Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta Decides not to Run for Governor of New Hampshire

 Manchester mayor Frank Guinta has decided he is not going to run for governor. The New Hampshire Republican party has to consider this a blow to their chances in November. Frank Guinta was the “biggest name” that was considering a run at John Lynch.

 The following statement, from this article, paints a bleak picture for Republicans in New Hampshire come November:

Now, with a potential vacuum at the top, the Democrats can focus virtually all of their attention on Sununu and McCain, while Lynch can work as he did two years ago to try to secure continued Democratic majorities in the House, Senate and Executive Council.

Influential state Republicans, surprised by Guinta’s unexpected decision, are now searching for a candidate who can perhaps come within 10 or 12 percentage points of Lynch to bolster the ticket and, theoretically at least, prevent a 2006-style blowout.

 The Republican party leadership is now just hopeful that they can field a candidate that can stay within 12% of John Lynch just to try to hold on to the Republicans that are still in office.

 I don’t know enough about Frank Guinta’s record to have made a decision on who I would have supported come primary season. There are still a couple of candidates running, but none with the name recognition of Guinta.

 Just last week Frank Guinta called for the resignation of a legislator solely because he didn’t agree with the way this legislator voted on a bill. The bill decriminalized small amounts of marijuana, and the legislator voted in favor. Regardless of how a person feels about this, you can’t expect a man to resign because you didn’t like his vote. The voters will take care of that if they don’t agree with him. Guinta has been backtracking from this all week. I am wondering if this had anything to do with his decision. Frank Guinta will eventually run for governor or maybe even for the senate, he has bigger aspirations than mayor of Manchester, perhaps he thought his resignation demand would hurt him too much and he would let it die down for a couple of years.

 This leaves New Hampshire Republicans lowering their expectations from winning back the governorship, or at least a majority in the house and/or senate, to just trying to be competitive.

 That is bad news.