The Fortnightly Rant for September 24, 2010, from The New Hampshire Gazette, Volume 254, No. 26, posted on Saturday, January 15, 2011.
Considering the large number of candidates, the huge amount of money spent, and the bitterness of the fight, it is clear that this year’s primary election campaign was nothing less than a battle for the soul of New Hampshire’s Republican Party. It would be easy to say, given the condition and value of that little item, that it was much ado about nothing. But elections do have consequences.
After a rancorous campaign Republicans turned out in droves on November 2nd to vote against the candidates they most despise. The survivors were Kelly Ayotte, for Senate; Frank Guinta, for the First Congressional District; and John Stephen for Governor.
The Corner Office
It has become an article of faith among the national Commentariat that the Democrats are in for an historic beating come the general election this November 2nd. Perhaps, and perhaps not. In the case of the New Hampshire Governor’s race, a full-fledged Armageddon would seem to be required to sweep John Stephen into the corner office. True, since our last paper was published Governor John Lynch’s chances for re-election have dropped slightly, according to ace election handicapper Nate Silver, in The New York Times. But only very slightly, from 97 to 96 percent.*
Stephen has a couple of problems, such as Lynch’s popularity and his own lack of a corresponding asset. Hardly anyone seems to like Stephen, particularly his former employees at Health and Human Services (HHS), where they fled the department in droves. He has a reputation for being as ill-tempered as the disgraced one-term Republican governor who appointed him in the first place. He is not entirely without friends. In particular, he seems to exert a mysterious thrall over some generous out-of-state donut mogul.
Unless and until Stephen gets tripped up over donut money, though, all that’s just gossip. More damaging, should John Lynch choose to club him over the head with it, will be Stephen’s record — particularly since he’s touting himself as the innovative solution to the state’s chronic fiscal woes.
Stephens’ innovative efforts at HHS inspired seven New Hampshire County Commissioners, in 2008, to write a scathing letter charging him with conducting an “illegal tax-shifting maneuver.” Stephen transferred the state’s obligation to fund nursing home care for the old and indigent onto local property owners, the County Commissioners charged, at a cost of up to $60 million a year. It was, they said, a “smoke and mirrors game to fool the public into believing he had cut spending when really he had just passed the buck.”
If the rising Republican tide being predicted by the Commentariat manages to lift Stephen’s boat this November, it will be an early sign of the Apocalypse.
First District
You might think that with eight candidates in the First District Republican primary, there could only be seven losers; but you would be wrong. To the less-than-magnificent seven, we must add former state GOP boss Fergus Cullen.
In the Union Leader, on the Saturday before the election, Cullen predicted that Portsmouth businessman Sean Mahoney would win with 36 percent, closely followed by Frank Guinta at 33 percent, leaving Rich Ashooh in the dust with a lousy 18 percent. The rest he assigned to the Also-Ran Hall of Fame.
Out here in the real world Cullen was right about the also-rans, but wrong about the rest. Guinta beat Mahoney by four percentage points (31.8 vs. 27.8), with Ashooh trailing Mahoney by a scant 42 votes.
This is Mahoney’s third run for office. He spent about $800,000 of his own money in 2002 and lost to Jeb Bradley. He tried for Executive Council in 2006 and lost. This year he shelled out nearly a million more of his own dollars in his second bid for Congress. It cost him $46 bucks a vote to become a three-time loser. If he ever decides to run again, we’ll know he didn’t even get an education for his money.
The GOP doesn’t just want this seat, they believe it’s rightfully theirs. They hand-picked Frank Guinta a year and a half ago to take it back. Their standard-bearer’s campaign was a mess from the start. Ashooh and Mahoney jumped in and tried to dethrone him. They failed, leaving Guinta even weaker than before.
The buyer’s remorse at GOP HQ must be dreadful these days. They’re not likely to give up on Guinta, though, unless his “very simple error” — failing to report a half-million dollar bank account to the Federal Elections Commission — becomes more, shall we say, complicated.
If there turns out to be a more believable but less tolerable explanation for Guinta’s $500K goof, then the party will throw Guinta over the side as mercilessly as they did Sen. Bob Smith in 2002, when he strayed into the path of John E. Sununu’s Senatorial ambitions.
Ashooh and Mahoney have now said they’ll co-chair Guinta’s campaign. We’d like to be a fly on the wall of that office, especially if Guinta suddenly decides to spend more time with his family.
Guinta may have doomed himself when he said his opposition to earmarks mattered more to him than the Memorial and Sarah Mildred Long Bridges put together. OK, his base is in Manchester — but how can he win without some votes from the Seacoast? See “News Briefs” for a little more on this.
The Senate
Rye businessman Bill Binnie spent $5 million of his own money throwing mud at the eventual winner, and all he got for it was a record for profligate spending — $250 a vote — that makes Sean Mahoney look like Scrooge McDuck. The GOP came away from this fight with an array of black eyes and a candidate who would be unelectable in a state with a functioning news media. Kelly Ayotte is the Oakland of candidates — there isn’t any there there.**
Like Guinta, the other well-bloodied primary survivor, Kelly Ayotte was hand-picked by Washington insiders to “represent” New Hampshire in Congress. One has to wonder, why?
Politico.com reported on Monday that “just minutes after it became clear that … Ayotte had won the Senate primary,” Washington lobbyist Jeff Walter “sent off an email to a group of about 50 K Street cohorts,” saying “she will be in D.C. on September 27 to gain support for her campaign. I hope you will agree to help.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, is spending $300,000 trying to defeat Ayotte’s opponent, Paul Hodes. Ayotte’s qualification seems to be that she’s even more beholden to our corporate overlords than Judd Gregg.
XXX
* Our blatant effort to drive up support for Tim Robertson, the pro-income tax candidate running against Lynch in the Democratic Primary, was an abysmal failure. Robertson got 6.58 percent of the vote statewide. In Portsmouth, the town best-served by our distribution network, he got just four percent.
** Gertrude Stein said, “The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there isn’t any there there.” Contrary to legend, Stein was not denigrating the city, but reacting to the news her childhood home there had been demolished.