Two months before the midterms, Democrats are devoting vast financial resources to red states like Ohio, Iowa and Texas, daring to hope their party can reclaim the Senate with victories in a series of states President Trump won in 2024.
New Hampshire would like a word.
In recent weeks, a tide of anxiety has risen among Democrats in the Granite State who are concerned that a party with big dreams of expanding its map could let the seat left open by the pending retirement of Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, slip from its grasp.
The matchup that is widely expected to emerge from the state’s primary on Tuesday would pit Representative Chris Pappas, 46, a four-term congressman from the swingy First District, against former Senator John E. Sununu, who is the brother and son of two former governors. A recent poll by the University of New Hampshire showed Mr. Pappas running narrowly behind in such a contest.
Mr. Pappas himself is raising the alarm and underscoring the national implications of the race. He put it bluntly in a fund-raising email on Friday morning: “We’re losing.”
Mr. Sununu’s candidacy, following a decade of lackluster Republican recruitment in Senate races in the state, has Republicans promising significant spending that some Democrats worry they are ill-prepared to counter.
At the same time, Mr. Pappas has moved in recent days to quell concerns about a progressive primary challenger, Karishma Manzur, who appears to have narrowed his polling lead as anti-establishment candidates make gains across the country.
“If we’re going to be able to take back four seats and flip the Senate majority, we can’t afford to take one step backward in any seat that’s currently held by a Democrat,” Mr. Pappas said in an interview this week.
‘It’s a purple state’
On paper, New Hampshire should be easy for the Democrats to hold onto. Ms. Shaheen and Senator Maggie Hassan, the state’s other Democratic senator, were handily re-elected in 2022 and 2020. Voters there have not elected a Republican to the Senate since Kelly Ayotte, who is now the governor, was elected in 2010. The state has not backed a Republican for president since 2000.
But New Hampshire Democrats — whose main character energy has not ebbed despite being dislodged from their traditional high-profile role as host of the kickoff presidential primary — say the picture is more complicated, particularly with Mr. Sununu in it. Ms. Hassan and Ms. Shaheen faced little-known Republicans in their last races. The last time a Democrat faced a serious Republican contender, when Ms. Ayotte ran for re-election in 2016, Ms. Hassan won by just about 1,000 votes.
And, in 2024, former Vice President Kamala Harris’s less than 3-point margin of victory over President Trump in the state was the narrowest in any state she held.
“People forget that New Hampshire’s not a blue state. It’s a purple state,” said Kathy Sullivan, the former chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party.
Ms. Ayotte is running for re-election, and her presence on the ballot could lift Mr. Sununu, but Democrats are most worried about the spending Republicans are planning on his behalf. The main Republican Senate super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, has pledged to spend $17 million in New Hampshire for the general election; the group’s Democratic counterpart, Senate Majority PAC, has announced plans to spend $10.2 million in advertising, which is slightly less than the initial television reservation it announced for Alaska. (Mr. Pappas’s own fund-raising has significantly outpaced Mr. Sununu’s.)
“Unless people wake up to the fact that New Hampshire is real, I do think there is a risk of him being swamped by all of this G.O.P. outside money,” said Aaron Jacobs, a Democratic strategist in the state and a former aide to Ms. Hassan. “I think he will need more resources, both to his campaign, and from national partners, to be able to pull this out.”
But in a year when their party sees lots of opportunities, New Hampshire Democrats worry that it will be harder to draw those resources their way. WinSenate, a group aligned with Senate Majority PAC and Democratic leadership, has spent or reserved $55 million worth of advertising in the Ohio Senate race and more than $30 million in deep red Iowa (two much larger states), according to data compiled by AdImpact, which tracks campaign advertising.
“I get these ads, emails, pitching donations,” said Ms. Sullivan. “They always put up these other states and never New Hampshire. It drives me crazy.”
She added, “You’ve got to protect all the states that are close. I just don’t see that happening here the way it should be happening.”
Sununu’s return
Mr. Sununu, the son of former Governor John H. Sununu, served three terms as congressman in the district Mr. Pappas currently represents, before beating Ms. Shaheen in the 2002 Senate race. He lost to her in a 2008 rematch with President Obama atop the ticket.
Democrats have gleefully attacked him for voters’ tendency to mix him up with his brother, the charismatic and popular former Governor Chris Sununu. (The Democratic Party’s operatives have even conducted polling on the matter.)
John E. Sununu is less garrulous than his brother, but he is expected to cruise to victory in Tuesday’s Republican primary over Scott Brown, a fellow former senator who lost his own race to Ms. Shaheen in 2014. Mr. Sununu has the endorsement of President Trump, but he has made a point of differentiating himself from the unpopular president on issues like the trade war with Canada, a nation whose economy is tightly interwoven with New Hampshire’s. He declined a request for an interview.
“New Hampshire is a prime pickup opportunity as Republicans work to protect and expand the majority,” said Chris Gustafson, a spokesman for the Senate Leadership Fund.
‘A must-win’
Lauren French, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority PAC, the Democratic group, said nobody is taking the state for granted, particularly given the popularity of Mr. Sununu’s family. Spending disparities reflect the differing sizes and media markets across the states.
“We understand that it should be a must-win for us,” Ms. French said, adding that the seat is “also a Democratic performing seat.”
The anxiety in New Hampshire partially reflects doubt about Democratic leadership in the wake of high-profile misses. The candidate Democrats recruited to run for Senate in Maine, Gov. Janet Mills, flopped spectacularly in the face of an insurgent challenge by Graham Platner, who later dropped out of the race. Last month, Alex Vindman, a former national security official and top witness in President Trump’s first impeachment trial, lost his Senate primary in Florida to the democratic socialist Angie Nixon.
Mr. Pappas has to get past a progressive challenger, too. A University of New Hampshire poll released late last month suggested that Ms. Manzur, a medical scientist with little support from national progressives, has gained on him since the last poll in June.
On Monday, Mr. Pappas rolled out an endorsement from Ms. Harris, a move that may have been aimed more at ginning up national attention — and fund-raising — than it was at shoring up his in-state support. His campaign also recently released its own poll with the website Semafor that showed him with a wider lead over Ms. Manzur.
The low-key grandson of the man credited with inventing chicken tenders in Manchester, Mr. Pappas is a darling of the state’s Democratic establishment who has made his swing district look less purple than it is. If elected, he would be the first openly gay male senator, but he hasn’t made his history-making potential central to his campaign.
Even as Mr. Pappas and his allies are trying to get attention and financial assistance from national Democrats, he has cast himself as distinct from many of the newly minted stars who have taken their party by storm with pithy social media videos and promises to fight rather than seek bipartisanship. Mr. Pappas says, though, that he knows what works in his state.
“I’m not as concerned with the national trappings of the political conversation and what you have to do to get on cable news,” he said. “I’m much more focused on how I can be dialed in to what people are living right now, and how you can translate that into some wins.”
The post New Hampshire Democrats Sound an Alarm: ‘We’re Losing’ appeared first on New York Times.
