MONDAY, JAN. 9, UPDATE: THE HEAT ON MITT. Mitt Romney's rivals Monday turned up the heat during the final day of New Hampshire primary campaigning, trying to portray him as a heartless venture capitalist who, as head of Bain Capital, “looted” troubled companies and threw people out of work.

Romney's campaign countered that it was “puzzling” to see Republicans engaged in “attacks on free enterprise.”

Primary eve was fierce on the campaign trail. It all comes to an end on Tuesday, when an estimated 325,000 Granite Staters are expected to go to the polls, with 250,000 of them expected to vote on the Republican side and 75,000 expected to vote in a Democratic primary in which President Barack Obama is not being contested by a major candidate.

To monitor potential voter election fraud and voting rights abuse issues throughout primary day, U.S. Attorney John P. Kacavas announced the Justice Department has set up a “primary day hotline” (603-491-7078).

Romney, who has led in New Hampshire throughout the campaign, appeared poised to become the first non-incumbent Republican in history to win both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.

While trying to stick to the message that has propelled him to his current standing, Romney poured gasoline on the fire over his Bain Capital years by saying in Nashua, “I like to fire people.”

It didn't matter to one rival or some in the national media that he was not talking about workers and was referring to the ability many Americans have to switch health insurance companies if they are displeased with the service they receive.

“Mitt Romney enjoys firing people,” remarked Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who is making a last-minute push for a strong finish. “I enjoy creating jobs.”

If Romney wins the primary by a substantial margin, he will be in a strong position going into the key South Carolina primary on Jan. 21. And if he wins there, he could be well on his way to the GOP presidential nomination, especially if he also wins in Florida on Jan. 31.

If the results shape up the way the current polls indicate, with libertarian-leaning Ron Paul in second place and with Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum splitting the traditional conservative vote, there will be no clear traditional conservative alternative candidate to Romney emerging from New Hampshire and heading to South Carolina.

Of course, New Hampshire voters have long been known for their unpredictability and their ability to prove political pundits dead wrong.

Still, any momentum Santorum may have picked up from his virtual tie with Romney in Iowa appears to have stalled and he was downplaying his own chances on Monday.

Asked about a possible second place finish, Santorum said in Salem, “In my dreams, second place. Given the fact that we're not running any media (advertising) up here and that we've only just spent five days in the last month here campaigning, second place would be a dream come true.”

That was a far cry from the confidence Santorum expressed about New Hampshire less than a week ago.

Moderate Huntsman was third behind Romney and Ron Paul in Sunday night's Suffolk University/7News tracking poll and tied for third with Santorum in the WMUR/University of New Hampshire Sunday night poll.

With Paul remaining in a strong position for second place, the race Tuesday appears to be for third place.

But Gingrich on Monday refused to answer any “horse race” questions and said only, “The race is for the nomination.”

If Romney wins, he will have bucked the New Hampshire penchant for knocking down front-runners near the end of campaigns. That was something he was unable to do in the 2008 campaign, when he lost a lead in the polls and then lost the primary to John McCain.

But given his consistently strong polling, he must win by a substantial margin in order to be viewed as a strong front-runner moving forward. If his win turns out to be a narrow one, he will have fallen short of expectations.

“Regardless of the outcome in New Hampshire,” said Romney spokesman Ryan Williams, the former Massachusetts governor “is prepared for a long, drawn out nominating process.”

He said Romney has run the New Hampshire race “as if he is behind” and his campaign is prepared with a big get-out-the-vote effort.

“Since Thursday afternoon,” Williams said, “we have made 150,0000 phone calls and knocked on 15,000 doors.”

Romney, several of his supporters have said, learned a lesson from 2008 and never took New Hampshire for granted.

THE BAIN ISSUE. Still, the attacks on Romney intensified Monday, focusing on his role as chief executive of the venture capitalist firm Bain Capital.

A pro-Gingrich political action committee called Winning Our Future, comprising Gingrich supporters but unrelated to the Gingrich campaign, previewed a 30-minute “documentary” detailing the formerly Romney-led Bain's practice of taking over troubled companies, and in some cases, shutting them down, leaving employees without jobs.

Democrats joined in by producing a man who said he was laid off after Bain took over a paper product company in Indiana in 1995.

