Tagged: Primary 2012

Colin Van Ostern won the Democratic nomination for the District 2 chair on the Executive Council.  The district includes the Concord area, and stretches from Vermont to the coast.
 
He beat opponent John Shea, who held a seat on the Council from 2006 to 2010.

Van Ostern says the Council’s decision last June to cut funding to Planned Parenthood spurred him to run.  But he made his campaign about the economy.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of last night was not that Democrat Jackie Cilley lost to her rival Maggie, Hassan, but by how big a margin. What was supposed to be a close race turned out to be a run-away.

This primary season the question has been: will democrats elect a candidate who hasn’t pledged to veto an income or sales tax? From the outset, Cilley has made not taking such a pledge the centerpiece of her campaign.

But with the very first poll returns it was clear that Cilley was in for a rough night. Later she took the podium to concede the race.

If Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jackie Cilley thought being a Berlin native would give her a crucial edge in the North Country she was wrong.

Cilley did win in Berlin but her 546 votes were only 56 percent of the total.

Down the road in neighboring Gorham she snared 55 percent of the votes.

But it was downhill from there despite spending five consecutive days touring the North Country from Littleton to Colebrook and Pittsburg and then over to Berlin and the communities along the Androscoggin River.

In Littleton she got only 35 percent of the vote.

With 94 of 112 precincts reporting veteran Executive Councilor Ray Burton of Bath has about 71 percent of the votes, easily rebuffing challenger Jerry Thibodeau of Rumney.

Burton had almost 14,500 votes compared to about 5,800 for Thibodeau.

Burton effortlessly put down a revolt by some Republican representatives in the North Country who thought he was too moderate and urged his defeat.

In November Burton will face Democrat Beth Funicella.

"My name is Ovide Lamontagne, the toughest name in politics. But tonight you made it a winning name."

To shouts of "Ovide," Lamontagne has accepted Kevin Smith's concession and the Republican nomination for gubernatorial candidate.

The crowd is psyched up, standing shoulder to shoulder in the hall. When asked if it's the New Hampshire way to increase spending by double digits, the crowd shouts back a resounding "No!"

With most of the voting day over some North Country election officials are figuring it won’t take long to count votes tonight.

NHPR’s Chris Jensen reports.

John Miller, the deputy moderator for the town of Bethlehem, says it has been a typical primary election for local candidates.

“The turnout so far has been very, very low.”

By about 4:30 roughly 250 of the 1600 or so registered voters in this Northern Grafton town had voted, Miller said.

He figured there were slightly more Republicans than Democrats voting.

See all contested race results: Governor | U.S. Congress | Executive Council | State Senate | State House

As voting in today's primary gets underway NHPR's Chris Jensen visits a polling place in Coos County.

Sound of voters being registered..

While state officials are predicting a somewhat light turnout for the primary there are folks who say there is no such thing as an unimportant election.

One of those is 93-year-old Fay Allin who slowly but steadily made her way through town hall in Lancaster Tuesday morning, slipped into the voting booth and emerged a few minutes later.