Shea-Porter Votes ‘Present’ on Wilson Sanction

Congressional Democrats voted to sanction South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson on Tuesday but they did so without the support of New Hampshire’s two Democratic House members.

The vote stands as an official rebuke against the Republican lawmaker for calling President Barack Obama a liar during a joint session of Congress last week.

Rep. Paul Hodes (NH-02) voted against the measure saying in a statement, “the focus on his outburst has served as a distraction to the larger goal of providing affordable, portable, high quality health care to every family.”

Rep. Shea-Porter (NH-01) voted ‘present,” which is to say she neither supported nor opposed the measure.

“The Congresswoman voted present to recognize that the Congressman did apologize to the President,” Rep. Shea-Porter’s spokesperson Jamie Radice told NowHampshire.com

Hodes’ ‘no’ vote and Shea-Porter’s ‘present’ vote are seen as climb downs from the white hot rhetoric of the August recess period during which Hodes called opponents to health reform “the flat earth society” and Shea-Porter called them “teabaggers,” a derogatory term that connotes a non-traditional sexual position.

Just this weekend, Shea-Porter criticized Wilson at a Strafford County Democratic picnic saying Republicans “were behaving in a way we never behave.” Shea-Porter was once forcibly removed from a speech by President George W. Bush and regularly disrupted then-incumbent Jeb Bradley’s town hall meetings while she was a candidate for Congress.