheen would beat Sununu in the 2008 Senate race (54–38).
According to the Boston Herald, "Granite State Republicans are calling U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen a hypocrite for asking potential GOP challenger and former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown to keep "outside" money out of the campaign while she fills the Democratic war chest on the West Coast".
[30] In June 2014, WMUR reported that Shaheen had never released her tax returns in her 18 years of public service in New Hampshire.
[32] On election night, even as her party lost control of the Senate, Shaheen won reelection with 51% of the vote to Brown's 48%.
[33] On January 6, 2021, Shaheen was participating in the certification of the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count when Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol.
"[48] On October 11, 2011, Shaheen voted to proceed with a proposed bill that included $446 billion in spending on infrastructure and schools and provided funding for state and local governments, as well as an extension of the payroll tax deduction.
[49] Shaheen used an earmark in a large appropriations bill to restore funding for a federal prison in Berlin, NH, despite a $276 million recommended cut.
[56] Shaheen also proposed legislation giving the president's bipartisan BP Oil Spill Commission subpoena power in its investigation.
[57] She argued that subpoena power was necessary to avoid another such disaster, emphasizing the spill's economic costs to the Gulf Coast region and the economy as a whole.
[59] In March 2019 Shaheen was an original cosponsor of a bipartisan bill intended to mandate that the Environmental Protection Agency declare per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances as hazardous substances that can be addressed with cleanup funds via the EPA Superfund law and require that polluters undertake or pay for remediation within a year of the bill's enaction.
[62] Shaheen said that she came to supporting the policy of removing Saddam Hussein from power after meeting with former Clinton-administration National Security Advisor Sandy Berger.
In a September 2004 televised interview as Kerry presidential campaign chair she said:[63] George [W.] Bush has taken us in the wrong direction.
On July 28, 2004, while serving as Chair of the Kerry-Edwards Campaign, Shaheen answered questions about her prior support of the Iraq war during an interview on C-SPAN.
What we know now and what George Bush and Dick Cheney have admitted is that in fact Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.
[68][better source needed] On March 5, 2021, Shaheen voted against Bernie Sanders's amendment to include a $15/hour minimum wage in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.