With a high-profile U.S. Senate race, two competitive U.S. House races and a gubernatorial showdown at the top of the ballot, next month’s elections for New Hampshire’s House and Senate by comparison are often receiving scant media attention.
But with gridlock between the two majorities increasingly suffocating action in the nation’s capital, the battle for control of the state legislature is just as consequential as the federal races and the showdown for governor.
While Democrats in the Congressional races are playing plenty of defense as they try to defend their razor-thin majorities in Washington, it’s a different story in the Granite State.
After two years of Democratic control, Republicans won back both chambers of the state legislature in the 2020 elections. The GOP currently holds a 202-179 majority in the 400-member House (with 19 vacancies as of last month) and a 14-10 Senate majority.
This past week a new race rating change by Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, which is a well-known non-partisan political handicapper, slightly benefited New Hampshire Democrats. The rating in the battle for the State House majority moved from Likely Republican to Lean Republican.
“Democrats have become more optimistic in New Hampshire, due to a combination of abortion-rights energy and the nomination of Trump-aligned candidates for U.S. House and Senate contests. Gov. Chris Sununu (R), while still a heavy favorite to win reelection, is expected to see somewhat eroded margins compared to 2020, which could have some down-ballot impact for the GOP,” Crystal Ball senior columnist Louis Jacobson highlighted.
“Of the 2 chambers, the state’s enormous House chamber is more likely to flip, given its history of large partisan swings, so we’re moving it to Leans Republican, Jacobson explained. But he cautioned that “taking control of either chamber remains a longshot for Democrats, given a favorable redistricting crafted by the GOP.”
Sabato’s Crystal ball kept their rating of the state Senate as Likely Republican.
State Rep. Matt Wilhelm of Manchester, the New Hampshire House Democrat Victory Campaign Committee chair, told the Monitor that the race rating shift by Sabato “doesn’t really change anything for us. We’re not paying attention to predictions or crystal balls. We’re doing the work. We’re putting our heads down. We’re out there talking to our neighbors, building trust, talking about the issues that matter to them.”
And he argued that “what we’re hearing is that Granite Staters are really fed up with extremism in Concord. They don’t want abortion bans. They don’t want school vouchers.”
Money matters in state legislative elections and state House Democrats in New Hampshire have hauled a record $1.4. million, more than double their previous record.
But Republican state Rep. Ross Berry of Manchester, who chairs the state House GOP’s re-election committee, charged that “no amount of money that House Democrats are spending from limousine liberals from San Francisco is going to compensate for the fact that people are paying $4.50 for a carton of eggs.”
And Berry, a former Republican consultant, was skeptical of Sabato’s race rating shift, arguing that “anybody who thinks Democrats are taking back the House is probably a college professor at the University of Virginia.”
A respected non-partisan, veteran New Hampshire-based political scientist was also far from sold on the move by Sabato.
“Hard to believe this is accurate,” tweeted Wayne Lesperance, the interim president of Henniker-based New England College.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster is keeping the spotlight on abortion as she seeks re-election in New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District, which covers the western half of the state from the Massachusetts border north and includes Concord and surrounding towns as well as the North Country.
The federal lawmaker from Hopkinton, who’s running for a sixth two-year term in the U.S. House, takes aim in her latest TV commercial at her Republican challenger Robert Burns, a former Hillsborough Country treasurer who unsuccessfully ran for the 2018 GOP congressional nomination.
“I’m 100% pro-life from conception,” Burns says in a clip used at the top of the new ad. And the narrator in the spot charges that “Bob Burns is just too extreme.”
In the wake of the late June blockbuster move by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority to upend the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling and send the battle over legalized abortion back to the states, Democrats have spotlighted the combustible issue, which quickly rose in importance for many voters.
The new commercial is Kuster’s fifth TV ad, and the third to focus on abortion. The two other spots highlighted Kuster’s move to stand up against Democratic Party leaders in Congress over her support for an anti-stock trading bill, and another focused on Social Security and Medicare.
Kuster and Burns will face off next Friday, Oct. 28, in their first of two debates. The showdown is being hosted by New Hampshire Public Radio, in collaboration with New Hampshire PBS and the New Hampshire Bulletin. The two contenders meet again for a televised debate hosted by WMUR-TV on Nov. 4, four days ahead of Election Day.
A dozen Republican politicians who pundits view as potential or likely contenders for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, will attend the Republican Jewish Coalition’s (RJC) annual leadership meeting next month in Las Vegas.
With the starting gun in the next White House race firing immediately after the midterm elections, the RJC’s confab on Nov. 18-19 will be the first major cattle call of possible Republican presidential contenders.
And among those dozen potential contenders is Gov. Chris Sununu, who’s making a second straight appearance at the annual gathering of top Republican leaders, officials, rainmakers, donors, and activists.
Also attending are some of the biggest names in the GOP who are considered possible White House hopefuls. They are former Vice President Mike Pence; former Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo; former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations; Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ted Cruz of Texas, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Rick Scott of Florida and Tim Scott of South Carolina; Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Larry Hogan of Maryland, and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.