Democrats cannot afford to lose New Hampshire if they are to retain control of the Senate. But they might

ONE candidate, Jeanne Shaheen, is the only woman ever to have been elected both a senator and a governor. The other, Scott Brown (pictured), is the only man ever to have been both a senator and a naked centrefold for Cosmopolitan. Politics in New Hampshire is never boring.

To be fair to Mr Brown, the Cosmo shoot was 32 years ago, when he was a hard-up student. Plus, the magazine had just named him “America’s Sexiest Man”, which must have been flattering. Still, the story underlines the contrast between the two rivals. Mr Brown, a Republican, is flashy. Mrs Shaheen, a Democrat, is not.

When Mr Brown was a senator, he represented liberal Massachusetts, not New Hampshire. After Ted Kennedy died in 2009, Mr Brown briefly captured the old lion’s seat by charming discontented voters. He lost to Elizabeth Warren two years later, but earned a reputation as a charismatic moderate. So the Republican establishment practically begged him to move to New Hampshire this year and challenge Mrs Shaheen.

Tall, grey and handsome, he talks fast, thinks fast and interacts easily with voters, even hostile ones. At a town-hall meeting in Stratham on August 26th, he said a cheery hello to the young Democrat whose job is to follow him with a camera, hoping he makes a gaffe. He was polite to a gun-lover who kept pressing him to endorse high-capacity magazines. And he stroked the crowd skilfully. Ann Roemer, a Democrat, says she was so impressed when she first heard him talk that she helped paint his campaign headquarters.

Mrs Shaheen, by contrast, plods through speeches as if they were shopping lists. Not even her admirers call her rousing. Joan Jacobs, a campaign volunteer, settles for “a very solid public servant”. A visiting reporter calls her “all steak and no sizzle”.

This race matters for two reasons. First, it is one that the Democrats must win. If New Hampshire turns Republican, so will the Senate. And though the polls favour Mrs Shaheen, they appear to have tightened. A recent one showed her only two points ahead—a statistical tie (see chart).

Second, it is a race that casts light on national politics. New Hampshire is a swing state. Its people like guns and hate taxes, yet Barack Obama won here twice. Now, however, many are fed up and blame the president—one hears the word “disappointment” a lot. That hurts Mrs Shaheen. Addressing a Rotary Club in Concord on August 26th, she did not mention Mr Obama’s name until a voter asked about him. Mr Brown paints the senator as a rubber stamp for the president. Mrs Shaheen retorts that she voted against the bank bail-out and the closure of more military bases. Mr Brown is expected to win his party’s primary on September 9th. He may not be the most conservative Republican (he is pro-choice, for example), but he has the best chance of beating Mrs Shaheen. Gloomy news helps him. Iraq is in flames. The Islamic State recently beheaded a journalist from New Hampshire, James Foley. Both candidates lament his death, but Mr Brown is more emotive. First, he calls for a moment’s silence for Mr Foley. Several minutes later, so as not to jump too crudely from grief to politics, he lays into Mr Obama for leaving a vacuum in Iraq and failing to get tough with Syria. The president has sent a powerful message to America’s allies (“Don’t trust us”) and its enemies (“Don’t respect or fear us”), says Mr Brown.

When asked a question he would rather not answer, such as which programmes he would cut or which gun curbs he might favour, Mr Brown says he would listen to “people like you” before deciding. “We need actually to get everyone in a room and work together,” he says; mindful that local voters, like other Americans, are furious about Washington gridlock.

In the next breath, Mr Brown bashes Mr Obama. He vows to repeal Obamacare, though he voted for a similar law in Massachusetts when he was a state senator. He courts the elderly, who fear their health benefits will be cut. “I was in three nursing homes today,” he mentions.

On immigration, Mr Brown blames Mr Obama for the flood of unaccompanied children crossing into Texas: they come because the president refuses to enforce the law, he says. This issue inflames Republicans, but will Mr Brown keep talking about it after the primary? New Hampshire borders Canada, not Mexico. Many locals find intrusive border checks irksome.

Mrs Shaheen fights back without raising her voice. Her campaign paints Mr Brown as a stooge of Big Oil and companies that outsource American jobs. Addressing volunteers, she bangs the partisan drum. Have you ever noticed, she asks, that on a car’s gearstick, “D” means forward and “R” means reverse? To cheers, she recites misleading statistics about the pay gap between men and women.

Before mixed audiences, she stresses her empathy for families and students so deep in debt that they delay marriage and kids. And she proposes things Congress can do to help, such as making it easier to refinance student loans. Government’s borrowing costs are low, she observes, so it’s a good time to invest in infrastructure.

Linda Fowler, a politics professor at Dartmouth College, thinks the race will be close but gives Mrs Shaheen the edge. She has much deeper roots: she won three terms as a state senator and three as governor. Her office has answered gazillions of calls from constituents with problems. Many voters feel they owe her something. But Andrew Smith of the University of New Hampshire notes that urging Democrats to go out and vote when the president’s approval rating is so low is “like pushing on a rope”.