Gingrich, after meeting with employees of Public Service of New Hampshire in Manchester's Millyard, said that “within the next week or so, Governor Romney is going to have to have a fairly long press conference and he's going to have to answer a lot of questions.”

Gingrich noted a Wall Street Journal report on Monday that examined 77 businesses Bain invested in while Romney led the firm from its 1984 start until early 1999 and found that “22 percent either filed for bankruptcy reorganization or closed their doors by the end of the eighth year after Bain first invested, sometimes with substantial job losses. An additional 8 percent ran into so much trouble that all of the money Bain invested was lost.”

“There are legitimate questions,” said Gingrich. “There are going to be more of those questions and some, Governor Romney will have to answer. It's a legitimate question about exactly what happened, where did the money go, who got the money, what happened to the people involved.”

Gingrich said he has not been “going negative” on Romney, simply drawing distinctions by calling himself a “bold Reagan conservative” and Romney a “timid Massachusetts moderate."

He said a pro-Romney political action committee attacked him relentlessly in Iowa while Romney said that a candidate needs “broad shoulders” and an ability “to stand the heat.”

“Fine. I have broad shoulders. I can stand the heat,” said Gingrich. “Now we'll see if he has broad shoulders and if he can stand the heat."

He said he campaign's charges are “factual,” and, “I would say publicly if there is anything being done by anybody supporting me that is not factually accurate, they should change it.

“A large part of his record is in the private sector, a large part of the reason he's been a candidate is he's put millions of dollars of his own money in, so it's legitimate to say: Where did the money come from?” he said.

Gingrich said he is “totally for capitalism” and “people making investments.”

But, he said, “What you have to raise questions about is if somebody goes out and invests a certain amount of money, say $30 million and takes in about $180 million -- a six-to-one return -- and then the company goes bankrupt.

“I have to ask the question: Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money, or is that somehow a little bit of a flawed system?” Gingrich said.

“I do draw a distinction between looting a company, leaving behind broken families and broken neighborhoods and leaving behind a (closed) factory that should be there,” said Gingrich.

Romney spokesman Williams responded, “It is sad when any American loses their job. Under President Obama, 25 million Americans are out of work, under-employed or have stopped looking for work.”

Williams said, “It's puzzling to see speaker Gingrich and his supporters continue their attacks on free enterprise. This is the type of criticism we've come to expect from President Obama and his liberal allies at Moveon.org. Unlike President Obama and speaker Gingrich, Mitt Romney spent his career in business and knows what it will take to turn around our nation's bad economy.”

Gingrich said he is not affiliated with Winning Our Future and “have not talked to them at all.” He said he has spoken with supporter Sheldon Adelson, a friend of Gingrich who has reportedly given $5 million to the PAC, but “not in a good while.”

But, said Gingrich, “If he wants to counter-balance Romney's millionaires, I have no objection to him counter-balancing Romney's millionaires, and anybody else, by the way, who would like to counter-balance Romney's millionaires, I would have no objection.”

Romney added fuel to the Bain-related fire when he said in Nashua, speaking in favor of having insurance companies provide individualized services, said, “That means that the insurance companies will have an incentive to keep you healthy. It also means if you don't like what they do, you can fire them."

Romney then said, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn't give me the good service I need, I want to say I'm going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me.”

Although Romney was talking about consumers being able to “fire” their insurance companies if dissatisfied, Huntsman tried to capitalize on the phrase.

“Gov. Romney enjoys firing people, I enjoy creating jobs,”Huntsman said in Concord. “It may be that he's slightly out of touch with the economic reality playing out in America, and that's a dangerous place for someone to be.”

Santorum wouldn't bite.

“We try to hire good people, we try to keep them employed,” he said in Salem, according to The Washington Post. “If someone is obviously not performing their duty and their mission, obviously a business has a responsibility for the greater good of the business and the other employees to make sure that everybody there is pulling their weight,” Santorum said.

According to the Post, when Santorum was asked whether Romney's corporate takeover experience at Bain Capital would be a liability, he said, “I'm not making it a liability. I believe in the private sector.”

(Earlier updates and the full Jan. 5 Granite Status follow.)

FRIDAY, JAN. 5, UPDATE: GARDNER SPEAKS. Secretary of State Bill Gardner told the Granite Status this afternoon he expects 325,000 Granite Staters to go to the polls for the first-in-the-nation primary on Tuesday.

That's an overall turnout projection of 42.2 percent of the 769,183 voters on the latest checklist, as of Jan. 4.

