Three term Republican Senator Judd Gregg (for whom I worked in 1980 and 1981, full disclosure) is retiring, leading to a wide open field of Republican Candidates.  The principals in the race include:

• Kelly Ayotte, a former Attorney General.
• Ovide Lamontagne, a somewhat perennial candidate who has the backing of New Hampshire Harold Stassen wannabee Lyndon Larouche.  Check the website.  (The banner looks a lot like Obama's.  Is this an effort to fool elderly Obama supporters into voting for him akin to butterfly ballots getting Geriatric JDL supporters in Palm Beach to pull the trigger for Pat Buchanan in the 2000 presidential race?)
• Businessmen Bill Binnie and Jim Bender.

In a poll fielded on September 1, Ayotte led Lamontagne 34% to 21% while Messrs. Binnie and Bender garnered 17% and 13%, respectively.  The generic “other candidate” garnered 4% and 11% remained undecided.

Ovide Lamontagne ran for Governor in 1996, losing to Democrat Jeanne Shaheen 57% to 40%.  His numbers tracked with Bob Dole’s who came in around the same, with Bill Clinton taking 49% of the vote and H. Ross Perot taking 8%.

The tracking, then, does not suggest Lamotagne is necessarily deemed extreme by NH voters and he is allegedly a Tea Party favorite, given he tracked with Dole's support.  But Kelly Ayotte received the coveted Lipsticked Pit Bull endorsement of one Sarah Palin, which seemingly splits the Tea Party support between those worshipping at the altar of Mrs. Palin and those worshipping at the altar of a strict constructionist view of the constitution who want to party like it’s 1799.

New Hampshire has changed dramatically since the days when Meldrim Thompson (1912 – 2001) was in cahoots with Manchester Union Leader publisher William Loeb (1905 – 1981).  Meldrim Thomson  served three terms as Governor in New Hampshire from 1973 to 1979.  He was out there.  Colorful.  He would order flags flown at half mast when the US Congress passed legislation he felt signified the death of the constitution.

William Loeb  was Meldrim’s buddy.  Back then the Union Leader, as it was called, had considerable clout.  He was a William Randolph Hearst wannabee not averse to yellow journalism to get his point across.  He was credited with bringing down Ed Muskie’s  (1914  -1996) 1972 presidential hopes by doing numerous hit pieces on Muskie’s wife culminating in Ed standing outside the Union Leader on a flat bed either 1) crying, or 2) having his eyes tears from snow flakes.

Either way, old Ed self immolated akin to Howard Dean screaming or George Bush, Sr. freezing during the Nashua Debate when Reagan seized the moment by angrily saying, “I paid for this microphone Mr. [sic] Green.” as Ronnie sandbagged George by inviting the other candidates to what was billed as a two person debate. 

So back in the day, folks kow towed to the Union Leader.  When Loeb died, his wife “Nackey” continued the hit parade, but it was not quite the same.

Many reasons contributed to this. 

1. Southern New Hampshire has had a rapid influx of Massachusetts transplants that get the folks in Coos (Coe-os) County wishing to secede from the state irate at the fall of civilization as a results of these Huns storming the Southern border.  It radically transformed the congressional districts, with one being a small triangle essentially from Nashua to the West, over to Portsmouth and north to Manchester.  That district is about 20% of the land mass.  Not quite the same as Canuckistan having 80% of its population an hour from the US border, but you get the idea.  It’s transforming New Hampshire politics.
2. Major Boston media outlets reach into New Hampshire.  This was the case during the 1980 presidential race in which I worked.  The state spending guidelines benefitted primary participants, as ad purchases on Boston media outlets counted against Mass primary spending.  Given the Mass Republican Party can caucus in a phone booth, the spending on NH-related activities was a boon.
3. The loosening stranglehold of traditional media outlets.  The Union Leader loses ground not only to Boston-based papers and a the more liberal Concord Monitor, but also to the multi channels of information content from cable and the internet.  Shifting demographics in the state coupled with shifting ways in which citizens garner information make the Union Leader seem like a dinosaur thrashing around in the tar pits.

So the conventional wisdom that says to watch out for Lamontagne to come up on Ayotte’s rail makes more sense in the outdated way in which New Hampshire gets viewed in the rest of the country.  Working against, Ayotte, however, is businessman Bill Binnie who has been putting out hit piece after hit piece on Ayotte for some of her more controversial cases.

I watched one several times on the Boston stations and could not for the life of me figure out who paid for it and what their party affiliation happened to be.  All I knew is that it was intended to slime Ayotte.

And it has worked to some degree, with Ayotte losing about 10 points in the polls.  Binnie is not the one who gained the traction, however, it was Lamontagne.

So this suggests the two known commodities are Lamontagne and Ayotte.  Undecideds typically break to challengers, which is difficult to calibrate in an open primary likes this.  Lamontagne would seem to have more incumbent status by virtue of his having run state wide for a prominent elected position.

Ayotte was attorney general and won the Union Leader’s person of the year award in 2008 which takes the sting out of said paper’s Lamontagne endorsement.  Ayotte’s husband flew combat missions over Iraq to boot.  

So the Union Leader  impact, increasingly less powerful, further dilutes from their past support of Ayotte.  Tea Party clout gets diluted from the Palin endorsement.  Makes the two influences somewhat of a push.  Palin's been on somewhat of a roll on endorsements, and she offered this one in July, suggesting she may also have wet her finger to determine which way the NH political winds were blowing before setting sail.

As such, this looks to still be Ayotte’s to lose provided Bill Binnie decides to go easy on his personal wealth and lay off the hit pieces now that his effort to negatively define Ayotte – with some success – has done nothing to give him traction in the polls.  Lamontagne will get his 30% or so and Ayotte will get 40% or so.

Polls pitting either one of these two against Democrat Paul Hodes, the current congresscritter in the second district that normally leans Republican have the Republican winning easily in the Senate race.  Hodes came in during the democratic groundswell of 2006.  Who is to say how he would fare in 2010 under the current voter angst that has it lining up to be on a par with 1994 and 2006.  The tide that washed him ashore in DC might well have pulled him back out in 2010 in that district.

There’s a fiscal penuriousness to all New Hampshirites, even the Mass transplants who went there for cheaper taxes.  Judd Gregg has that fiscal austerity in spades.  The deficit spending in DC, justified or not, will not sit well with New Hampshire, and it will most likely remain in the Republican column at the end of the day.