Everyone thought this Republican would be easier to beat. He may win anyway.
Don Bolduc, a hard-right Republican candidate, may unseat Maggie Hassan in a race that could decide control of the US Senate.
MANCHESTER, N.H. — During the primary, Democrats and Republicans seemed to agree on at least one thing: Don Bolduc would be the easier candidate for the Democratic incumbent to beat.
Yet in the final days before the midterm elections, the hard-charging, Trump-supporting former Army brigadier general is polling neck-and-neck with that incumbent, Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan, in a race that could decide control of the US Senate.
National Democrats got the Republican opponent they wanted, and they may still lose to him.
Hassan “faces an incredibly tight race this fall,” said another endangered incumbent, Representative Chris Pappas, squinting in a sunny parking lot, where he had gathered Saturday with top New Hampshire and national Democrats to kick off a last-minute canvass. A few feet to his right, Hassan nodded and smiled knowingly. “But she’s no stranger to those tight races.”
Six years ago, Hassan won this purple state by 1,017 votes. This year it may get that close again, as Democrats appear to be facing down a Republican onslaught nationwide, fueled by voter concerns about inflation and the economy, and dissatisfaction with President Biden.
Hassan was always expected to be one of Democrats’ most vulnerable incumbents this cycle. But many in her party breathed a sigh of relief when Republicans nominated Bolduc, a rough-around-the-edges candidate whose campaign has been marked by outlandish claims and missteps. For a time, in September and October, polls showed Hassan with a consistent, if modest, lead.
New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu said earlier this year that Bolduc was “not a serious candidate”; establishment Republicans were so worried that Bolduc would be easy to beat that they spent millions boosting his more traditional GOP primary opponent, Chuck Morse. Democrats were so sure Bolduc would be a softer target that they spent millions against Morse in hopes of drawing the more favorable opponent.
Now that they have, Democrats nevertheless find themselves in trouble, in a race that will test both New Hampshire’s appetite for hard-right candidates and the nation’s disappointment with the party in power. Polls in the Senate race have tightened considerably in the past few weeks, with some showing Bolduc in the lead. A similar story is playing out in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District, where Pappas is running a close race against Republican Karoline Leavitt, a 25-year-old former Trump White House press aide who has promoted falsehoods about the 2020 election.
Both Leavitt and Bolduc are a different breed from the New England Republicans who have typically succeeded in this purple state with bipartisan promises and a soothing moderate approach.
Some New Hampshire political strategists believe that if Republicans had nominated more moderate candidates, the GOP slate would be polling even better. Arnie Arnesen, a radio host and former Democratic state representative in New Hampshire, said Bolduc and Leavitt are succeeding because “people don’t know them.”
Both candidates have softened their message and tilted more toward the center since winning the GOP primary in September, strategists said. Bolduc, who once called Sununu a “communist Chinese sympathizer” and claimed that his family business “supports terrorism,” now enjoys Sununu’s support. Mingling with more moderate, popular figures is helping the candidate gain ground, analysts said.
Sununu is a “Trojan horse,” Arnesen said, “sneaking in all the radicals.”
In an interview, Leavitt said she and Bolduc are “not at all” too extreme for New Hampshire and dismissed the idea that more traditional candidates might be doing better.
“Look at the polls,” she said, citing a recent one that showed her leading Pappas by six percentage points. “I’m not sure how much better you want us to do.”
Bolduc’s campaign did not respond to multiple interview requests.
Other strategists said the narrowing of the race has less to do with the candidates themselves than the national mood. Democratic efforts to paint Bolduc and Leavitt as extremists haven’t worked, said Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, making this year more like a typical midterm election: bad for the party in power. As the economy continues to pinch, and voters continue to blame Democrats, the political environment is growing increasingly friendly to Republicans, no matter their stripes.
Bolduc, for example, has embraced a bizarre and widely debunked conspiracy theory that New Hampshire schools were making litter boxes available to students who identify as cats. School officials have said that is false.
But behavior like that may not have much to do with whether Bolduc gets elected, said Fergus Cullen, a former chair of the New Hampshire GOP. “If the number one issue on people’s minds is inflation and economic anxiety,” Cullen said, “then that may be enough for him.”
“He is a cork on the ocean, going wherever the tide takes him,” Cullen added. “The question is: How high does the tide go?”
Democrats are hoping to keep that tide from swallowing too many of their own, including Hassan and Pappas. That’s why national Democrats are pouring into New Hampshire in the final few days before the election: Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Assistant House Speaker Katherine Clark. This cavalry is spinning a national message, promising to fight for abortion rights, hoping to convince voters that President Biden and a Democratic-held Congress can stem inflation and lower the cost of living.
But it’s not clear that New Hampshire voters are buying Democrats’ economic message. One 43-year-old woman told the Globe this past weekend that she registered to vote for the first time because the cost of heating her home has become unsustainable and she wants to rebuke “the people who got us into this mess”: Democrats. Several voters described a tension between wanting to vote for Democrats because of social issues, such as the party’s support for abortion rights, while being more drawn to Republicans who they believe will improve the economy.
“Things are just kind of terrible right now, to be honest with you,” said William Provencher, 53, as he loaded groceries into his Toyota Corolla outside a Market Basket in Manchester. Provencher said he often votes for Democrats, but “I’m not too sure about Maggie Hassan and Chris Pappas this year.”
On the other hand, he said, “Don Bolduc is an extremist.”
“I’m going to make my decision when I go in there on Tuesday,” Provencher said.
Another voter, who wore a “0% Liberal” T-shirt and would give his name only as Todd, said he’s voting for Republicans because “this” — a cart full of groceries for the week— “used to cost me $60, and now it’s $150.”
“I wish there was someone better” than Bolduc, he added, though he plans to vote for the former general. The candidate’s crass style “just kind of rubbed me the wrong way… I’m afraid he’s going to lose votes.”
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