Four years ago, when both parties had contested primaries, 529,711 voted.

Gardner predicts that 250,000 Granite Staters will vote in this year's GOP primary and 75,000 will vote in the Democratic primary, in which President Barack Obama is running unopposed by any major challenger.

Gardner could not say specifically what percentages of the turnout in the GOP primary will be registered Republican and how many will enter the polling places undeclared.

But he said that four years ago, 75,522 of the 241,039 who voted in the Republican primary entered the polling places undeclared and took a Republican ballot and registered as Republicans. He said 121,515 of the 288,672 who voted in the 2008 Democratic primary entered the polling places undeclared and became Democrats for the purposes of voting.

Many, but not all, of those voters, when exercised the option of returning to undeclared status.

Undeclared voters can vote in either primary, but voters registered as Republicans or Democrats cannot vote in the other party's primary.

Gardner said the largest overall turnout for a primary in which only one party was having a contested race came in 1996, when 210,211 Republicans voted in a contested primary and 93,044 Democrats voted when Democrat Bill Clinton was seeking renomination.

In 2004, when Republican George W. Bush was seeking renomination, 69,414 Republican voted in their uncontested primary and 221,309 Democrats voted in their contested primary.

New Hampshire actually has fewer registered voters on its checklist than last year. Under a state law, town checklist supervisors must purge their lists every 10 years to insure overall accuracy and that there are no duplicates from town to town.

The process carried out last year dropped the number names on the checklist from 929,200 in March 2011 to 765,979 on Aug. 31, 2011, a drop of 163,221 voters.

Gardner said that of the 769,183 on the Jan. 4 checklist, there are 314,278, or 41 percent, undeclared; 232,133, or 30 percent, Republicans, and 222,772 or 29 percent Democrats.

(Earlier updates and the full Jan. 5 Granite Status follows.)

THURSDAY, JAN. 5, UPDATE: BOB TAKES ON MITT, RICK. A top Newt Gingrich supporter not only took aim at Mitt Romney as a weak, flip-flopping “Massachusetts moderate” Thursday, but also raised questions about the ideological purity of Gingrich conservative rival Rick Santorum.

Former New Hampshire U.S. Sen. Bob Smith, after unloading on Romney, urged anti-Romney conservatives to coalesce behind the former House speaker, calling him the most credible candidate to lead a conservative charge against Romney in the final days of the New Hampshire Primary campaign and beyond.

“Who is seasoned?” asked Smith. “Newt is the leader, the visionary. He's the guy who hatched the revolution that put these (Republican U.S. House members) in power.

“We'd still be in the minority in Congress if it weren't for Newt Gingrich,” said Smith, who has temporarily returned to New Hampshire from his home in Florida to help with the Gingrich campaign.

Gingrich has limited most of his criticism to Romney. A new campaign television ad Thursday compared Romney's "timid" economic plan to Gingrich's "bold" leadership.

But the political reality is that conservative support is scattered among the former speaker, Santorum and Ron Paul.

Smith said that Paul supporters, with their libertarian tendencies, are unlikely to jump ship, and Rick Perry isn't seriously running in New Hampshire, so the race to become the conservative alternative to Romney boils down to Gingrich versus Santorum.

A split by conservatives between Santorum and Gingrich _ with some going to Paul _ only helps Romney.

In an example Thursday, two leading liberty movement activists backed Santorum, while a leading Tea Party activist backed Paul.

Jerry DeLemus, chairman of the Granite State Liberty Patriots political action committee and a former backer of now-exited candidate Michele Bachmann, gave his personal endorsement to Santorum. DeLemus's wife, state Rep. Susan DeLemus, did the same.

Also Thursday, Jane Aitken of Bedford, founder of the New Hampshire Tea Party Coalition, backed Paul.

Recently, Jerry DeLemus's predessor as chair of the GSLP PAC, former state GOP chair Jack Kimball, backed Gingrich.

► Click here to view our Primary photo galleries.

Gingrich, campaigning in Plymouth, refused to attack Santorum, calling him “a fine person.”

But surrogate Smith, while not attacking Santorum, did question the former Pennsylvania senator's loyalty to the conservative cause.

“If you're a conservative voter and you're trying to make a decision, it's your call. But I'm going to go with a proven entity,” said Smith.

