New Hampshire Primaries

I went to bed with the belief that Ovide Lamontagne (I like the guy but I had to look up his last name) was the probable winner. I woke up to hear that Ayotte was the probable winner. An hour later Ovide is back in the lead.

This was an interesting race. Sarah Palin backed Ayotte and Demint backed Ovide. The press will probably spin the Tea Party angle no matter who wins. But the fact is, these are probably the two candidates that least fit the tea party template. Bill Binnie, the successful businessman and political outsider spent over $5M of his own cash to garner about 11% of the vote. His commercials seemed to hit all of the bases and they featured voice over extraordinaire Peter Thomaa (you may know him from such TV shows as "Forensic Files") and they followed a tea party narrative. He was supposably a close second to Ayotte in the weeks leading up to the election. So much for polling.

Ovide received the endorsement of "The Union Leader" a newspaper that still packs political clout. An endorsement from most major newspapers don't matter any more but the paper once edited by the Loeb family still decides elections. John McCain resurrected a DOA campaign in 2008 with their endorsement ( a slap in the face to Mitt Romney to be sure.) Ovide followed up with an endorsement from Jim Demint (can we take that to mean that he is running for the presidency in 2012?) New Hampshire is known as a late-breaking state and a state where the voters seem to want to prove pollsters wrong. Everything changed in the last few days of the primary.

What is the largest lesson of this primary? It confirms the belief that New Hampshire is perhaps the quirkiest, most independent,least predictable state in the Union. It is not the bellwhether. Not even close. It is New Hampshire. Now and for ever.

Viva La Granite State!