I hate late primary elections. They extend the amount of time our candidates spend attacking one another and give little time for the fractures to heal. Flipping the New Hampshire governor’s seat now that Gov. Chris Sununu is retiring shouldn’t be hard. Yet after the bilge that was aired during the Democratic primary I’m not sure the hard feelings have entirely disappeared.
In the primary for governor, former Manchester mayor Joyce Craig and Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington are trading accusations over who has personally profited more from New Hampshire’s drug crisis.
Craig is criticizing Warmington for her work on behalf of oxycontin manufacturer Purdue Pharma as a lobbyist two decades ago and for serving more recently as a lawyer to a notorious New Hampshire-based pain clinic.
A recent Craig campaign ad accuses Warmington of “profiting off the opioid crisis” for more than 20 years.
Warmington, meanwhile, is criticizing Craig for having a financial stake in her husband’s law firm, which has advertised its work representing drug traffickers.
“It’s Joyce Craig, who is personally profiting from the defense of drug dealers trafficking oxycontin and cocaine,” a new Warmington ad alleges.
The ad also accuses Craig of “failed leadership” that made Manchester “the epicenter of the opioid crisis.”
It gets worse, as both candidates used GOP talking points to attack one another which should reaffirm those issues in the minds of voters.
Without policy differences, the two campaigns compensated with brass-knuckled attacks on each others’ personal records, launching the kinds of broadsides not often seen in Democratic primaries in New Hampshire.
In one television ad, Warmington assailed Craig’s leadership of Manchester, which she said had been riddled with concerns around homelessness and overdoses, mirroring the same attacks waged against Craig as Republicans.
Craig, meanwhile, approved of ads reminding voters of Warmington’s past legal and lobbying work for Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin whose business practices are now regarded as a key driver of the opioid crisis.
The intraparty attacks exposed political vulnerabilities for both candidates that raised risks of weakening them in the general election. Where Morse’s criticisms of Ayotte had been framed around the perception that she was not conservative enough for Republicans, Craig’s and Warmington’s attacks against each other were broad enough to potentially stick in the minds of independent voters.
The question for Joyce Craig, the wounded winner of the primary, is whether this dumpster fire fatally harmed her chances of winning.
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The governorship of New Hampshire has been held by the Republican Party since 2016. It will be a tight election in 2024 especially with the opponent being former Sen. Kelly Ayotte. We need to win the governor’s seat and break the majorities in the state legislature this year!
Joyce Craig for NH-GOV
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What’s the Big Idea?
THIS GUBERNATORIAL RACE IS A TOSSUP, with a D+1 PVI
New Hampshire, like the rest of New England, used to be a classically Republican state. To top it off, the state was once the most Republican in the entire nation. If you had a pulse and were socially liberal and economically conservative, it was hard for you to lose with the R beside your name in New Hampshire once upon a time. It took a landslide for Democratic candidates to carry the state.
This trend began to change starting in 1992 with former president Bill Clinton. Aided by Ross Perot taking a huge chunk of votes away from HW Bush, Clinton carried the state twice. The state reverted back to the GOP in the bitterly contested 2000 election, with W Bush narrowly carrying the state over Gore. Since that defeat, the Democratic Party has carried New Hampshire in every Presidential election, although sometimes the margin of victory is very small.
That presidential streak does a disservice to how much of a gyrating swing state New Hampshire is politically. The governor chair is currently held by the prominent Republican Sununu family after several Democratic governors. The state legislature is also held by the GOP.
There is often a backlash to the party in power in elections in this state, which is why the race for governor is hard to handicap. There are many moving parts right now — Sununu fatigue, a bitterly contested Democratic primary, the fact that former Sen. Kelly Ayotte is now a “moderate” in the GOP… The fundamentals call for the governorship to flip but I have a nagging unease that Ayotte will win very narrowly.
Here’s where this New Hampshire race will be won.
- Keene, Lebanon, Nashua, Concord: These small cities are all found in New Hampshire’s more Democratic leaning 2nd district, and it is important that Craig runs up the score in the cities. I don’t know much about the state politically, but these areas went for Clinton as well during her narrow win of the state.
- Southeast Coast: These cities and areas used to be the political backbone of the GOP in the state, and now they are critical swing areas that Craig must win if she is to sit in the governor’s chair. Once again, these areas very narrowly supported Clinton in 2016, and more widely supported Biden in 2020.
Here’s where we need to keep the margins down or we lose.
- Manchester: This city is the one that will likely decide the fate of Craig. The anchor of the 1st district, Manchester has been a light blue hue for two elections running and could easily snap back to the GOP on a bad night for us in November. While Craig does not have to blow out her opponent in the city, winning it narrowly will ensure that she wins the state narrowly.
- Rural New Hampshire: Unlike neighboring Vermont, the rural areas of New Hampshire have stayed primarily with the Republicans as the state attracts libertarian and low tax types from neighboring states. While there are blue small towns (they usually have a college), most of the small towns in the state have trended redder in the era of Trump.
Joyce Craig: A Wounded Winner
Joyce Craig on paper is the ideal candidate for this race. Too bad she was savaged in the primary!
Joyce Craig was born in Manchester, NH in 1967. She was an only child to parents that dropped out of college. She graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in business administration. After college, she moved to Boston to work at the advertising agency Hill Holiday. She started in the message center and worked her way up to an account executive position. Later, she worked for Cynthia Fisher's ViaCord, a Boston-based cord blood stem banking company. She then worked for herself as a property manager.