Santorum, said Smith “is a good conservative, a good guy.”

But he said, “You can have the right ideas but sometimes you get pushed to the point where you really need to show whether you mean it or not.”

Smith said that when Santorum supported liberal Republican (and eventual Democrat) Arlen Specter over conservative Pat Toomey in the 2004 Pennsylvania U.S. Senate primary, “it was an example where he could have taken his philosophy and put it to work and he went in the wrong direction.”

Smith noted that Santorum partially explained his support for Specter by saying Specter was the incumbent. But Smith then pointed out that in his own 2002 primary battle against John E. Sununu, which incumbent Smith lost, then-Senator Santorum backed Sununu.

“I never made a big deal about it,” said Smith. “It's history. I'm not whining about it. It's over.

“But when he supported John Sununu in the primary over me, that was really unprecedented.”

“It was a chance where Rick could have stood up and said, ‘My principles first. I like Bob Smith. He was there for me.'

“You've got to be able to stand up for these principles,” said Smith.

Smith has had his own controversy with the GOP over the years.

After briefly running for the GOP nomination for President, he left the party in 1999 feeling that the party was not true to conservative principles and was “bending” to the Democrats. He rejoined later, saying he had never actually changed his party registration.

Two years after he was defeated by Sununu, Smith wrote a letter to Democrat John Kerry in 2004 saying he endorsed him for President.

Last month, Smith said he never truly supported Kerry but was “angry at the Bush administration for subtly supporting Sununu.

"I'm not proud of that and I did a stupid thing,” Smith said.

Romney was on the receiving end of most of Smith's fire.

He said Romney was elected governor by “changing his view on abortion, raising taxes” and supporting “Romneycare.”

“We need a contrast between President Obama and our Republican nominee,” Smith said. “And it has to be a conservative contrast. It can't be muddy or unclear.”

Citing what he called a liberal Romney record as governor, Smith said, “I don't know how the Republican Party can nominate a guy like that and expect to win.”

Smith pointed out that in the Iowa caucus, “75 percent of the Republican voters voted against Romney. They picked other conservative candidates. That's the key.” Gingrich finished fourth with 13 percent.

He said Gingrich has been attacked as “unfit and stable by (Romney) surrogates up here, including (former Gov.) John Sununu. He was mocked by Governor Romney when the speaker lost it a little bit when the Speaker was talking about his mother.”

Smith said that if Romney wanted to show any leadership, he would have called on the SuperPAC supporting him to take down attack ads against Gingrich.

Although Romney cannot by law communicate with the Super PAC, Smith said the candidate could have publicly expressed his disapproval of the attack ads.

“He can say, ‘I didn't like the fact that they're lying in these ads,” said Smith. “Thats' a pretty poor excuse to say, ‘I didn't coordinate it.'”

Smith was joined on the conference call by former Ohio U.S. Rep. Bob McEwen, who railed against Romney, at one point calling him “Obama-lite.”

(The full Jan. 5 Granite Status follows.)

THURSDAY, JAN. 5: MITT FLIES HIGH, BUT.... Mitt Romney is flying high in New Hampshire in this final week of the campaign. Perhaps too high for his own good.

With the latest New Hampshire polls showing him with more than double the support of his closest rival, Romney can't escape the expectation that he should not only win the first-in-the-nation primary next Tuesday, but that anything less than a double-digit victory margin would be an under-performance and a sign of weakness in what is supposed to be his stronghold, his catapult to the nomination.

After all, Romney is far more well-known in this state than any of his rivals. He's from Massachusetts. He has a home in Wolfeboro. He ran for President in 2008 and kept in close touch with the state in the intervening years. He has been revving up his campaign here for more than a year.

The first post-Iowa caucus poll of New Hampshire GOP primary voters (surveying those who were watching the caucus results) put Romney at one of his best showings yet — 47 percent. That was a full 30 percentage points ahead of second-place candidate Ron Paul's 17 percent, with Jon Huntsman at 13 percent, surprise Iowa virtual co-winner Rick Santorum at 10 percent and Newt Gingrich at 9 percent.

The 2012 primary, then, should be a race for second place. Santorum, in an interview yesterday, said it well:

“New Hampshire can make a huge statement here. New Hampshire can choose the conservative alternative (to Romney) and that's really what this is about.”



