MANCHESTER – Ovide Lamontagne has made his long-awaited decision. Tomorrow, he'll officially become a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated next year by Sen. Judd Gregg.

The 52-year-old Manchester attorney, 1996 Republican gubernatorial nominee and long-time conservative activist has been weighing whether to run since March, talking to GOP and other grassroots groups.

He told the New Hampshire Sunday News on Friday that despite being far behind former Attorney General Kelly Ayotte in fund-raising, and despite a pledge to his wife, Elizabeth, not to spend any personal money on a campaign, he will seek the seat.

Lamontagne

Tomorrow's Lamontagne filings with the Federal Election Commission will be a statement of candidacy and the necessary campaign finance committee paperwork. He'll also unveil a new Ovide2010.com Web site and embark on what he described as an anti-establishment campaign.

"Not only is Washington broken, but Washington is in desperate need of changing fundamentally how it operates," Lamontagne said in an interview at the Devine Millimet and Branch law firm, where he has practiced since 1986.

Lamontagne will become the fourth candidate officially in the race, joining Ayotte and businessmen James Bender of Hollis and William Binnie of Rye. Sean Mahoney of Portsmouth, publisher of BusinessNH magazine and a New Hampshire GOP representative on the Republican National Committee, is still considering whether to run.

The lone Democrat so far in the Senate race is 2nd District U.S. Rep. Paul Hodes.

No self-funding

While Ayotte has $563,000 on hand in her campaign account, and while Binnie and Bender, both wealthy, intend to pour substantial amounts of their own money into their campaigns, Lamontagne denied he will enter the race at a competitive disadvantage.

Lamontagne said he has done no polling. He has set up a tax-exempt "527" organization to raise what he called "small dollars" to explore a candidacy and to cover expenses associated with his Web site and "some consulting."

But, he said, "I cannot self-finance. The lady of the house won't let it happen. She said that if the market is not there for me to raise the dollars, I ought to reconsider."

He said he will rely on individual contributions but will also take PAC money, something he did not do during his campaign for governor, when he lost to Democrat Jeanne Shaheen after upsetting Republican former U.S. Rep. Bill Zeliff in a primary.

"I need to (accept PAC contributions) to be competitive," he said. "But no PAC is going to have control over me."

Lamontagne is also unconcerned that Gregg and some members of the Senate GOP leadership in Washington recruited Ayotte to run.

"I'm liberated by that," he said. "I don't want to be beholden to the national party or the party bosses. "I'll never be the establishment candidate. I'll always be the people's candidate.

"When you say that we should balance our budget, who's going to go down there and fight for that, and who's going to go down there and take orders from somebody in Washington who's got perhaps a different agenda?" he asked. "That will be an important litmus test, I think, for voters."

Emphasis on fiscal issues

Lamontagne said his campaign will be based on conservative principles, but focused on fiscal, rather than social issues.

Lamontagne said that since he ran for office at age 39, he has matured, "but I am still fundamentally a conservative. And on those fundamental principles, which I think are important to people now, I'm the same person that ran before."

While still a staunchly pro-life social conservative, Lamontagne said, "I'm not getting into this race for social issues. The real challenges are fiscal issues, which pertain to the runaway spending we have in Washington and the expansive growth of government.

"I'm not going to deny what I believe in on the social side. That is who I am. But my focus is going to be on economic issues facing the country," he said.

The GOP and its leadership "must take responsibility, as well as the Democrats, for where we are in this country," Lamontagne said. "Republicans abandoned some of the very core principles of our party, which is why we have lost. People have rightly questioned whether we're sincere."

He promised to fight for an end to earmarks and to propose a constitutional amendment mandating a balanced budget. He called for a constitutional amendment to give the President a line-item veto and for term limits of two six-year terms for senators and six two-year terms for House members.

He said he would try to repeal the federal stimulus law and phase out the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which "was basically writing a blank check to government and then disbursing money in ways that really were not accountable to the Congress and the people."

He said the stimulus is "nothing more than large pork-barrel spending. There was no real criteria used to design an approach to help the economy weather the storm."

Limited government role

Lamontagne said one example of a limited government role in helping the economy is the extension of unemployment benefits, as long as the cost is balanced by other cuts or "a revenue stream."

He called for continuing the Bush tax cuts and simplifying the tax code "to relieve the burden on industry and small businesses."

Lamontagne, general counsel for the Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, opposes the Democratic health-care package that was scheduled to be voted on in the U.S. House yesterday.

"There's no justification for it," he said, calling for locally-designed, market-based, targeted solutions.

He said he continues to support the federal Medicare, Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income Programs and noted that federal law requires hospitals to treat patients in emergency rooms without consideration of their insurance coverage or ability to pay.

"No one is denied health care in America," Lamontagne said. "There is a safety net, and anyone who needs health care can get it," he said.

He called for zero-based budgeting.

"It's not enough to simply say that we're going to spend a little less and have to try to balance our budget. We have got to do it," he said.

Lamontagne said that for President Barack Obama to spend time in Copenhagen lobbying to have Chicago host the Olympic Games, "instead of spending time with his military advisers focusing on Afghanistan, is at best negligent, if not reckless. He has not kept his eye on the ball on job one for the commander-in-chief, our international strategies, particularly when we're deploying men and women" in harm's way.

Lamontagne said he would have opposed the nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. He said Obama "views the judiciary as an agent of change, advancing a liberal agenda that is contrary to where Americans want to be and what the Constitution provides."

He said the President has turned out to be "more of a big-government person than people were led to believe. People viewed this President as someone who was going to be moderate and temperate in how he exercised the power of the Presidency, and that's not what we're seeing."

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