“Today, I have been nominated by President Obama to serve in his administration as Secretary of Commerce, and I want to thank the President for this extraordinary opportunity,” Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) has announced. “I have accepted this post, and the call to help address the momentous and significant economic challenges facing our nation.”

If Gregg goes to Commerce, the next question is: What happens to his Senate seat? Gov. John Lynch (D), a Democrat, has the right to appoint his replacement, but an unofficial deal is in place whereby he will appoint a Republican.

What sort of senator can Granite Staters expect? Before the choice had been made, one Republican politician in the state told me, “I don’t think any of the choices are really going to please conservatives.”

The swirling rumors included such Republicans as moderate former Sen. Warren Rudman, former Gov. Walter Peterson (who is 86 years old), and former House Speaker Doug Scamman (R), an ally of Lynch. The Concord Monitor even floated the name of former state Sen. Liz Hager (R), a liberal supporter of an income tax in New Hampshire and a NARAL board member who was defeated in a primary last year.

But this morning, shortly after I spoke with former GOP chairman Fergus Cullen, CNN reported that Bonnie Newman will be the replacement. Newman is a former George H.W. Bush and Reagan administration appointee who served as Gregg’s chief of staff decades ago during his time in the U.S. House.

“She is not an ideologue,” Cullen told me. “I really have no idea where she stands on fiscal issues, social issues, foreign policy. She’s more of a good-government person.”

It is worthy of note that this precise description could as easily be applied to Gregg himself. Another source in New Hampshire suggests that Newman is “probably just a bit more moderate than Gregg.”

Newman’s most controversial act was probably her decision, in 2004, to split with Gov. Craig Benson (R) and endorse Lynch, his Democratic opponent. Many Republicans followed her lead. “When I was chairman, she did not go to Republican events,” said Cullen, whose term as chairman ended two weeks ago. Cullen said that while he could not exactly defend her decision to support Lynch, he “would not criticize it . . . When Bonnie chose to work actively with John Lynch, there was nothing in it for her. It’s not as though she got a position in Lynch’s administration.”

Benson, Cullen said, was a “political screw-up . . . He was a very wealthy man who had bought both his primary and general elections, and he had no governing experience. I found it extremely frustrating trying to work with him.” Among Benson’s eccentricities was his insistence that his staff have no titles (a source of great confusion for those dealing with his office). As a rule, he would remove all of the chairs from the room whenever he held a meeting. He would also lock the doors at precisely the moment when the meeting began. “If an important official showed up two minutes late, he’d be locked out,” said Cullen.

“Most of us simply sat on our hands and hoped Benson would decide he was bored with being governor,” said Cullen. “Some people would see what [Bonnie] did as an act of political treason, but others would see it as an act of political conscience. Craig Benson was a screw-up. He was great on policy, but he just couldn’t get along with people.”

The suggestion appears to be that conservatives could do worse than Newman. They could probably do a lot better, too.