The Republican primary in New Hampshire's Senate race has been heating up of late, with former Attorney General Kelly Ayotte and self-funding businessman Bill Binnie going negative on each other in a barrage of advertising.
But that doesn't mean it's a two-way race -- there are two other candidates in the race, and this week, one of them moved out of the "easy to overlook" category. Former gubernatorial nominee Ovide Lamontagne has now gotten the endorsement of the state's biggest newspaper, the Union Leader. Steve Kornacki writes in Salon that:
[T]he Union Leader's decision could provide Lamontagne with a spark. The fiercely conservative paper is unusually influential in right-wing circles and it tends to promote its chosen candidates more aggressively than other newspapers do. Plus, Lamontagne has been in this same position before. Back in 1996, he waged an insurgent bid for governor, running far to the right of Bill Zeliff, a moderate three-term congressman with strong establishment credentials. At this point in that campaign -- three weeks before the primary -- Zeliff led Lamontagne 46 to 19 percent. But as voters focused on the race after Labor Day, Lamontagne surged, boosted by the Union Leader's loud support (and its equally loud condemnations of Zeliff). In the primary, Lamontagne prevailed, 48 to 43 percent.
Lamontagne had already been named "the only true conservative in a very important race" by Laura Ingraham, and this week he's going on the air with a cable ad touting her endorsement and that of the Union Leader.
In late July, PPP polled (PDF) this primary and found Ayotte with a 33 point lead. But after a month of Binnie advertising against her and with Lamontagne's boost this week, it looks like this could become a real three-way (and then some) race. That being the case, here's the question: Can Lamontagne be the Creigh Deeds of this primary, slipping through as two better-funded candidates nuke each other? Or if the Union Leader endorsement and his ad are too little, too late, will he draw votes away from Ayotte and let Binnie in?
