Early on in the 2022 election cycle, you could find few candidates in the Republican Party more enthusiastic about former President Donald Trump than New Hampshire’s U.S. Senate candidate Don Bolduc.
During his last Senate bid, Bolduc praised supporters on social media who carried his campaign sign at Trump events. He attended several Trump rallies. He phone banked for the then-president during his 2020 reelection bid and—before his Republican primary in September—claimed to be the strongest candidate in the field to go to Washington to fight the liberal establishment and “restore President Trump’s America First agenda.” And when he won, the former president noticed.
“Strong words from President Trump,” Bolduc said in response to a congratulatory post from the former president in September. “Thank you, sir!”
But as Bolduc—who lost his primary to a Trump-endorsed opponent by 8 points in 2020—has undergone a metamorphosis from a long-shot curiosity to a legitimate threat to unseat Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassan, the former president’s influence on Bolduc’s populist campaign has all but disappeared.
Though Trump lent Bolduc his endorsement earlier this week, Bolduc’s campaign has completely ignored it, even as it proudly touted similar endorsements by high-profile conservatives like former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, CPAC leaders Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, and senators Tim Scott, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee.
Several days after Trump’s endorsement, Bolduc took to Twitter to highlight an additional show of support from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a rising star in the Republican Party some in the GOP base see as Trump’s heir apparent. In a debate following Trump’s endorsement, Bolduc also dodged an attack by Hassan seeking to tie him to the former president’s rhetoric about a stolen 2020 election, saying that “we need to focus on the future” before pivoting to an aside about inflation and gas prices.
In a state President Joe Biden won by near-double digits in 2020, it might be the most politically prudent strategy, particularly as polling shows Hassan with a slight edge heading into Election Day.
Throughout the campaign, Bolduc has regularly faced questions over his belief in the “big lie,” waffling back and forth over his previously stated position on whether Biden was legitimately elected in 2020. Trump’s endorsement earlier this week—which Trump said Bolduc requested—notably described Bolduc as a “strong and proud ‘Election Denier,’ a big reason that he won the nomination, but he then disavowed. He has since come back, at least on busing, but that is only a small part of N.H. Election Fraud.”
While Bolduc “welcomes the support of President Trump and anyone who wants to change the direction of this country,” his spokeswoman Kate Constantini told The Wall Street Journal earlier this week, he has yet to acknowledge it publicly.
In recent weeks, Bolduc has sought to depict himself as an independent-minded outsider, stumping around the state on a message focused on Democrats‘ performance on the economy—”heating and eating,” he often says—as well as Hassan’s ties to the Biden administration.
A significant investment by Mitch McConnell‘s Senate Leadership Fund and senior guidance from the party’s top minds helped polish the gaffe-prone Bolduc into a legitimate contender, with his poll numbers rising from a low of 41 percent in early October to within 3 points of Hassan in the closing days of the campaign.
Trump, meanwhile, remains largely unpopular in the Granite State, with unfavorable ratings nearing 60 percent in recent polling conducted by Saint Anselm College. And Bolduc’s message—that Democratic policies aren’t working—is a popular one.
“It’s the same reason that President Biden is not in Manchester right now campaigning for Hassan,” Neil Levesque, executive director at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College, told Newsweek. “Endorsements like these tend to wrap yourself with an unpopular person, and you get sort of tied to their own popularity and whatever issues they’re tied in with. I think voters generally can see through that and know where the candidates are, but certainly reminding them with an endorsement is not helpful a week before an election.
“I’m assuming that the former president has no idea how unpopular he is in New Hampshire,” he added. “Because I think if he did, and he really wanted Bolduc to win, he probably wouldn’t have done it.”
Newsweek has contacted Bolduc’s campaign for comment.
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