US primaries: New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan wins Democratic nod for US Senate

Maggie Hassan, a registered Democrat, won the primary election for the open US Senate seat in New Hampshire. The incumbent was competing with political newcomers and dominated the polls on Tuesday.

She won 79,935 votes, or 94% of the ballots, in the primary elections. Paul Krautmann and John Riggieri, the other two candidates, had nearly 5,000 combined votes.

Also Read: US primaries: Governor Chris Sununu advances to New Hampshire midterms

Maggie Hassan will meet the winner of the GOP Senate primary, a race that is too close to call between Donald Bolduc and Chuck Morse. The New Hampshire midterms are scheduled for November 8, 2022.

Republicans see Democratic incumbent Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire as beatable in the general election, now just eight weeks away. But a strong competitor in the GOP contest is Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general who some in the party believe is too far to the right for some swing voters in the general election. Morse, the president of the state Senate, has been backed by the Republican establishment.

New Hampshire’s Senate seat could prove pivotal for whichever party controls the chamber after November. President Joe Biden carried the state by more than 7 percentage points and Bolduc has campaigned on a platform that includes lies that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and conspiracy theories about vaccines.

Hassan clinched her party’s nomination against only token opposition while Governor Chris Sununu won the Republican party’s nomination for another term. He’s heavily favored against Democrat Tom Sherman, who was unopposed for his party’s governor’s nomination.

Also Read:Seth Magaziner, Allan Fung advance in Rhode Island’s Congressional elections

New Hampshire’s Senate race is perhaps most revealing about the direction of the GOP. Morse has been endorsed by Sununu, who called him “the candidate to beat Senator Hassan this November and the candidate Sen. Hassan is most afraid to face.”

By contrast, Sununu called Bolduc a conspiracy theorist and suggested he could have a tougher time winning the general election.