GOP lawmaker recants Ayotte endorsement
A Republican lawmaker from Rochester has asked Sen. Kelly Ayotte to remove his name from a list of New Hampshire residents who have endorsed her re-election bid.
“For what it is worth,” state Rep. Don Leeman wrote in a message that he posted on Ayotte’s Facebook page, “I do not recall giving Senator Ayotte my endorsement for another term. However, I now see she is using my name as an endorser!”
Leeman’s name was included in a November press release, distributed by Ayotte’s campaign, that identified over 750 individuals supporting the incumbent Republican.
“While I will certainly vote for her if she is the Republican Nominee,” he explained, “I am respectfully requesting that my name be removed from the list that has been circulated… unless proof can be presented that I ‘signed on’ as an endorser.”
No Republicans have publicly announced plans to take on Ayotte but some conservative activists, upset with her voting record in the senate, have signaled support for a primary challenge. One group, led by former state House Speaker Bill O’Brien, organized a closed-door meeting in November to weigh the effort required to mount a successful challenge.
“If Kelly Ayotte had been doing her job, if she had been voting the way she told us she was going to, this meeting wouldn’t happen,” O’Brien told WMUR. “Let’s make sure we have the answers about support, financials, grassroots and so forth to make sure that it can be done, and then we’ll choose a candidate.”
For his part, Leeman conceded that he is not certain if the campaign mistakenly identified him as a supporter or if he had, in fact, endorsed her earlier in the year. “This past year has certainly been an extremely busy one for me, and it is possible that I did give her ‘the nod,’ “ he wrote. “But at this point in time I do not remember having done any such thing.”