The Week in Review for Oct. 15: Raising Cain

The debate Tuesday evening at Dartmouth College helped continued solidify Mitt Romney at the top of the Republican heap, but it raised the profile of businessman Herman Cain.

While Romney took the usual shots from opponents and didn’t do himself any damage, an enormous amount of attention was paid to Cain, in particular over his 9-9-9 economic plan of a 9 percent corporate tax and a 9 percent national sales tax.

Check out what our Facebook friends have to say about the 9-9-9 plan here.

Both Romney and Cain entered the debate on a surge of confidence: Romney from the twin endorsements of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Granite State U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg, and Cain from two statewide polls that showed him running in N.H. in the No. 2 spot behind Romney.

The post-debate buzz, in fact, vaulted Cain over Romney in a couple of national polls.

The question is whether Cain can maintain the momentum -- as others before him had, but lost.

Some observers believe -- our John Sullivan, for example -- that Romney winning the New Hampshire primary is a foregone conclusion.

Candidates in the House

Five GOP candidates for president took time on Wednesday to address members of the New Hampshire House.

Cain, Michele Bachmann, Gary Johnson, Jon Huntsman and Newt Gingrich each had about 10 minutes to state their case.

Both Bachmann and Gingrich took the opportunity to back local Republican efforts to make New Hampshire the 23rd right-to-work state in the country, which elicited some boos from union supporters in the gallery.

There was some speculation that the House might take up Gov. John Lynch’s veto of the right-to-work legislation, but that didn’t happen … again.

House Speaker William O’Brien has left open the option of taking it up in January before the House opens its session for 2012.

House overrides sprinkler veto

For the fourth time this year, the House overrode and passed into law another Lynch veto.

This time it was the law that prohibits cities and towns from requiring the installation of fire sprinklers in certain residential dwellings.

Lynch had vetoed it; the House override vote was 266-61.

Budget revision will wait on Senate

The House also met this week to tweak the state budget.

SB 198 would fix a glitch in the state budget intended to cut state welfare benefits to those families that also get federal Supplemental Security Income checks.

O’Brien’s successfully attached to the bill a permanent ban on renewing marital masters after their two-year appointments.

When a master’s appointment ends, judicial administrators would have to to either seek from a legislative oversight panel permission to convert him or her to a full-time judge or be out of a job.

But the Senate won’t take up the measure until it reconvenes in January, worrying some that the savings intended in the bill won’t occur.

Poll: Keep gay marriage

A vast majority of New Hampshire residents seem happy enough with the state’s gay marriage law to the extent they don’t want it repealed.

A new WMUR Granite State Poll released this week shows only 27 percent of New Hampshire adults support the repeal of the 2009 law that legalized same-sex marriages.

The Republican-controlled Legislature will bring the law up for repeal in the upcoming 2012 session.

“Strong opponents of repealing same-sex marriage continue outnumber strong proponents by more than 2 to 1,” said Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center, which did the poll.

“The New Hampshire public is not showing any strong desire to repeal this law.”

On the calendar

Registration at the Secretary of State’s office opens on Monday for candidates wishing to file for the presidential primary.

The filing period runs through Oct. 28 and information is here.

Secretary of State William Gardner has yet to decide just when the primary is going to be.

He said this week it could be as early as Dec. 6, 2011 -- in keeping with the first-in-the-nation mandate -- because he doesn’t want it to bump too closely to the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3 and the Nevada caucuses on Jan. 14.

On Thursday, the campaigns of Jon Huntsman, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann all said they would boycott Nevada unless its caucus date is changed.

Is the fix in?

The LFDA provided coverage on Thursday of a New Hampshire Institute of Politics forum on America's fiscal crisis, and how the political climate in Washington contributes to it.

A panel of experts offered ideas on how to fix this financial crisis, so check some of our videohere.

See you next week? Hope so.