It’s been a little more than eight months since Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) announced he would leave office after eight years, setting up a fight for a governorship that’s swung back and forth between Republicans and Democrats for decades, and in an Electoral College swing state where President Joe Biden and the GOP nominee-in-waiting, former President Donald Trump, will likely go head-to-head this fall.
The deadline to file for New Hampshire’s governor race isn’t until June. The gubernatorial primaries are on Sept. 10, creating a general election sprint of less than two months ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5. New Hampshire’s gubernatorial terms last two years, making it the only state, along with neighboring Vermont, where chief executives don’t hold their governorships for four years at a time.
The New Hampshire governorship is among the nation’s most competitive. Along with Vermont, this race is one of two Republican-held governorships up for election in 2024 in a state Biden won in the 2020 White House contest.
That year, Biden beat Trump in New Hampshire fairly easily, 52.7% to 45.4%, nabbing its four electoral votes. The race was much closer in 2016 when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton beat Trump 47.62% to 47.25%, a difference of only 2,736 votes out of nearly 732,000 cast.
Neither side has anything close to an advantage for governor. Over the 36 years preceding the end of Sununu’s term, in early January 2025, Democrats will have held the governorship for 18 years, the same as Republicans.
The Republican half of that political equation includes Chuck Morse, who held the governorship for two days when he was the state Senate president before Sununu assumed office in January 2017. Then-Gov. Maggie Hassan resigned the governorship a bit early to get sworn in as a senator. In 2016, Hassan beat Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who held the office for a single six-year term.
Now Morse, a private citizen who was a state legislator for most of 1998-2022, is facing Ayotte for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Morse also unsuccessfully sought the 2022 Republican Senate nomination for the Granite State’s other seat, which ended up staying in Democratic hands. Ayotte is widely deemed a favorite for the gubernatorial nod, having previously won statewide office.
The Democratic primary also has two candidates. There’s Joyce Craig, who is the mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire’s most populous city with about 116,000 people that is a familiar backdrop to television coverage of the state’s first-in-the-nation presidential primaries, and Cinde Warmington, a member of New Hampshire’s Executive Council, a five-person panel unique to the state that advises the governor on all matters and provides a check on the governor’s power.
Craig is the likelier Democratic candidate, said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.
“She has a little more money than Warmington does,” Bannon said. “She has more establishment and union endorsements, which counts in New Hampshire.”
Low-profile candidate field
Except Ayotte, the candidates running to replace Sununu have all maintained relatively local profiles, and Ayotte, the gubernatorial-appointed attorney general of New Hampshire from 2004-09 before winning her single Senate race amid the 2010 Republican wave, has been out of office for going on eight years.
Christopher Galdieri, a professor at Saint Anselm College, pointed to the “very limited profiles” of the candidates as a reason the gubernatorial race is likely to be competitive.
“Both Democrats and one of the Republicans have very, very limited profiles,” Galdieri said, beyond “the district or the city where they’ve previously held elective office.”
“And then you’ve got Kelly Ayotte, who has held statewide office before but also hasn’t been on a ballot in eight years and hasn’t won an election in 14 years,” Galdieri said.
Galdieri continued, “Even the best-known candidate is going to have to be doing a lot of sort of reintroducing herself to voters during this campaign.”
Still, polling released by the University of Massachusetts, Lowell last month shows Ayotte leading Morse 54% to 22% in the Republican primary. Ayotte also led both Craig and Warmington in a general election poll released by Emerson College in November 2023 by 3 points and 7 points, respectively.
Sununu’s retirement offers Democrats their best chance to flip the governorship since he assumed office in 2017. The state has not gone to a Republican in a presidential election since 2000. Democrats also hold both of New Hampshire’s Senate and House seats.
Chris Sununu is the son of New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, who held the office from 1983-89 and then became chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush.
As for the younger Sununu, “Without him on the ballot, Democrats are hoping that they have a better shot than they would have if he were running for a fifth term,” Galdieri said. Democrats hope that “folks are ready for a change.”
New Hampshire still purple despite recent Democratic wins
Republicans hold both the state Senate and House, proving that New Hampshire is still politically competitive despite the recent string of Democratic wins for president and senator.
New Hampshire’s largest voting bloc is independents, with 343,192 voters having an undeclared political affiliation. There are only 267,905 Republicans and 262,262 Democrats registered in the state, according to the state secretary of state’s office.
A Morse campaign consultant, Dave Carney, noted, “We have a highly educated voting population. We have a lot of people who are just independent-minded. They’re less enthusiastic about what team jersey you wear versus your ideas.”
Sean Van Anglen, a New Hampshire-based Republican consultant who has endorsed Ayotte, also pointed to the state’s purple makeup as a key factor in the gubernatorial race.
New Hampshire is “the type of state where you’ve got to go person to person,” Van Anglen said.
But Bannon, the Democratic strategist, noted that because of New Hampshire’s large swath of independent voters, it can be difficult to predict race outcomes in the state.
As in any presidential cycle, statewide races often become linked to their national party’s nominee, throwing another obstacle in the race for the candidates as they make their case to voters to succeed Sununu — even in a state willing to split its ticket.
“On the Republican side, I think Trump probably is a drag,” Galdieri said. “He’s lost here twice. In general elections. He underperformed a little bit in the primary.”
For Ayotte, in particular, having Trump at the top of her ticket could open a political minefield. In 2016, after the Access Hollywood tape was released that showed Trump bragging that he could kiss women and grab at their genitals because of his star status, Ayotte reversed her support of the then-Republican nominee, instead stating she would vote for his vice president, Mike Pence.
“Kelly Ayotte, I think you can make a fairly strong case lost in 2016 in part because she was not able to manage having Trump at the top of the ticket,” Galdieri said.
Still, Van Anglen believes Ayotte is “the perfect person to take the baton from Gov. Sununu, if you will, to keep New Hampshire moving forward.”
Carney pointed to Morse’s record as the state Senate president as a reason why his candidate has the potential to do well in the race. “It’s not so much a partisanship we have here as it is, you know, competence, and I think that’s one of the reasons why Chuck’s going to do so well.”
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Still, Galdieri emphasized the fact that the race’s makeup could be shaken up if a currently unknown candidate hops into the race by the time the filing deadline closes.
“So, if I’m Chuck Morse or Kelly Ayotte, one of the things I’m really worried about is that some very Trumpy candidate files in the primary for governor,” Galdieri said, saying that if a Trump-esque candidate files in the race, “all bets are off in terms of the Republican nomination.”
