With the partisanship that’s gridlocked Washington increasingly infiltrating Concord, and no letup of the bitter acrimony and trading of verbal fire between the Democratic and Republican parties and their candidates in this year’s election campaign, a veteran New Hampshire-based political scientist argues that Granite Staters face a dilemma as they get ready to cast a ballot in the midterm elections.
“There’s a significant number of voters that would probably agree that they don’t have good choices,” Wayne Lesperance, interim president of the Henniker-based New England College, tells the Monitor.
“Voters, and especially independent voters, are not really interested in the labels of R and D. They’re interested in the people who are going to address the concerns they have. And the concerns they have are the economy, affordable electricity and heating oil, the kitchen table issues,” Leseperance said.
Democrats are facing historical headwinds in this year’s battle for control of Congress, as the party that wins the White House traditionally suffers major setbacks in the ensuing midterm elections. Democrats are also battling a very rough political climate fueled by record inflation, soaring crime nationally and a crisis at the southern border, and these are accentuated by President Joe Biden’s rebounding but still underwater approval ratings.
Republicans across the country have hammered Democratic incumbents running for re-election this year – including in New Hampshire former governor and first-term Sen. Maggie Hassan and Reps. Annie Kuster in the Second Congressional District and Chris Pappas in the First Congressional District – blaming them for many of the nation’s ills. Democrats have pushed back, targeting their GOP challengers in many cases as extremists on key issues such as abortion and election denial.
Pointing to New Hampshire voters, who are often socially moderate but fiscally conservative centrists, Lesperance emphasized “when they hear about stealing the election and democracy’s on the ballot, climate change, those are important. But for them, the kitchen table issues are paramount. As a result, they don’t have good choices,” he argued.
“There’s a lot of blaming the Democrats and the Biden administration for where we are now. And then they look at the Republican options and these folks are talking in a way that’s very dogmatic, the Trump cult of personality,” Lesperance said. “They want someone who’s going to offer solutions to what they’re experiencing.”
New Hampshire’s a key general election battleground state with a crucial U.S. Senate race between Hassan and GOP nominee and former general Don Bolduc that’s one of a handful across the country that will likely determine if the Republicans win back the chamber’s majority. And the state’s two congressional districts are considered competitive – especially the very swingy First District – and the winners in both those races will impact whether the Democrats are able to hold onto their razor-thin majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
But New Hampshire’s also the state that for a century has held the first presidential primary in the White House race, and the Granite State has seen plenty of traffic this cycle by out-of-state politicians who may harbor national ambitions in the 2024 election cycle.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations during former President Donald Trump’s administration, returns to New Hampshire on Sunday, to campaign with Bolduc. It’s Haley’s third trip to the Granite State in the past six weeks to team up with her party’s U.S. Senate nominee in New Hampshire.
On Wednesday, conservative talk radio host Larry Elder trekked to New Hampshire to team up on the campaign trail with GOP congressional nominee Karoline Leavitt, who’s challenging Pappas in the First District. Elder, who was the top GOP vote-getter in last year’s unsuccessful gubernatorial recall election in California, says he’s mulling a run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
And he wasn’t in New Hampshire in person, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who pundits view as a possible Republican presidential hopeful, endorsed Bolduc this past week and put his name on a fundraising email for the Senate nominee.
As for the Democrats, Hassan is getting some high-profile help this weekend from three Democrats who ran for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination and may possibly run again in 2024 if President Biden decides against seeking a second term.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the progressive champion, made the short trip on Friday from Massachusetts to New Hampshire to campaign with Hassan at UNH in Durham. And U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who came in second and third in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire, join Hassan on the Granite State campaign trail on Sunday.