Kelly Ayotte: New Hampshire Senate
Kelly Ayotte, the recently retired attorney general of New Hampshire, has one major thing going for her this election season: running for a seat held for the past 17 years by Republican Judd Gregg, she can't be labeled a Washington insider. Ayotte's biggest challenge as the new Republican candidate will be learning on the fly, as she has no experience running for elective office. But her status also carries benefits — as a newcomer, she has no real voting history to examine. Her Democratic opponent Paul Hodes looks good on paper, having worked with a pre–Supreme Court David Souter in New Hampshire and having been the state's first prosecutor to incarcerate white collar criminals. His margin of victory as a U.S. Representative was higher in his second election than his first, and he even voted against bailing out the financial industry in 2008, which most voters now see as a positive. But this season, he has trailed Ayotte in the polls since July. New Hampshire voters from both parties are notoriously opposed to taxes, a quality that should especially help Republicans during a time of economic hardship.