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The race to be New Hampshire’s next governor remains tight. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely New Hampshire voters finds Republican Ovide Lamontagne with 48% of the vote to Democrat Maggie Hassan’s 46%. Five percent (5%) are undecided at this point. (To see survey question wording, click here.) The numbers were reversed last week when Hassan held 48% of the vote to Lamontagne’s 46%, highlighting the closeness of the race. In late September, Lamontagne had a 48% to 44% advantage over Hassan. Ninety-seven percent (97%) of voters in the Granite State are certain they will vote this November....

Question wording and response: If the election for Governor of New Hampshire were being held today between John Babiarz, the Libertarian, Maggie Hassan, the Democrat, and Ovide Lamontagne, the Republican, for whom would you vote - Babiarz, Hassan, or Lamontagne? (names rotated)

Attorney Ovide Lamontagne, who came within 1,667 votes of defeating former state Attorney General Kelly Ayotte in the GOP primary for Senate, is headlining a fundraiser for the new nominee next week. Ayotte will face Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes in November. Ayotte, who was recruited by national Republicans to get into the race, won with 38 percent of the vote over a crowded field on Sept. 14. The next day, Lamontagne conceded the race and endorsed Ayotte – providing a swift end to the battle, unlike the Senate primaries in Delaware and Alaska, where the establishment Republican candidates declined to...

Good afternoon. I think I recognize some of you from last night’s party. What a party! And what a campaign this has been. This has been a classic New Hampshire campaign, one for the ages that we’ll be talking about for a long time to come. I believe that in our American Republic, the people are the sovereign – they are the king -- and government is their subject. Well, the people of NH have spoken and they have ruled. While I am disappointed with the result, I humbly accept their verdict and I would ask you to join me...

CONCORD, N.H. — New Hampshire has certified former state Attorney General Kelly Ayotte (AY'-aht) as the winner of the Republican primary for U.S. Senate. Ayotte was endorsed by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and won a narrow victory over Ovide Lamontagne (LAH'-mohn-tayn). His conservative credentials and courting of the tea party pulled him close in the final days of the campaign. Lamontagne has until 5 p.m. to decide whether he'll seek a recount because the margin of victory fell within 1.5 percent of the total votes cast. The secretary of state's office says Ayotte's official margin of victory was 1,667...

New Hampshire - 32 of 301 Precincts Reporting - 11% Lamontagne , Ovide......GOP......9,376......48% Ayotte , Kelly...........GOP.....6,583......34%

MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: CLOSER AND CLOSER. Ovide Lamontagne continues to close in on Kelly Ayotte in the battle for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination. On the heels of a Sunday night poll showing Ayotte's lead narrowing to 7 percentage points (see item below) comes a primary eve poll released late Monday afternoon by Magellan Data and Mapping Strategies. It shows Ayotte with 35 percent, Lamontagne with 31 percent, Bill Binnie with 14 percent and Jim Bender with 10 percent. Other candidates drew 3 percent, with 7 percent undecided.

In the September 14 New Hampshire GOP Senate primary, pro-life groups are weighing in to defend Attorney General Kelly Ayotte's pro-life credentials. Though Ayotte is pro-life and has been endorsed by Sarah Palin, her record is being assailed by supporters of candidate Ovide LaMontagne, who styles himself as the true conservative in the race. The most recent poll shows Ayotte leading LaMontagne 34% to 21%. Pro-choice multi-millionaire Bill Binnie was close behind at 17%, but other polls have shown him in second place. The Susan B. Anthony List, whose primary goal is to send pro-life women to Congress, announced yesterday...

South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint is bucking his party’s establishment yet again, endorsing two insurgent Senate picks just ahead of their competitive primaries Tuesday. In a series of late Friday night tweets, the conservative senator announced he was supporting Senate candidates Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Ovide Lamontagne in New Hampshire. Both GOP hopefuls face primaries against better-known—and better-funded—Republicans, but have also been working to coalesce conservative support in the final leg of their campaigns. “I'm proud to endorse Christine O'Donnell for U.S. Senate in Delaware. She will stand strong for the principles of freedom,” DeMint tweeted. O’Donnell, a conservative...

Ovide Lamontagne is our choice for the U.S. Senate. He is not the flashiest candidate. He certainly is not the richest. He isn't the favorite of the bigtime professional pols or the Washington crowd. Ovide is just a smart-as-a-whip, honest, hard-working son of New Hampshire who says what he believes. What he believes makes sense to save our nation from economic ruin; and he will stick to it come hell, high water, or demands from party bosses to "go along and get along.''

The flap over former Bush White House adviser John DiIulio's cutting criticisms of his former colleagues, followed by his earnest, near-groveling apology — all stemming from a still-to-be-published article in the January issue of Esquire magazine — has obscured another, perhaps more newsworthy aspect of the story.In the piece, a preview of which is available on Esquire's website, DiIulio ridicules the "Mayberry Machiavellis" in the White House, whom he defined, in a letter to the writer Ron Suskind, as the "staff, senior and junior, who consistently talked and acted as if the height of political sophistication consisted in reducing...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Politics and re-election concerns rule the White House at the expense of good public policy, says a former aide to President Bush. Not so, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday, dismissing comments from John J. DiIulio as ``baseless and groundless.''DiIulio issued two statements, the first generally standing by his criticism, the second - similar to Fleischer's comment - calling his own allegations ``groundless and baseless due to poorly chosen words and examples.''DiIulio, a Democrat who led the White House office of faith-based initiatives until August 2001, said in an interview with Esquire magazine: ``There is no...