Ayotte's win and what it means in NH

It's a bit of an enigma, this skin-of-the-teeth win by Kelly Ayotte over Ovide Lamontagne for the Republican nomination in New Hampshire's U.S. Senate race.

To hear the pundits tell it, this is the year of the anti-establishment, the anti-status quo. This is the year that voters who are mad as hell and can't take it any more are going to the right of right to make their ballot choices.

But leave it to New Hampshire to confound the conventional thinking.

That Lamontagne would surge toward the end of a contentious campaign among Republican Senate hopefuls isn't too much of a surprise.

He represented the conventional thinking that the conservatives would hold forth. Lamontagne, a Manchester lawyer, had the endorsement of the conservative Tea Party. And he stayed above the cat fights that embroiled Ayotte and Bill Binnie and, to a lesser extent, Jim Bender.

Ayotte represented the establishment. For years she had been part of the political fabric as the state's attorney general for two governors, one a Republican and one a Democrat. She had the endorsement of retiring U.S. Sen. Gregg himself, U.S. Sen. John McCain and the Republican Senate Campaign Committee. You can't get more politically established than that.

But she also had the endorsement of Sarah Palin and the motivational power of her conservative national agenda.

It wasn't like Palin to endorse the so-called establishment candidates. And it wasn't like Palin to also endorse candidates who hadn't also been endorsed by the Tea Party. But there it was: Ayotte with the double whammy endorsement of the establishment and anti-establishment.

In the end it was Ayotte squeaking by Lamontagne by a margin of 1,667 votes.

A surprise?

Not totally, not when you also add in the Charlie Bass factor.

Here was another establishment politician, a moderate Republican no less, who won the Republican nomination for the U.S. House in the 2nd Congressional District.

Bass is a former six-term congressman -- a been there, done that, want to do it again veteran. And he beat his closest rival -- Jennifer Horn -- by 6 percentage points.

Then there's Frank Guinta, who established his political credentials as former mayor of Manchester. He bested a large field of Republican newcomers and political outsiders in the 1st Congressional District

The evidence would suggest that Republican voters want experience. Look no further than the GOP nomination of John Stephen to take on Gov. John Lynch. Stephen has been around the political landscape as the former state commissioner of health and human services.

Unlike other areas of the country, the Granite State GOP voters didn't want total outsiders taking on the Democrat incumbents.

November will tell if they chose wisely.