When Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut came to deliver a speech in Concord last week, it could have been a scene from any recent decade in New Hampshire politics: a possible presidential hopeful, talking to a small roomful of local activists about the issues of the day.

But on this day — just hours after the longest government shutdown in U.S. history had ended, it didn’t take long before talk turned to what a member of the crowd called the “donkey in the room”: the decision by the state’s two Democratic senators — Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan — to join Republicans in passing the bill to reopen the government.

Murphy, like most Senate Democrats, opposed that plan, but on this day in Concord, he refrained from criticizing colleagues who backed it.

“ We should not hide from

See Full Page