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when New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware held their primaries on Tuesday, with the results of the night’s most anticipated race still up in the air as of early Wednesday morning. Votes are still being counted in New Hampshire’s Republican primary for U.S. Senate, where the GOP establishment candidate is narrowly ahead in the race to face Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. Race is the final puzzle piece Main calendar of 2022 The eight-week run-up to November’s midterm elections has ended.
Dan Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general and election denier who embraces Trump’s approach to politics, led state Senate President Chuck Morse early Wednesday. If he wins the race, he’ll join a slate of candidates national Republicans can’t appeal to November voters.
The stakes are high, with the Senate split 50-50 and Republican candidates in Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania also battling it out. The GOP expected New Hampshire, which Hassan won by just 1,000 votes six years ago, to be added to the list of battleground states in November.
Meanwhile, the fields were set for two of New England’s most competitive House races on Tuesday — including one in New Hampshire, where a Trump White House aide who admitted his lies about election fraud defeated an establishment-backed candidate. Complicating the GOP’s efforts to win control of the House.
Here are four takeaways from the final night of the 2022 primary season:
Republicans’ hopes of winning a Senate majority hinge on a razor-tight outcome. First in New Hampshire.
Morse is backed by Republicans, including moderate Gov. Chris Sununu, and boosted by a super PAC affiliated with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, which has pumped more than $4 million into the race in an effort to prevent Bolduc from winning the primary.
Bolduc is closely aligned with former President Donald Trump. He said he “agreed with Trump’s assessment” of the 2020 election — namely, Trump’s lie that President Joe Biden’s victory was the result of widespread fraud.
“I signed a letter with 120 other generals and admirals saying, ‘Oh, I stand with Trump,'” Bolduc said in the August primary debate.
Bolduc also called Sununu, a Republican governor who tried to include him in the race of national figures, “a Chinese Communist sympathizer.” He raised the possibility of abolishing the FBI, saying he would repeal the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, which requires states to directly elect their senators.
Trump is missing in New Hampshire’s primary. His decision not to endorse either candidate is a departure from Trump’s approach to most Senate primaries this year.
Hassan won by just 1,000 votes in 2016, and Republicans are evenly split between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans in their bid to control New Hampshire’s Senate.
Mirroring Trump’s brash style and parroting his electoral disapproval again proved more powerful than embracing the policy substance of his tenure in the White House at the Republican primary.
That is the primary lesson of the Republican Party 1st District of New Hampshire25-year-old political newcomer Carolyn Leavitt, a former Trump aide who closely followed the brand of politics that defined Trump’s orbit of political allies, defeated Matt Mowers, another former Trump administration official but more cautious on the issues. Like the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from the former president.
Movers fully embraced aspects of Trump’s tenure. His website was filled with positions that defined the former president, and Mowers attributed the fact that Trump endorsed him in his failed bid to win the seat in 2020.
Rhetorically and stylistically, the two differed dramatically.
Movers were “hopeful in the New Hampshire elections,” Leavitt said, adding that “the 2020 election was undoubtedly stolen from President Trump.” Where Mowers recommended hearings to determine whether President Joe Biden should be impeached, Leavitt said there was no doubt the president should be impeached. When asked about the newly released coronavirus vaccine, where Mowers said he supported the science, Leavitt said, “None of your business.”
The movers’ control effectively opened the door for someone like Leavitt to win over Republican primary voters in New Hampshire, many of whom still support the former president.
As polls showed Leavitt surging in the final days, outside groups like the Congressional Leadership Fund and Defending Main Street, joined by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, spent millions on ads to help movers fend off a challenge from the right. But the money often isn’t — and now Republicans have a more complicated candidate in the race against one of the nation’s most vulnerable Democrats, Rep. Chris Pappas.
Leavitt was the first Gen Z candidates An occasional primary hit.
After Rhode Island State Treasurer Seth Magaziner won, the field is set for what is expected to be one of New England’s most competitive congressional races this fall. 2nd District Democratic PrimaryCNN planned.
He now faces Cranston Mayor Alan Funk, a Republican, in longtime Rep. Jim Lange’s district. retires. Langevin, a Democrat, has won his races since 2001 without serious competition President Joe Biden In 2020 they won there by 14 percentage points. But Republicans believe they can win the seat.
Fung was the Republican candidate for governor in 2014 and 2018, losing twice to former Gov. Gina Raimondo, but did well in the district that covers the western part of the state.
The journalist defeated Sarah Morgenthau, director of Peace Corps Response under former President Barack Obama; David Segal, who once served in the state legislature and ran an unsuccessful congressional race in 2010; and Joy Fox, who served as director of communications for Langevin and Raimondo.
Dan McGee of Rhode Island is one of the most popular governors in the country Four primary challenges were faced He is seeking his first full, elected term.
McGee, who took over as governor last year when Raimondo left the job to join the Biden administration, is no stranger to tough primaries — he nearly lost a renomination bid as lieutenant governor in 2018.
Ultimately, despite being weighed down by a federal investigation into the awarding of a controversial state contract to a company with ties to an old ally — an episode in which McGee denies any wrongdoing — he emerged from a packed field. Benefiting from a split between anti-incumbency votes.
His closest rivals, former CVS executive Helena Foulkes and Secretary of State Nellie Corbia, ran as reformers with promises to clean up government. Foulkes has been endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has vowed not to run for re-election if Rhode Island doesn’t revitalize schools.
The race was a bust for progressive favorite Matt Brown, a Bernie Sanders-endorsed former secretary of state who trailed the leaders four years after losing a primary challenge to Raimondo.