True. New Hampshire will likely have a large say — and possibly the final say — in who will be “The Romney Alternative” as the race moves on to South Carolina next Wednesday morning, and then later to Florida.

Who will break out of the pack to challenge Romney? Will it be Santorum, Gingrich, or Paul? Or will Huntsman finish second and set himself up as a more moderate (than the others) alternative?

And what of Rick Perry, who is staying in the race despite a horrendous showing in Iowa and despite a decision to skip New Hampshire and head directly to South Carolina (with a quick return for the two New Hampshire debates this weekend)? His only hope is that Romney wins so resoundingly here that all of the potential alternatives are damaged severely, giving him life.

Michele Bachmann dropped out of the race yesterday after she finished the Iowa caucus behind everyone but Huntsman, who did not campaign there.

The two weekend New Hampshire debates could go a long way in setting the stage for the vote.

But it should not be conceded that it's going to be an “all-Romney” election night.

Remember the expectations game.

If someone else breaks out of the pack and comes close to Romney — within 10 percentage points or less — then Romney loses even if he wins. He exits here a damaged front-runner and the race is wide open heading south.

In short, with this kind of polling lead, any win is not a win this time around for Romney. He has to win convincingly.

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THE REAL THING? Santorum, fresh off of his first-place tie with Romney in Iowa, knows his bounce only goes so far in New Hampshire, which rarely follows Iowa's lead.

He isn't unknown in these parts. He and his organization, under the direction of national campaign manager Mike Biundo of Manchester, has worked quietly and hard to build a strong organization.

The next few days will tell whether or not he has finally caught on here.

Earlier this week, a poll of New Hampshire had him where he has been all year — in the 5 percent range.

The Tuesday night CNN poll, released yesterday, indicated his support had doubled to 10 percent.

Santorum sees the momentum continuing, expects Romney and Paul to continue beating on Gingrich, with Gingrich fighting back.

Santorum doesn't know what his rivals have in store for him, but he said he can withstand charges that he supported earmarks as a senator.

“It's a constitutionally permitted practice and it isn't necessarily a horrible thing,” he said. “They can try to beat me up as being too liberal, but, wait a minute, it wasn't too long ago I was supposedly too conservative. So I don't know where they will go with me.”

Santorum said he has made 30 trips to New Hampshire over the past year and has nearly 30 state representatives in his camp.

“We feel very good,” he said. “I feel like we have laid the groundwork, we have paid attention to New Hampshire and we have done our homework.

“If we can finish third, that's a damn good place to be, and I think we have a chance of finishing second,” he said. “If we have a similar bump in the next poll, we're ahead” of all but Romney.

“We feel we can lead the (non-Romney) pack or finish second in that pack. An overall third place would be remarkable, candidly. Six days ago we were at 4 percent in the polls. If we can finish with 15, that's not quite the meteoric rise we had in Iowa, but we had a little bit longer to do it there.”

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NEWT IN THE GAME. Gingrich, with his new get-tough approach against Romney and with the editorial page endorsement of this newspaper, should not be ruled out and remains, with Santorum, the leading potential conservative alternative to Romney.

One GOP activist told us, “If it wasn't for the Union Leader's support for Gingrich, Santorum would have a decent shot at coalescing the conservatives, but I expect Newt will be bolstered by the Union Leader.”

Paul, with his fired-up organization, could be the second-place finisher. But even if he is, the national media will likely to continue to discount him as an unelectable potential nominee.

Will anyone drop out if he has an unexpectedly poor showing after New Hampshire? Probably not, although if Huntsman finishes fourth or worse, where does he go, having bet entirely on New Hampshire?

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THE BIUNDO EFFECT. No one knows where this Iowa bounce will take Santorum, but for now, credit goes at least in part to Biundo, who could be on the verge of his biggest election night yet.

He most recently directed Frank Guinta's congressional campaign and previously, Guinta's two wins as Manchester's mayor.

He got his start in presidential politics in 1996 as Pat Buchanan's deputy New Hampshire director, responsible for coalition-building. Buchanan built a tenacious “peasants with pitchforks” ground game, but, unlike Santorum, had the editorial endorsement of the Union Leader when he won a narrow primary victory over Bob Dole, the establishment candidate with all the big name endorsements. But Dole was not nearly the candidate that Romney is.

With Santorum, “We have been doing voter ID work since July,” Biundo said, “making all the phone calls, following up with mail and doing all the things you need to do to build momentum.

