New Hampshire primary news: Senate race still too close to call

  The New Hampshire primaries are over–sort of– so before I get to the main focus of this post let me congratulate John Stephen and Frank Guinta on their primary wins.

  Frank Guinta manage to hold on despite a tough challenge from an unexpected source. It was thought that this was a two way race between Guinta and Mahoney with some polls showing Mahoney leading. It did turn into a two way race, but Mahoney conceded early as it became evident that Rich Ashooh was going to give Frank Guinta a run for his money. And he did, but at 1:00 this morning Rich Ashooh finally conceded the race to Guinta.

  I believe that this surprise challenge was partly the results of the surging Ovide Lamontagne; I believe that many late breakers to Ovide probably also cast their votes for Rich Ashooh.

 We have a great candidate in Frank Guinta and I look forward to watching defeat Carol Shea-Porter in November.

  The race for the Republican nomination for governor certainly lacked the drama of CD1 as my candidate–John Stephen–cruised to an easy victory. The race was called for Stephen shortly after the results started flowing in.

  John Stephen is probably the best Republican candidate that Governor Lynch has gone up against in his tenure as governor and it will be interesting to see if John Stephen can do what no other Republican has been able to do–beat John Lynch.

  But speaking of drama, as of this morning the senate race between Kelly Ayotte and Ovide Lamontagne is too close to call. Less than 1,000 votes separate the two candidates, with Kelly Ayotte holding a slim lead.

  When I first decided to endorse Ovide Lamontagne I did not think that he was going to have enough money to be a serious contender, but I believe that he is the most honest, conservative, straight forward talker in the race and that seems to have resonated with the voters of New Hampshire as can be seen by his surge in the polls over the last week. Now that he has come so close I can’t help but feel disappointed if he  ends up losing this race.

  When it looked as though this race was going to be between Kelly Ayotte and Bill Binnie I chose a favorite to root for if my candidate ended up losing, and that candidate was Kelly Ayotte. I just do not trust Bill Binnie and in the last week I think he was exposed.

  Bill Binnie had been trying to hide the fact that he is pro-choice, he dodged this issue for several weeks before embracing his pro-choice beliefs in the debate last Thursday. Abortion is far down on the list of issues in my opinion, but how can a person expect people to vote for him if he is not willing to be up front and honest about where they stand on the issues?

  When I listened to Bill Binnie’s concession speech it confirmed many of the fears I had about him; he is not the conservative he claimed to be. He talked about moving the party in a new direction; he talked about making the Republican party more of a big tent, tolerant party; he said he was still going to work to try to change the direction of the party. In other words, he wants to drag the party towards the center. We saw how that worked for John McCain, didn’t we? Thankfully he did not turn out to be a serious contender.

  Whoever wins this race will get my endorsement over Paul Hodes in the general election. I would prefer that candidate to be Ovide Lamontagne, but I can accept Kelly Ayotte. Paul Hodes is a toe the line, Nancy Pelosi rubber stamp and he must be stopped at all costs.

  It looks like this race could drag out for awhile as it is close enough for the loser to call for a recount. Stay tuned, this has been a strange and exciting night and early morning and it looks to continue for a little while longer.