New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen is endorsing Chris Pappas in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District Democratic primary, but she appears to agree with Maura Sullivan on the issue of Confederate monuments.
Sullivan, an Obama-administration official who moved to New Hampshire from Virginia last year and immediately entered the race to replace Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, injected the issue of the Confederacy into the primary by stating during an interview that the display of monuments celebrating the legacy of the Confederacy should be “up to state and local communities.” Her comments inspired a backlash from other candidates in the race, most notably front-runner Pappas, who said these monuments to “racism” must be “repudiated.”
Interestingly, Sen. Shaheen’s comments regarding the issue of Confederate memorials seem more in line with Maura Sullivan’s, rather than the candidate she’s backing. In an interview last year just after the deadly incident in Charlottesville, VA, Sen. Shaheen was asked whether Confederate statues and monuments should be removed:
“I personally don’t think we should smash [the statues] to bits, but I do think we should put them in a place where they remain as part of our history, but we’re not glorifying what happened there,” Shaheen said.
“I think there’s a difference between remembering our history and memorializing aspects of our history,” Shaheen said. “[Memorializing] may not be something that we want to continue to celebrate. And certainly, I think we want to remember the Civil War… but I don’t think we want to continue to celebrate those people who really engaged in treasonous activities against the union of the United States by seceding…”
Shaheen has also refused to cosponsor legislation to ban Confederate statues at the U.S. Capitol and has yet to take a position on a House bill to ban Confederate monuments from all federal property.
