Election Results
We finally have results from the NH House and Senate races. These results are still unofficial, however, so they may potentially change. The backlash against Republicans due to national issues made it extremely challenging for all of our candidates, significantly limiting our victories. Yet despite these overwhelming odds, our candidates were able to move the State House towards liberty by winning a Senate seat, and 20 House seats! Although we wish all of our candidates had won, this is an incredible step in the right direction.
In this prolonged battle for freedom, we held our losses down, and managed to gain ground in the House. We unfortunately lost two great incumbents - Jason Bedrick (in the primary), and Gregory Sorg. Their leadership will be sorely missed, but we will be ready to help them again in 2010. We fortunately retained the majority (nine) of our incumbents - Paul Ingbretson, Nancy Elliott, Lars Christiansen, Russ Ober, Andy Renzullo, John Reagan, James Headd, Gary Daniels, and Dan Itse. This group of experienced Representatives will provide valuable leadership to the group of eleven non-incumbents that prevailed - Frank Sapareto, Frank Holden, Bob Mead, William O’Brien, Calvin Pratt, Jenn Coffey, Carol McGuire, Will Smith, David Bates, Don VanPatten, and Tim Comerford. The NH GOP as a whole gained 17 seats in the House - so most of those were due to NH Liberty PAC endorsed candidates who either held their current seats, or gained new seats!!&! nbsp;
In the Senate, we were extremely pleased to have Bill Denley win his seat (formerly held by Joe Kenney)! He’s got a great record as a former house Representative, and we look forward to his leadership in the Senate. Our other candidates were fighting in extremely difficult districts against incumbents, and were mainly first-time candidates. Despite the overwhelming odds, Andy Sanborn managed to get within 4% of victory! And Chris Callahan managed to get to 38% in the die-hard liberal Portsmouth district. Similar strong performances by our candidates has sent a great message to the NH GOP - liberty is a message that resonates with voters, and will be the key in regaining majority status in NH.
These victories were made possible by numerous generous donations and hard work by volunteers. Everyone in NH owes a big debt to the folks that donated and volunteered to ensure our liberties are protected and expanded. A special thanks goes out to Ron Paul’s Liberty PAC for their direct contributions to our candidates, and the generous donation that made our direct mail efforts possible. But most of all, we owe so much to all the candidates who stepped forward to run, putting themselves on the front line!