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Four days after Gov. John Lynch announced he will not be a candidate for re-election, Ovide Lamontagne today launched his campaign for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.
"We know that there is such important work to be done right here in New Hampshire, and the rest of the country is looking to us for the message we send," Lamontagne told the Bedford Republican Committee during a fundraiser breakfast at the Manchester Country Club.
Here's a small sample of the important work Lamontagne wants to accomplish:
He supports federal legislation to make English the official language of the United States.
He would abolish the Department of Education.
He supports a constitutional amendment overturning Roe v. Wade, which limits a state's right to outlaw abortion.
He calls the U.S. tax code a book of "tyranny and oppression" and says "it has to end now."
He called for a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between one man and one woman.
Lamontagne would rubber stamp the agenda advanced by Speaker O'Brien and the extreme Free State/Tea Party elements of the GOP. In fact, he says, the damage inflicted by the GOP-dominated legislature thus far is "just the beginning."
"Right here in New Hampshire, [we have a] new Speaker of the House, new Senate President, a Republican conservative majority in both houses and it's just the beginning."
The successful thirty year march toward radical income redistribution for the super-rich have had some interesting side effects.
One is that the plutocrats' party is increasingly honest about their desire to abolish the safety net that has led to so much growth, security and prosperity in the 20th century for the American middle class.
Witness up and comer (and, imo, likely Veep pick) Marco Rubio:
These programs actually weakened us as a people. You see, almost forever, it was institutions in society that assumed the role of taking care of one another. If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them. You saved for your retirement and your future because you had to. We took these things upon ourselves in our communities, our families, and our homes, and our churches and our synagogues. But all that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities. All of a sudden, for an increasing number of people in our nation, it was no longer necessary to worry about saving for security because that was the government's job.
(This is both breathtakingly ignorant and dishonest in a number of ways, but let's leave that aside for the moment.)
And today Ovide Lamontagne notifies New Hampshire what we've already know - that he's running for governor. From the article:
"It is about time we have leaders who say we are ready to wean ourselves off of the federal dependency, which we've allowed to happen," Lamontagne said.
He said there is no room for the federal government in education and health care policies for individual states.
There was a time not long ago when you couldn't say these things out loud for fear of voters running you out of office. That's still mostly true of the general electorate. But the small tent, FOX News driven ideology of the radical right has made it so that members of the GOP can say this to the Republican base with refreshing, and frightening, candor.
More than 24 hours have passed since DJ Bettencourt attacked a Catholic Bishop for expressing the opinion of the New Hampshire Council of Churches toward the unnecessary and immoral budget cuts supported by the Republican leadership. I have yet to hear the opinion of any of the three Republican members of the congressional delegation, Charlie Bass, Frank Guinta or Kelly Ayotte, or the two who want to be Governor, Ovide Lamontagne and Johnny Stephen.
What are they waiting for? And is the press asking for comments?
But what does he expect? The primary is over, and the Republican nominees are rather busy right now pretending that they aren't the radical right-wingers they (and he) are.
Although Frank Guinta will be there. He does enjoy the Manchester club scene.
Kelly Ayotte does only one point better against Paul Hodes than Ovide Lamontagne.
I may not agree with Lamontagne on... well, pretty much anything, probably, but there's no denying that he's demonstrated over the years that he's firm in his Republican partisan beliefs. Ayotte made her own trouble here by trying to leave herself undefined and let people project conservatism or moderation on her. Only now that she's got a serious primary battle has she started running ads claiming the conservative mantle.
Neither one would cast many votes I'd be terribly happy with, but I'd at least believe Lamontagne has a reason for his beyond 'because Mitch McConnell told me to.'
PPP will release the rest of the results on Wednesday, after the primary voting is concluded, so keep your eyes open.
About a year ago, I wrote an op piece in the UL abouit Kelly Ayotte's drift to the right. It was after she refused to take a stand on the nullification resolution.
Ayotte's refusal to take a stand on a pretty simple question is an example of a disturbing drift on the part of her campaign. Until now, political chatter has focused on whether candidates like Ovide Lamontagne or Sean Mahoney can pick up enough of the conservative base to defeat Ayotte, who was perceived (wrongly, it seems) as a moderate. Based on Ayotte's recent performances, a better question is whether she is so loathe to offend any voter, no matter how outside the mainstream, that she herself is drifting into fringe territory. Someone may want to explain to her that New Hampshire is not going to send the next Michele Bachmann to Washington.
