Centrist view obscured in N.H.

Bounced out of Congress in the 2006 Democratic sweep in New Hampshire, former Republican Rep. Charlie Bass is trying to win back his narrowly divided district in November.

He's still a bellwether candidate. But Charlie Bass has changed.

The old version, the one who didn't believe he would lose until the day it happened, was a traditional New England Republican, moderate in substance and style.

The new Charlie Bass is full of fight. He accuses President Obama of "coddling terrorists" and advancing "extremist" policies, like the Wall Street overhaul bill now facing a Republican filibuster threat on the Senate floor. Bass said recently of "tea party" activists, "God bless every single one of them. Their agenda is exactly the same as mine."

But for a career politician who served on Capitol Hill for a dozen years, addressing serious policy questions with people who profess to hold zero faith in the federal government can get awkward. Bass's challenge is to recraft his image in a way that will defang his conservative Republican opponents yet stay true enough to his centrist self to win back the crucial independent voters who defected to his Democratic opponent in 2006.

New Hampshire's vulnerability to political waves was again demonstrated four years ago, when Bass and the state's other congressman, Rep. Jeb Bradley, a Republican, lost House races to Democratic newcomers. In 2008, Republican Sen. John Sununu was defeated by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and the Granite State backed Obama over Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, for president.

This year, Republicans are targeting both House districts and an open Senate seat created by the retirement of Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, part of a national effort to wrest back control of Congress.

Democratic candidates are keeping close tabs on Bass and other GOP candidates, hoping here, as elsewhere, that general-election voters will reject the fiery anti-government rhetoric of Republican primary battles.

Bass's two GOP opponents are more biting than he is. Former talk-radio host Jennifer Horn greeted a Republican dinner Thursday with the line, "Friends, we have a Congress that is crushing the American dream." Robert Giuda, a former state representative and now a United Airlines Boeing 777 captain, told the same crowd of small-town party activists, "This president and this Congress are the enemy of a free republic."

Bass is content to try to reposition himself as a political outsider, an average citizen who "is honestly and truthfully appalled."

Like Bass, the two leading GOP Senate candidates have resumes with a centrist streak, at least compared with the other three Republicans on the ballot. Kelly Ayotte, the front-runner according to recent polls, served as state attorney general under Republican and Democratic governors. Plastics entrepreneur Bill Binnie favors a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, likes portions of the new health-care law and has a record of contributing to Democratic candidates.

For Democrats, the financial overhaul debate comes as a welcome diversion from the highly unpopular health care bill. Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes, the newcomer who beat Bass and is now running to succeed Gregg, said it provides "absolutely the clearest example" of his contention that Republicans protect powerful special interests at the expense of the middle class.

"If there's one thing that I think the sentiments of voters are based on, it's the sense that Wall Street ran wild, Wall Street banks got bailed out, but the Main Street American middle class didn't," Hodes said.

Katrina Swett, seeking to replace Hodes in the House, conceded that Democrats are the primary target of voter anger but predicted that by November, if the economy continues to improve, "we will see a resurgence of the pragmatic independent voter." (next page »)