Yesterday was the last day this year for a primary election: Rhode Island, Delaware, and New Hampshire voters cast their ballots. Of the three, the Washington blogosphere was most interested by far in what the Republican voters in the Granite State did.
The State’s two Senators, both Dems, are Jean Shaheen, who used to be Governor, and its other Senator, also a Democrat, and also a woman, and also previously Governor, is Maggie Hassan, who, six years ago, had a margin of victory of a mere 1,017 votes over her Republican incumbent, Kelly Ayotte, who was on a short list among Republican women to be John McCain’s running mate in 2008. Which is why Mitch McConnell assumed that it would be easy to knock off Senator Hassan.
But in the land of “Live Free or Die,” voters are cantankerous, and they don’t like to be told what to do.
Which meant that yesterday the voters in New Hampshire who voted in the Republican column picked a retired general, Don Bolduc, who tied himself very closely to Donald Trump and his prevarication machine, and won even though he never got Trump’s endorsement. Bolduc’s primary opponent yesterday was Chuck Morse, the President of the New Hampshire Senate.
Bolduc is best known for having denounced popular governor Chris Sununu, a Republican whom McConnell desperately wanted to run against Hassan, only Sununu had sense enough to stay in New Hampshire. Anyway, Bolduc denounced Sununu as a “Chinese Communist sympathizer" and claimed that the Governor’s business “supports terrorism," and, in response, Sununu refers to Bolduc as “not a serious candidate” and a “conspiracy theorist."
Yup, Bolduc won his primary yesterday, much to the pleasure of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who is continuing the stupid practice of the DNC plunging into Republican primaries, helping Trumpie candidate to win their primaries, and in New Hampshire it evidently worked.
Our Chief New Hampshire political operative, associate solitary reporter Kathy Fogarty, a devoted Democrat, tells us that Hassan will win with at least 53% of the vote in November. Fogarty operates Bennett Kennels, which prepares canines to be Best in Show.