WASHINGTON -- A new poll has New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) down a total of 15 points from her previous approval rating in a survey that followed her vote against requiring background checks for firearms purchases.

Ayotte's plunge underscores the changing politics around gun control and gun safety. In years past, lawmakers worried that a vote for gun control would bring the anger of the National Rifle Association. In the new reality, votes against gun control also carry a political risk, as the Ayotte poll indicates.

A full three-quarters of New Hampshire voters support such background checks, along with 56 percent of Republicans, according to Public Policy Polling. A WMUR Granite State Poll taken in January and February found that more than 9 in 10 state residents supported implementing background checks at gun shows.
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Local coverage has not been friendly to Ayotte. Sunday's Portsmouth Herald headlined its editorial: "If you want gun control, vote Ayotte out of office."

"New Hampshire voters who care passionately about sensible gun legislation can contribute to the effort by defeating U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, the only senator in New England to vote against the Toomey-Manchin bill. Ayotte justified her vote by parroting the NRA, saying the measure would 'place unnecessary burdens on law-abiding gun owners and allow for potential overreach by the federal government into private gun sales.'"

The Concord Monitor was flooded with angry letters and ran a rough cartoon of her. The editorial page called it a "double abomination." She was hit by a tough ad paid for by Gabby Giffords' group -- the kind of on-the-ground spending that is helping to alter the political dynamic. link

I had a client in California's Central Valley whose executive director had quit her former longtime job as chief nurse at an area hospital to take her present position at a community health center (which was my client). She had once been in a personal relationship with the president of the hospital that had long since ended when she decided to leave.

However, the president -- who proved himself an emotionally unstable man -- subsequently decided to take her departure as a personal slight, even though she had taken her new job for reasons of professional advancement, and it had nothing to do with their prior relationship.

To make a long story short, he began stalking his former girlfriend at work and home, and spread professional rumors about her around town that she was a drug addict whom he had asked to resign her post because she was stealing pharmaceuticals at the hospital to feed her habit. When I had prepared a USDA grant application for my client, he called D.C. and said that my client was about to declare bankruptcy. And ultimately, he sent his own sons to vandalize the health center itself, resulting in his own eventual arrest when those three young baboozes were caught in the act by the police and confessed who put them up to it.

Incredibly, this clown still has his job at the hospital even after pleading no contest -- honestly, what does one have to do to get fired at that place? -- but his teenaged kids now also have juvenile criminal records, and both muy client and its executive director have gotten retraining orders against all four of them.

Did you see Kevin Curtis's presser yesterday, after charges were dismissed and he was released? Suffice to say that these two birds in Mississippi both sound like they're out to sea without mainsail, rudder and compass.