YOUR COMMENTS

Having been raised in New England and living in Arizona for the last 20 years, I thought some of you may be interested in a few John McCain facts. Primarily, he'll be extremely fortunate if he carries his own state (assuming our "beloved" Secretary of State Jan Brewer doesn't get carried away with her vow to "do anything she can to see that he gets elected." McCain has totally missed 420 Senate votes (64.1%) during the current Congress. Of those for which he was present, he voted against issues such as railroad safety improvement, family business and farmer protection, closing tax loopholes FISA reviews, striking provisions providing immunity from civil liability to communication service providers, etc. Last year, he also missed a number of significant votes. He also has a habit of voting against the best interests of veterans (that is, when he shows up). Check out his voting record on the Internet if you really want to see what you'll be getting as a President. Those of us in Arizona are already wondering where his head went.
- Kevin Deminie, Scottsdale, AZ

Peter Bearse, Independent candidate for Congress in the First district, certainly has reason to be miffed. Measuring stacks of uncertifiable petitions with a ruler is a quaint way of determining who gets on the ballot, given the work of campaign volunteers to collect the signatures. The entire process needs to be reviewed and reformed.
- Ben Kilgore, Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA

Anyone hear about the new ads that Howard Dean is funding for Obama and planning on releasing this week negatively targeting McCain's age and scars? Talk about a low blow and scummy ad! In my opinion, that is the lowest ad of them all and completely disgusting. Dean and Obama have taken this campaign to a new and horrible level after this ad. So Gov. Richardson, how do you feel about how scummy Obama's ads are now?
- Chris King, Manchester Nh

There has been PLENTY of negative campaigning from BOTH major parties. To say it's only one or the other is simply not so....
- Paul Yankowskas, Londonderry

Sorry, Gov. Richardson, but its flat out untrue to claim that McCain has more negative ads than Obama:

According to Ken Goldstein, an individual who directed a study by the Wisconsin Advertising Project, based at the University of Wisconsin:

"Despite perceptions that Sen. John McCain has spent more time on the attack, Sen. Barack Obama aired more negative advertising last week than did the Arizona Republican, says a study released yesterday.

Seventy-seven percent of the Illinois Democrat's commercials were negative during the week after the Republican National Convention, compared with 56 percent of the spots run by McCain.

You're a nice guy Gov. Richardson, but try getting your facts straight before lying about actual facts that have been released this week and talked about all over the news.
- Ryan Feltner, Manchester, New Hampshire

Rasmussen is a very reliable and independent polling company that has the upmost reputation in the political community, so their results hold much more weight than any other. If you look at Marist polls for other states and the national polls, they are constantly very far off from all other polling data acquired from other companies. Point seen with the NH polls. Rasmussen, UNH, and ARG all gave poll over the last week and a half and all three were in the same ballpark of about +3, +2 for McCain, and then Marist comes in with a high one for Obama. All polls are certainly not equal in validity and Marist isn't the most reliable.
- Kevin Lyons, Raymond, NH