Craig was elected to the Manchester school board in 2007 and then the City Council in 2009. She was a rising star by the time that she first ran for mayor of Manchester in 2015. Incumbent GOP mayor Ted Gatsas was projected to win easily but only did so by 64 votes. She tried again in 2017 and won by a wide 53%-47% margin over Gatsas. She was the first female mayor of the city of Manchester. She would not run for re-election in 2023 to focus on her bid for governor.
Craig will be a breath of fresh air on many issues that have been ignored in the Granite State. Joyce will use the CHIPS and Science Act funding to attract industry to the state. She will oppose right-to-work legislation that kills unionization. She will also push for an increase in the minimum wage so that those at the bottom can earn more money.
Craig will also protect and expand abortion access in New Hampshire. The procedure is legal in the state but that’s only because MAGA hasn’t found the votes in the State House to ban it yet. She will be a brick-wall veto over any attempts to ban the procedure. This is a personal issues for Craig because she needed an abortion after a painful miscarriage.
Education is another issue that is handled at the state level, and Craig has some solid plans. She believes that public tax dollars should go towards public education and opposes the state’s runaway school voucher program that is costing taxpayers millions of dollars for private and religious schools. Craig also believes we need a Commissioner of Education that believes in public education and won’t undermine our educators.
If Joyce Craig can overcome being wounded in the Democratic primary to become governor she will have earned it. She’s a LOT better on the issues but healing fractures takes more time than she has.
Kelly Ayotte: Flirting With MAGA
Former Sen. Kelly Ayotte hasn’t run for office since her narrow loss in 2016 to Sen. Maggie Hassan.
Kelly Ayotte was born in Nashua, NH in 1968 to parents of French-Canadian descent. She graduated from Penn State University with a degree in political science. She attended Villanova University and matriculated with a law degree. She was a clerk for a justice on the NH Supreme Court and then went into private practice. She would eventually join the state Attorney General’s office with a focus on environmental law.
Ayotte would work her way through the ranks until she was appointed Attorney General when the previous one resigned in June 2004. She was strong on environmental cases in this office as well as tough on criminals. However, she also was anti-abortion and argued cases before the Supreme Court that restricted abortion rights. She parlayed her time as Attorney General into a run for the US Senate in 2010. She barely won the primary against a Tea Party nutcase and won the general election in a landslide during the red-wave that year.
Ayotte compiled a more moderate voting record in her one term as Senator. She was seen as someone who could work across the aisle and get things done. She was a bright spot on foreign policy and immigration. She was socially liberal (except abortion rights) and economically conservative. In short, a classical Republican for the state.
I don’t know what happened to Ayotte after her narrow loss to Maggie Hassan in 2016. She went from an almost moderate that rejected Donald Trump to someone who is flirting with MAGA in order to win. For instance, 2016 Ayotte would have never said the following statement while 2024 Ayotte got tripped up by it.
She’s also changed her tune on abortion rights. She claims to support the current laws on the books for abortion rights in the state. This is after a long career trying to undermine those very laws as Attorney General and US Senator. If you believe her conversion is anything more than political expediency, I have a bridge to nowhere to sell you. She’s anti-abortion and will reveal her true colors the minute she’s elected.
It is clear that Kelly Ayotte is banking on her more moderate tenure as US Senator to win because she’s been flirting with MAGA for this election. 2016 Ayotte would excoriate 2024 Ayotte both for her gormlessly sycophantic nature toward Trump and for ditching political positions.
How Can You Help?
Based on campaign finance reports filed with the New Hampshire Secretary of State, Craig raised $3 million and spent $2.7 million and Ayotte raised $8 million and spent $6.9 million. These reports are from September right after the primary so it is unknown how much has been raised and spent since then. It is really late for meaningful donations now but Craig may need them.
The DGA really only has this race to spend on now that North Carolina is looking good. On September 10, 2024, Politico reported that national groups also targeted the election leading up to the primary, with the Democratic Governors Association spending $9 million on advertisements criticizing Ayotte and the Republican Governors Association donating more than $2 million to Ayotte's campaign through an affiliated group. Those numbers surely have gone up since then.
New Hampshire doesn’t have much in the way of early or mail-in voting, so phone banking operations and canvassing are still happening in the state even at this very late date. I’ve linked to the New Hampshire Mobilize page for volunteering opportunities. If you want to help Joyce Craig directly you can also click “Volunteer” at the top and bottom of the article.
I don’t have a good feeling about this race. Polling is tight but Ayotte is leading narrowly in most of them. Ayotte is clearly banking on her tenure as Senator to camouflage her shifting to the right to appease MAGA. Her answer on January 6th should be disqualifying as well as her cynical flip-flop on abortion rights.
Joyce Craig is a wounded winner thanks to a late primary election. If she wins she will have MVP Harris to thank for being a strong top of the ticket option. I don’t think it will happen though and we will have to hope for a strong showing in the state legislature to act as a check on Ayotte. When will we learn that 2008 was the exception for contested primaries and that whaling on one another always hurts our side?
The question for Joyce Craig is going to be answered in 6 days. The lean of the state is either going to bail her out or the fractious primary will have done her in.
Joyce Craig for NH-GOV
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