Ayotte's flirtation with extreme silliness was on display at another Republican town committee meeting in Milford. She was asked if the democratically elected President of the United States was trying to turn our country into a socialist state. Again, Ayotte had the opportunity to take a firm stand against this kind of rhetoric, just as John McCain did recently when telling a town hall audience that President Obama respects the Constitution. Ayotte blew the chance to give a straight answer; instead, she said she saw "a shift in attitude." That answer can only be read to mean that she either agreed with the questioner or did not disagree.
Whether Ayotte is afraid of offending any primary voter, no matter how far off the reality reservation, or is a true believer is starting to be irrelevant. Her continued dissembling and refusal to voice any disagreement with fringe elements is painting her into a corner she will not be able to escape. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in Barack Obama's patriotism and dedication to our country. We also believe in our constitutional form of government. Moreover, we reject extremism, whether from the left, or the right, or that really crazy place where the two extremes meet sometimes.
This is really getting unbelievable (and unbelievably bad for Ayotte). Magellan:
In our final poll of the New Hampshire Republican primary for US Senate, we find Kelly Ayotte leading Ovide Lamontagne by 4 points, 35% to 31%. Bill Binnie is third with 14%, Jim Bender with 10%, the generic "another candidate" receives 3%, and 7% are undecided. These results are based on a September 12th automated survey of 1,083 likely Republican and independent primary voters who intend to vote in the September 14th primary. This survey has a margin of error of +/- 2.98% at the 95% confidence interval.
The story in this race is the 10 point surge in support for Ovide Lamontagne since our last survey on September 1st. His increase in support is broad, but not limited to any particular subgroup of voters. He has improved his standing among every major voting subgroup in the state by 9 to 11 points.
At this point, even if she squeaks out a win tomorrow, this late surge has damaged the confidence others will have in her ability to close in the general.
A very brief diary, but amidst the fun of watching the Patriots rolling all over the Bengals in the season opener there's a release from Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling.
The money quote:
We're going to have Republican primary numbers out in Delaware and New Hampshire late tonight and based on the first day of polling it's clear both of these races are in single digit territory...
UPDATE (Dean): Interesting thoughts from Dante:
In a preview on the PPP blog, Tom Jensen reports that Ayotte has a 6-point lead over Lamontagne with voters who would be positively influenced by Sarah Palin's endorsement of Ayotte.
How would we classify such New Hampshire voters? Jensen does not say. However, according to a Granite State Poll conducted by my UNH colleague Andy Smith back in May, Palin was favorably viewed by conservatives, and by those who attend church at least once a week. I would speculate, then, that those who would be positively influenced by Palin would tend to be socially conservative voters.
The UL continues its campaign to defeat Kelly Ayotte, this time with yet another guest column:
Ayotte could have used her commanding front-runner status to galvanize the faithful around a strong agenda tied to an identifiable set of core conservative principles. Instead, she appeared to play it safe, relying on name recognition and her front-runner status to carry her through the primary.
Sources say a recent automated poll from Magellan Strategies, which had Ayotte up 34 percent to 21 percent on Lamontagne, is pretty close to reality. And Lamontagne's campaign is set to release an internal poll this afternoon that shows him down 34 percent to 24 percent (two other candidates are at 12).
And yet another newspaper, the Laconia Citizen, demurs on Ayotte, giving the nod to Bender. The field is absurdly diluted at this point, and the only one trending up is Lamontagne.
As the Fix notes, and as Jim Splaine noted before that, Ovide could pull this off with 30% of the vote.
Every day, the meme grows a little bigger. Kornacki in Salon:
It's not impossible to envision a Lamontagne win next Tuesday. With Ayotte and Binnie sniping at each other (and Binnie pouring even more money into his self-funded campaign this week), Lamontagne may start to look more appealing to the electorate. And Ayotte, who has positioned herself as a pro-lifer, is suddenly taking heat for the revelation that she approved a $300,000 taxpayer-funded settlement with Planned Parenthood last year. Plus, the Union Leader is hardly done pleading his case; when the paper endorses a candidate, it tends to follow up several times before Election Day.
The fallout continues from the revelation that Kelly Ayotte quietly paid Planned Parenthood $300,000 of Granite State money to settle the legal fees from the case Sarah Palin claims she "won". Former US Senator Gordon Humphrey on the Laura Ingraham show:
Laura Ingraham: ...There was a case-parental notification. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. She was not obligated in her role as attorney general to authorize a payout of $300,000 in legal fees to Planned Parenthood. Am I getting anything wrong there?
Sen. Humphrey: No, that is correct. That is absolutely correct. I'm not an attorney, but I've been advised by one of the most imminent attorneys in the state, that she could have rejected the judges' ruling, she could have appealed the judges' ruling that the state pay the defense costs for Planned Parenthood. She did not appeal it, she did not dig in her heels. In fact the whole thing was rather, um, quietly pushed under the rug...
