Former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, the polling and fundraising front-runner for the GOP nomination in New Hampshire’s early September primary for governor, is firing back after coming under repeated attack by her rival, former longtime state Senate president Chuck Morse.

“I think there’s a big difference between myself and Kelly Ayotte,” Morse said last week as he officially filed his candidacy for governor at the State House. “I started as a conservative, and I finished as a conservative as Senate president, and I promise you, I will be a governor that’s a conservative.”

“That’s not what Kelly did when she went to Washington,” charged Morse, who came in second in a crowded field of contenders in the 2022 U.S. Senate Republican primary.

And hours before Ayotte arrived on Thursday to file in the race to succeed Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, a Morse campaign memo asked which Ayotte would show up, “the so-called conservative candidate Kelly or the moderate establishment she has always been in office.”

Ayotte pushed back.

“I am a common-sense, strong conservative, and I’m going to continue this state down the path that Gov. Sununu has,” she said. “We’re going to have even brighter days ahead.”

And pointing to Morse, she argued “I’ve known Chuck a long time and this is a sad way for him to end his political career.”

Morse, in a statement, returned fire.

“Governor Chris Sununu followed a path blazed by conservative leaders like me, while Kelly’s record is littered with bad policy choices and voting with Obama over 260 times,” he said. “This state deserves leaders who face tough questions, not those who hide from accountability. I’m here, ready to answer to the people and continue moving New Hampshire forward. If Kelly can’t face her own record, how can she lead?”

Morse, who wasn’t particularly close to Donald Trump when the former president first ran for the White House, endorsed Trump last December. He’s showcased his backing of Trump and for months questioned Ayotte’s support for the former president.

While he’s made dozens of endorsements in competitive Republican primaries across the country, Trump remains neutral in the New Hampshire gubernatorial race.

Asked if she’d embrace a Trump endorsement and if she’d campaign with him in the Granite State, Ayotte told this reporter she would “certainly appreciate” the former president’s backing. “Anyone who is offering their support, I’d love to have their support.”

“But on the other hand, you think about what’s the most important issue in this race and it’s the people of New Hampshire,” she emphasized. “So, I’m campaigning every day to get the support and earn the support of the voters in this race, and that’s what I’m doing on the campaign trail and will continue to do.”

While support for the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee – thanks to his immense clout over the party – seems like a no-brainier for nearly all Republicans running in 2024 for elective office, for Ayotte, it takes on heightened importance.

Ayotte was a rising star in the Republican Party in 2016 as the former state attorney general and first-term U.S. senator with a burgeoning profile on national security was running for re-election.

But just ahead of the 2016 election, she withdrew her support for Trump over the “Access Hollywood” controversy, in which Trump in a years-old video made extremely crude comments about grabbing women without their consent.

“I cannot and will not support a candidate for president who brags about degrading and assaulting women,” Ayotte said at the time.

Ayotte lost re-election by a razor-thin margin of just over 1,000 votes at the hands of then-Gov. Maggie Hassan, her Democratic challenger.

But Ayotte slightly outperformed Trump in New Hampshire, as Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton edged the White House winner by less than 3,000 votes.

Fast-forward nearly eight years, and Ayotte charged in an interview that “under Joe Biden things cost more, we’re less safe. There’s no question that we are worse off than we were than when President Trump was in office. I’m supporting President Trump because I believe we need to change courses for the nation.”

Ayotte also took aim at former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig and executive councilor Cinde Warmington, the two main Democrats running for governor.

“My Democratic opponents have a very different vision for New Hampshire. They actually think that the Massachusetts model is better,” she reiterated.

Ayotte, since launching her campaign, has targeted her Democratic rivals over New Hampshire’s progressive neighbor to the south, which has long been a target for Granite State conservatives.

The Democratic Governors Association, in a statement, claimed that Ayotte “is a self-serving politician who will say or do anything to win, even lying to Granite Staters about her dangerous record of restricting reproductive freedom.”

Asked about her stance on abortion as she filed, Ayotte emphasized that she would protect New Hampshire’s state law that allows abortions through the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.

“As governor, I will protect that law. I will not change it. So, they’re misleading the women of New Hampshire right now by making them think that there’s going to be something else that will happen. I want them to know what our law is, that I will protect it and that I won’t change it,” she said.

And Ayotte added that she “would pledge to veto restrictions” to the current state law.

The two-week long parade of candidates coming to the Secretary of State’s office at the statehouse in Concord came to a close on Friday, which was the final day for Democrats and Republicans running in early September’s major party primaries to formally file.

Among those receiving cheers and applause from large groups of supporters lined up along the statehouse second-floor hallway outside of the Secretary of State’s office were the two Democrats vying for their party’s nomination in the 2nd Congressional District: Former executive councilor Colin Van Ostern and Maggie Goodlander, a former senior official in President Biden’s administration and wife of the current U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.