Well another Republican has jumped into the race to try and unseat Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D. NH) next year, and it's a familiar face:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/...
Bob Smith, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire, decided to challenge incumbent Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) next year for his old seat.
Smith told Manchester TV station WMUR Sunday that he previously stayed out of the race to allow room for other candidates. He said he gave into encouragement to run when no other major candidate materialized for the GOP. - TPM, 12/2/13
Here's a little more info:
http://thehill.com/...
Smith was elected to the Senate in 1990 and represented New Hampshire in the Senate until he lost the 2002 Republican primary to Sen. John Sununu.
Smith told WMUR that he will be moving to New Hampshire full time and launch his campaign in January, as well as filing paperwork to form his committee campaign in the coming days.
The Republican field for 2016 includes former state Sen. Jim Rubens and activist Karen Testerman, and former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) was rumored to be considering entering the race. - The Hill, 12/1/13
This will be Smith's second attempt at a political comeback:
http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/...
Former U.S. Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., said back in October he would not run for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire. But over the weekend, Smith, who made two bids for the Senate in Florida, said he would run to challenge U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., in 2014.
After leaving the Senate, Smith moved to Sarasota where he sold real estate and became active in Florida politics. Smith made a bid for the open Senate seat in Florida in 2004 but pulled out in April of that year, citing an inability to raise money. In 2010, Smith ran for the Republican nomination for an open Senate seat in Florida again but pulled out in March of that year noting frustrations with fundraising.
During his time in the Senate, Smith worked on a number of key issues for Florida including protecting the Everglades and keeping Elian Gonzalez in the U.S. instead of Cuba. - Sunshine State News, 12/2/13
We'll see if Smith will actually be a competitive challenger to Shaheen but first he has to get past the primary where he'll have to go up against this guy:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
A Republican U.S. Senate candidate in New Hampshire is defending a 2009 blog post, saying he did not mean to imply that women working outside of the home leads to a rise in mass shootings.
Former state Sen. Jim Rubens (R-Hanover) told The Huffington Post that a post he added to his blog in 2009 was meant to explain statistics published in The New York Times that showed more men had lost jobs than women and the impact that lost jobs could have on men.
BuzzFeed first reported the blog post on Wednesday and Rubens has since taken it down, but the post is still visible in archived versions of his blog. Rubens announced this week that he would seek the GOP nomination to challenge United States Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) next year.
In the post, Rubens describes the Times report, then lists a series of statistics, including one showing that women receive college degrees more often than men and hold more managerial jobs. The post includes a series of crime statistics showing that men are more likely to be involved in mass shootings and murders, while women are more likely to commit white-collar crime. It also notes that school shooters are men.
"Bottom line: the collaborative, flexible, amorphously-hierarchical American economy is shutting out ordinary men who were once the nation’s breadwinners in living-wage labor and manufacturing jobs," Rubens says in the post. "Because status success is more vital to the male psychology, males are falling over the edge in increasing numbers." - Huffington Post, 9/19/13
And of course Republicans are eagerly waiting for this guy to make a decision about the race:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The big question in the New Hampshire Senate race, of course, is whether another former senator who recently ran in another state will switch to the Granite State. Former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown over the holiday dropped the "MA" from his Twitter account. It had been @ScottBrownMA and is now just @SenScottBrown. - Washington Post, 12/2/13
But he could pull off a win:
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/...
Smith’s entire political career has been one of fits, starts and changes in his party affiliation, in hopes of igniting his ambitions. After his re-election to the Senate in 1996, he entered the GOP primary for the presidential election which is considered heresy for someone coming from the vaunted, first-in-the-nation primary state. After not getting any traction, Smith withdrew before the primaries began and joined the Taxpayers Party seeking its nomination. He then changed parties again becoming an independent before dropping out of the White House run altogether. He later said his Roman Catholicism caused the Taxpayers Party to resist his nomination. He withdrew from the race and endorsed Republican George W. Bush in October. After Rhode Island GOP Sen. John Chafee died, Smith claimed his repudiation of the GOP had been a “mistake”’ and that he never changed his voting registration. Smith publicly rejoined the GOP so that he could replace Chafee and become chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. The whole experience caused New Hampshire GOP establishment figures to abandon him and recruit Congressman John E. Sununu to oppose Smith’s renomination in 2002. Sununu defeated Smith in the primary and went on narrowly to beat Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen for the Senate seat. After that setback, Smith moved to Florida and briefly ran for the Senate there in 2004 and 2010 dropping out in both cases after faring badly in GOP primary polls. Despite this sordid history and his longtime absence from the state, Smith and his wife, Mary Jo, still have a home in Tuftonboro. If Smith devotes full time to the Senate campaign this move installs him as the unique favorite to win the nomination and face Shaheen in November 2014. - Nashua Telegraph, 12/2/13
We shall see. Who knows, this might be another entertaining GOP primary to watch where establishment and Tea Party Republicans tear each other a part. What I do know is we need to keep Shaheen in the U.S. Senate. If you would like to donate or get involved with Shaheen's campaign, you can do so here:
http://www.jeanneshaheen.org/