New Hampshire voters will cast ballots Tuesday to select the nominees who will vie to succeed Chris Sununu as governor and Rep. Annie Kuster in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, and to take on incumbent Democrat Chris Pappas in the 1st Congressional District.
The primaries in the open seat races have been the most active — and most full of vitriol.
Pitched primary fights are common in New Hampshire politics, but they typically take place on the Republican side of the ballot. This year, the Democratic primaries for governor and in the 2nd Congressional District are the most hard fought, and far more focused on biographical details than on policy.
Here are a few things to watch ahead of the polls opening across the state Tuesday morning.
Republican governor’s race: 'Sununu path' vs MAGA message
The dynamic in the Republican primary has held steady for months, featuring two candidates with long resumes in state politics. Former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte holds a big edge on all polling and has vastly out-fundraised former state Senate President Chuck Morse. She’s also been endorsed by Sununu, who says Ayotte is best poised to extend the track record he built over eight years in the corner office.
Morse, who established his political reputation over 20 years in Concord as a budget expert and fiscal conservative, has meanwhile retooled himself for 2024 as an unalloyed Donald Trump-aligned populist. A MAGA-heavy message could be a way to win a GOP primary against someone like Ayotte, but Morse isn’t a natural fit to deliver it, given his long record as a nuts-and-bolts budget watcher rather than culture warrior.
In their debates last week, Ayotte largely ignored Morse to look towards the general election, where she promised to keep New Hampshire on the “Sununu path.” Morse, meanwhile, took the fight to Ayotte on multiple fronts. He questioned her membership on lucrative corporate boards, and her refusal to vote for Trump in 2016. At one point, Morse blamed Ayotte — a former state attorney general — for the state’s failure to stop the abuse at the former Youth Development Center: “She either knew it, or she ignored it,” Morse said. Ayotte called Morse’s claim a “blatant lie.”
Democratic governor’s race: Opioid records a source of attacks
Former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig entered the Democratic gubernatorial primary as the frontrunner, but Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington has made the race competitive. In part, that’s because she’s pumped a million dollars of her own money into her campaign. Craig’s uncertainty as a campaigner has also helped.
And with few clear differences on policy, the candidates have instead battled at length over who has the most damaging links to the state’s opioid crisis: Warmington for her past lobbying work for the maker of Oxycontin and legal work for a notorious pain clinic; or Craig, for leading Manchester when homelessness and drugs were public crises.
Their fighting on this front, which dominated their recent debate on WMUR, has left the third Democrat — Newmarket businessman Jon Kiper — the only candidate unscathed. How that is likely to translate on Primary Day is far from clear. But how well Kiper does — and whether he pulls more support from Craig or Warmington — could help decide the race’s outcome.
Republican congressional primaries
The fight to pick a Republican to take on Democratic incumbent Chris Pappas, who is seeking a fourth term representing the 1st District, has felt sleepy. That’s despite the fact that prior to Pappas’ tenure, the district had regularly flipped between the two parties.
That history has made it a target for pickup by national Republicans, but that’s less the case this year. Still, the 2024 race has attracted a long list of GOP candidates.
Former Executive Councilor Russell Prescott of Kingston is the favorite, at least on paper. He’s raised the most money of any of the five main candidates, and his long political resume includes two wins over US Sen. Maggie Hassan in state Senate races. But when Prescott sought this same seat just two years ago, he finished a distant fourth.
This year's GOP field lacks candidates with close ties to Trump, but longtime Manchester Alderman Joe Kelly Levasseur is working the MAGA angle hard. “Trump or Bust,” his campaign signs proclaim. “That’s not a slogan,” Levasseur emphasized in a recent debate, “It’s a fact.”
But the fact is, every Republican running in New Hampshire congressional races this year lacks name recognition. In the 1st District, other hopefuls include Novel Iron Works president Hollie Noveletsky, Derry businessman Chris Bright, and Walter MacFarlane of Manchester.
That same goes for the 2nd District GOP candidates, even though the leading contenders — Vikram Mansharamani of Lincoln and Lily Tang Williams of Weare — were both on the ballot two years ago. Mansharamani, a former Harvard lecturer and self-described “global trendwatcher,” finished fourth in the 2022 U.S. Senate primary. Tang Williams, a libertarian-leaning candidate from Weare, finished third in the 2nd Congressional district primary two years ago.
2nd District Democratic primary a battle of resumes
The most consequential congressional primary this year is probably the battle between the two Democrats looking to succeed incumbent Congresswoman Annie Kuster in the 2nd District.
The race pits former Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern against former Biden Administration lawyer Maggie Goodlander. Both are squarely in their party’s mainstream on the issues, and both — Goodlander in particular — are prolific fundraisers.
Van Ostern — who has spent much of the past two decades working in and around New Hampshire politics, including as the 2016 gubernatorial nominee — is a familiar name to many Democratic voters.
Until she got into the race in May, Goodlander, a Nashua native, was better known in Washington’s elite legal and political circles than to voters here. She’s a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk who advised the Trump impeachment effort and held several top jobs in the Biden Administration (where her husband, Jake Sullivan, works as National Security Adviser).
Goodlander and Sullivan have owned a house in Portsmouth since 2018, but she’s now renting an apartment in Nashua, where she hasn’t lived since college. According to her financial disclosure, Goodlander could be worth more than $30 million. That wealth derives from the real estate empire built by her grandfather, Sam Tamposi.
Van Ostern entered this race as Kuster’s chosen successor: He had worked as her campaign manager in an earlier race. But running against Goodlander has proven a challenge for Van Ostern. Kuster’s role as an outspoke Van Ostern backer has angered some Democratic activists. So too has Van Ostern’s willingness to question Goodlander’s past work and political contributions to Republicans who oppose abortion rights. This allegedly “nasty” campaigning is the stated reason former Democratic Gov. John Lynch pulled his support from Van Ostern to endorse Goodlander last week.
In their recent WMUR debate, Van Ostern called Lynch’s move an “error of judgment.” But Lynch isn’t the only high profile backer to ditch Van Ostern in the final days of the primary campaign. Gary Hirshberg, who employed Van Ostern at Stonyfield Yogurt more than a decade ago, also jumped ship on Van Ostern last week, to support Goodlander.
Regular 2nd District voters get the final say in this race. And in its waning moments, Goodlander and Van Ostern are continuing to jockey over their respective biographies.
On Sunday, Goodlander asked voters to see her work in all three branches of the federal government as about serving New Hampshire.
"The work I've done has been about my home the whole time,” Goodlander told the crowd at a Nashua house party. “It would be the honor of my life to represent the place that always has and always will be my home."
And as Van Ostern campaigned in Hopkinton alongside Kuster Sunday evening, he stressed that representing a community wasn’t “a birthright, but something that you earn by understanding the lives of other people in your community."