And the UL is unrelenting, today with a guest cloumn:
Sarah Palin may know her Alaskan grizzly bears, but she got a bit confused here in New Hampshire, where we have only black bears. If Palin cares about the Constitution and the conservative values that prompted her ill-advised "mama grizzly" movement, she should admit her mistake and rescind her endorsement of Kelly Ayotte.
Kelly Ayotte is not having a good day. A Magellan poll shows Ovide Lamontagen rapidly gaining on her, with Ayotte's lead 34% to Lamontagne's 21%. More importantly, Ayotte's unfavorables are at 34%, while Ovide's are at 18%. If Bender and Binnie voters decide to look elsewhere (they are at 13% and 17%), then Ovide is the likely recipient. I had thought this was Ayotte's race, but she is limping toward the finish line - and two pieces of news won't help her.
I think (unlike the DSCC) the more important piece of news is Ayotte's secret $300,000 settlement with Planned Parenthood. The story appeared in the Telegraph today, and details how Ayotte agreed to settle the parental notification case with a payment of $300,000 by the State of New Hampshire to PP. Ayotte supporter Sarah Palin trumpeted Ayotte's "win" in the case in her endorsement, but now it appears that the win was not just a loss, as discussed at BH previously, but a costly loss. And, not just a costly loss, but a secret costly loss with terms that Ayotte kept hidden from legislators and members of the anti-choice community:
House Finance Committee Chairwoman Marjorie Smith, D-Durham, said she knew the judge had ordered the state to negotiate a settlement, but was unaware of the specifics....
Some in the anti-abortion rights community were angered Thursday to learn that taxpayer money got paid to pick up any expenses for the opposition.
"Most people still don't know about this," said Kevin Smith, executive director of Cornerstone New Hampshire, a socially conservative interest group. "The few I have talked to in the right-to-life community are furious. They think it's atrocious the state would settle with Planned Parenthood after the state had not lost in the Supreme Court."
On economic issues, all of the candidates agreed they would repeal any remaining money from the federal stimulus package.
OK then:
President Obama's much-maligned economic stimulus package added as many as 3.3 million jobs to the economy during the second quarter of this year, and may have prevented the nation from lapsing back into recession, according to a report released Tuesday by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
In its latest quarterly assessment of the act, the CBO said the stimulus lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 and 1.8 percentage points during the quarter ending in June and increased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million. The higher figure would come close to making good on Obama's pledge that the act would save or create as many as 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year.
Adding: I have a dream that someday I will be able to have a genuine policy disagreement with the opposing party's ideology that is grounded in reality.
One moment of dissent for Lamontagne came when the candidates were asked about the war in Iraq. Lamontagne, alone among the candidates, said he believed going into Iraq was a mistake.
"We went on a false premise" that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, he said.
Thank you, Mr. Lamontagne, for not sweeping the biggest foreign policy mistake of my lifetime under the rug.
They're too chicken to go after Boomers and seniors - they know it'll cost them votes. Instead, New Hampshire Republican candidates for federal office are gunning to loot Gen X-ers and Millenials and the disabled, who they think are paying less attention.
Frank Guinta:
When it comes to reforming Social Security and other programs, he would consider creating personal accounts and increasing the retirement age.
"Everything has to be on the table," said Guinta.
Sean Mahoney:
"But the younger generations, they need to understand there should be other options. Your retirement age may be later in life than your parents' were."He also said younger people should "be able to have a private option, take some ownership over your own retirement."
The Seacoast Republican Women hosted a candidate forum last night in Portsmouth. The doubleheader began with the six GOP candidates for the 1st Congressional District seat, followed by 90 minutes with the six GOP U.S. Senatorial candidates. My observations and impressions follow.
General
Atmosphere: Large, enthusiastic audience. The moderator stressed the event was "educational and informational" in nature and discouraged confrontation. The candidates followed her orders. No fireworks.
Format: The questions were provided to candidates prior to the event, eliminating rude surprises. No questions from the audience. Included a "lightning round" featuring litmus test questions, limited to almost unanimous simple yes/no answers.
The candidates: The lesser known candidates (Congressional candidates Peter Bearse and Rick Parent; Senate candidates Dennis Lamare and Gerard Beloin) were more spontaneous, more thoughtful, less guarded, and less scripted. They, of course, have no chance to win.
Over the past six months, my opponents have constantly reminded me of how crucial this race is. Whether it's a woman's right to choose or a family's right to affordable health care - they've shown us time and time again what we all stand to lose if Kelly Ayotte, Bill Binnie, or Ovide Lamontagne wins.
