{"id":659617,"date":"2010-02-09T19:04:04","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T00:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com\/?p=10892"},"modified":"2010-02-09T19:04:04","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T00:04:04","slug":"battle-for-gregg%e2%80%99s-seat-sparks-intense-gop-primary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/659617","title":{"rendered":"Battle for Gregg\u2019s Seat Sparks Intense GOP Primary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New polling suggests former New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte (R) has a good shot at knocking off Democrat Paul Hodes for the state&#8217;s U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Judd Gregg (R), who is retiring. However, the Granite state&#8217;s GOP primary may prove no picnic for Ayotte.<\/p>\n<p>A WMUR\/University of New Hampshire survey shows Ayotte leading Hodes 41% to 33%. The poll, conducted from January 27th through February 3rd, surveyed 444 likely general election voters and carried a margin of error of +\/- 4.7%.<\/p>\n<p>The Real Clear Politics Average, a compilation of polls widely consulted by political professionals, also has Ayotte up by nearly 8 points.<\/p>\n<p>However, Granite state Republicans tell Fox News the GOP primary is far from locked up. As one insider put it, the contest is &#8220;a competitive race among politically astute voters where the winner will have less than 100,000 votes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Other Republicans in the race include Ovide Lamontagne, a 1996 Republican gubernatorial nominee, and William Binnie, a wealthy industrialist who has already put more than a million dollars into his campaign. Indeed, at this early stage, Binnie has begun airing television ads, trying to introduce himself to voters.<\/p>\n<p>New Hampshire Republicans profess themselves happy with the competition, though, with one party operative telling Fox News: &#8220;All the heat and interest will be on our side.  It&#8217;s a good way to get our base excited, as if [President] Obama hasn&#8217;t already done enough of that.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New polling suggests former New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte (R) has a good shot at knocking off Democrat Paul Hodes for the state&#8217;s U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Judd Gregg (R), who is retiring. However, the Granite state&#8217;s GOP primary may prove no picnic for Ayotte. A WMUR\/University of New Hampshire survey shows [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2919,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-659617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2LAZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2919"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}