New Hampshire emerges as potential Senate battleground

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John Sununu wins Republican Senate primary in New Hampshire

John Sununu wins Republican Senate primary in New Hampshire

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New Hampshire is emerging as a key state to watch as the primary season wraps up, with Rep. Chris Pappas clinching the Democratic nod last night to face former Sen. John E. Sununu (R) in the general election in November.

By most accounts, Democrats should be in a good position to keep the blue-leaning seat, which will be vacated by retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D), and strategists say the national mood and President Trump’s record-low approval ratings should help Pappas.

However, in a University of New Hampshire (UNH) poll released Aug. 26, Sununu led Pappas 45 percent to 43 percent. Two months earlier, the hypothetical match-up showed Pappas leading, 47 percent to 44 percent. Both results were within the margins of error. Election forecasters Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball both rate New Hampshire as lean Democrat.

Pappas’s roughly 32-point margin over progressive Karishma Manzur on Tuesday will bolster Democratic confidence heading into November. Still, as national Democrats set their sights on flipping high-profile Senate seats — including in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Ohio and Texas — some are cautioning the party not to sleep on New Hampshire.

Democratic strategist James Demers told Morning Report that Sununu’s name carries a lot of weight in New Hampshire — both his brother, Chris Sununu, and father, John H. Sununu, are popular former governors — and the Republican Party is pouring money behind a candidate they think could have a shot at flipping the seat red.

“Democrats need to remember that the first thing and the highest priority is to maintain the seats that we already have, and New Hampshire is one of them,” Demers said.

“So, I think this should be a winnable seat for Democrats,” he continued. “Donald Trump is polling in the low 30s here, but the Sununu name is big, and the Republican money is big, and so it could be more competitive than people think.”

Sununu has also been running as a “throwback candidate,” Saint Anselm College political science professor Christopher Galdieri said, and asking voters to “remember when things weren’t as crazy as they are now.”

“I think that’s appealing to a decent segment of the New Hampshire electorate,” Galdieri said.

“He’s also benefited from the fact that he is not a Trumpy Republican, but he has the Trump endorsement,” he added. “And so that sort of gives him the best of both worlds heading into the primary.”

UNH political science professor Dante Scala is skeptical the race is really as close as polls suggest.

“I’m not saying the polls are wrong, but I am saying that I don’t think that’s where we’ll be in a couple months,” he said. “I think there’s a good possibility that John Sununu has had a bit of the afterglow of his brother, who was a very popular figure as governor. I think that could be part of what’s going on in the polls.”

Scala also said the latest UNH survey suggests progressives may be holding out on Pappas, not yet willing to commit to backing him in a hypothetical match-up.

But Scala said “given the polarization” in today’s era, the idea that progressives “would not vote for Pappas over John Sununu, with the U.S. Senate control of Congress at stake, seems to me unlikely.”

Galdieri pointed to the souring national mood under unified Republican control in Washington and Democrats’ recent strong showings in polling and special elections as evidence that a GOP win in New Hampshire is not likely in the cards.

“The fact that we’re talking about potential Democratic success in places like Texas and Iowa and Ohio makes me think that New Hampshire is probably not going to be the exception,” Galdieri noted. “That said, I think Sununu is probably the strongest candidate Republicans could have put forward, especially in this environment.”

In the primary for the seat that Pappas is vacating, health tech entrepreneur Stefany Shaheen, the daughter of the outgoing senator, clinched the Democratic nomination over state Democratic Party Vice Chair Maura Sullivan and several other candidates.

The race between Shaheen and Sullivan, a former Obama administration official, became nasty at times as Sullivan went after Shaheen over her “fancy last name” and Shaheen slammed Sullivan over donations from people with ties to Palantir and the American Israel........

© The Hill