The entry of former, Democratic State Sen. Bobby Stephen into the Nashua mayoral campaign today sure complicates things for Manchester GOP Sen. and fellow candidate Ted Gatsas.

    For several weeks, Gatsas had been trying through back channels to convince Stephen, a retired, state jobs official, to stay out of the fight to replace Frank Guinta who is running for Congress in 2010.

     But Stephen has always had his own mind and the name remains familiar in the city given his son, John, ran for Congress himself twice and served as the state’s health and human services official.

    Now, Gatsas finds himself in the uncomfortable middle of an ideological sandwich in this race between the more liberal, Ward 1 Alderman Mark Roy and the more conservative Stephen.

     While in the Senate, Stephen was a favorite of GOP governors and Senate presidents back then opposing both broad-based taxes and liberal Democratic spending schemes.

     Now Gatsas has to uncomfortably wait to see whether Stephen goes after the level off spending in city budgets that Gatsas has played a big role in.

      To be sure, the self-made, multi-millionaire Gatsas can outspend anyone in this race but once you get up around $250,000 in this kind of race, any additional money amounts to citizen harassment that has little utility in turning more voters out.

     This one will be interesting.