“I don't think Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina can be bought,” he said. “In these early states, you need to really to work with the grassroots folks. They are so much more important than money.”

Getting big-name endorsements, he said, means far less than help from people who talk to their friends and family, who volunteer to make phone calls and go door-to-door.

Romney has done all of that, in addition to getting the big name endorsements and having enough money for a strong television ad program.

“In New Hampshire, and we just saw in Iowa, that grassroots type of stuff matters,” Biundo said.

Biundo said his goal is simply to have Santorum exceed the media's expectations.

“If we do that,” he said, “it's a win.”

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THE McCAIN ENDORSEMENT. So, what does John McCain's endorsement of Romney yesterday really mean?

McCain four years ago seemed to enjoy leveling scathing criticism at then-rival Romney. He called him a flip-flopper on “literally every major issue” and noted that in the 1990s, Romney said he did not want to return to the days of Reagan-Bush.

But times have changed.

Yesterday, McCain told the Granite Status that after their battle for the nomination four years ago, “we got together and spent time together and campaigned together and we developed a very strong relationship.”

He said he seriously considered Romney as a running mate.

McCain said Romney has “the background, the qualifications and the knowledge to address the issues facing our economy.”

McCain would not predict the margin of Romney's win in New Hampshire “because every one of these ‘flavors of the month' candidates who have popped up, we thought would be the challenge to Romney and it turned out it hasn't been.”

But, McCain said, given Romney's “very strong roots” in New Hampshire, “it's less likely that there will be an upset here. I don't think you will see any serious erosion of his base, and after all, a win is a win. Eight votes is a win.”

McCain said Romney's steadiness as others have risen and fallen “is going to have some effect. I'm happy where he is. I think he can do well, but one thing both he and I have learned is you don't take a single vote for granted.”

A long-time McCain supporter told the Status McCain “feels like he owes Mitt Romney after helping him out so much after the 2008 primary.” Romney endorsed McCain just more than a month later.

The supporter said the McCain endorsement could actually hurt Romney by reinforcing the message that he is the “establishment” candidate and in fact a moderate.

The supporter said Huntsman probably has the most to lose since much of his support is coming from more moderate Republicans and independents.

“If John McCain is able to swing any votes Romney's way, it will be from Jon Huntsman,” the supporter said.

Biundo of Santorum's campaign said that while McCain retains “a lot of good will” in the state, “times have changed, the country is in a different position and the mood of the Republican Party is in a different position.”

Meanwhile yesterday, a pro-Gingrich Super PAC, Winning Our Future, recycled a web ad McCain used against Romney in 2008.

Entitled “Two Mitts,” the ad focuses on mixed Romney messages over the years on abortion, guns and “on being Republican.”

The ad says that Romney's flip-flops have been “masterpieces.”

The end of the ad shows McCain saying, the required disclaimer: “I'm John McCain and I approve this message.”

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“DEBATE THE DEBATE.” Jennifer Horn's We the People conservative grassroots group tonight is hosting a pre-primary forum at Southern New Hampshire University's Walker Auditorium at 7 p.m.

Seating is free but should be reserved by contacting the group.

Featured guests are U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, Fox News editor Fred Barnes, former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, founder of the advocacy group Defend Your Health and conservative pollster Kellyanne Conway.

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JACK BACKS OVIDE. In a brief break from presidential politics, UnionLeader.com yesterday was first to report that former state Republican Party chairman Jack Kimball endorsed Manchester attorney Ovide Lamontagne for governor.

Lamontagne, a former U.S. Senate candidate, and Kevin Smith, former executive director of the conservative issues group Cornerstone Action, are the two Republicans who have so far announced their candidacies.

Democratic former state Sen. Maggie Hassan is also an announced candidate to succeed the retiring Gov. John Lynch.

Kimball ran for governor in 2010, losing the GOP nomination to John Stephen, and then served as party chairman until earlier this year. He is a leading Tea Party activist in the state.

Kimball called Lamontagne “business friendly” and said he “understands what is required to create an environment where small businesses can flourish.”

He also cited Lamontagne's pro-life, pro-Second Amendment and pro-10th Amendment positions. He called Lamontagne “a man of honor and integrity” and asked “all conservative and liberty-loving voters to get behind Ovide in this critically important election.”

John DiStaso is senior political reporter of the New Hampshire Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News.