No, New Hampshire was "going red" when the marxist DemocRATs swept all the state and national offices there in 2006 and 2008. At the time, a bunch of conservatives "wrote off" New Hampshire as a hopelessly Dem controlled state for the foreseeable future due to "Massachusetts transplants" changing the demographics, rather than the incompetent NH GOP leadership.
During that era, pretty much the only Republicans given the state party establishment's blessing to run for higher officer were pampered politicians kids -- 3 out of 4 of the federal offices were dominated by them, and the only reason the fourth had a non politician's kid as the GOP nominee is there were no politician's kids available so they settled on some other worthless RINO.
Ever since the NH GOP cleaned house in 2010 and got rid of the old guard establishment, they've discovered there are plenty of other qualified Republicans to run for major office in NH, and hence we now have Kelly Ayotte, Frank Guinta, and Ovide Lamontagne making waves.
If the old guard was still in charge, they'd tell us the ONLY "electable" Republicans in "moderate New Hampshire" are people with famous last names like Sununu, Gregg, Merrill, or Bass. And sadly, a bunch of freepers would buy that line of B.S. and tell us "Lamontagne can't win!" Steve Merrill's kid would the nominee right now, or possibly another Bass family member. Basically whichever one of them kissed daddy Sununu's ring...
Well Lamontagne got crushed by Shaheen in 1996 and lost the Senate primary to Ayotte so he’s not exactly fresh blood.
I hope he wins this time cause Maggie Hassan appears to be a virtual Shaheen clone.