New Hampshire voters may be ripe for Trump
Electorate indicated in 2014 it was ready for an insurgency.
Political pundits and Republican leaders like to say that nobody could have foreseen the extraordinary rise of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy.
But there were early signs that the electorate was ready for an insurgency like the one Trump has inspired this election. And some of the most powerful of those indicators came from New Hampshire.
In 2014, Scott Brown, a Republican and former Massachusetts senator who was running for a Senate seat in New Hampshire, aired an ad that seemed a curious fit for the state: As ominous music played in the background, and scenes of southern border crossings flashed on the screen, Brown described an “immigration crisis” sweeping the country.
“Americans go through security before they get on a plane, enter a government building or attend a ballgame,” Brown said. “But folks who come here illegally? They just walk across the border. That’s wrong.”
The advertising message from Brown seemed surprising for several reasons. It collided with national Republican leaders’ moves to temper the party’s views on immigration after the 2012 election. And it was aired in nearly all-white New Hampshire, some 2,000 miles from Mexico.
Even so, it had a powerful impact, helping Brown survive a crowded primary and make the race with the incumbent senator, Jeanne Shaheen, competitive. It also prodded Shaheen to distance herself from Pres- ident Obama’s planned executive orders on immigration.
“Scott did something that the national party was actually arguing against,” said Eric Fehrnstrom, a consultant for Brown in that race. “It worked for him.’’
Brown narrowly lost that contest, 51 percent to 49, but his campaign recognized something that the national party seemed for months to miss: The party’s base was deeply angry, and white working-class voters, like those in New Hampshire, felt neglected by and alienated from the political system.
“That message was ripe for Trump to come in and run with it,” said David N. Bossie, the president of the conservative group Citizens United. And, with Trump’s combination of celebrity and command of a media microphone, Bossie said, he is the perfect person to capitalize on it.
Trump has emerged as the champion of those voters who feel neglected, in large part by viscerally amplifying Brown’s message that the borders are not secure, America is not safe from terrorism, the economy is lagging and immigrants are poised to do harm to the United States. Brown, as it happens, endorsed Trump this week.
These themes, which have helped propel Trump’s ascension in the polls, might also help him regain his trajectory after a loss in Iowa. Immigration is one of the few issues where Trump is to the right of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and one where he can puncture Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as too moderate.
Trump’s first wave of ads framed illegal immigration as a national security concern in stark terms, and he has used this argument to shape the Republican debate for months.
“Now, they’re all trying to be tougher than me — nobody can be tougher than me,” Trump said Tuesday night at the rally in New Hampshire where Brown endorsed him.
The Brown campaign was not alone in deploying a focus on national security and immigration in the midterm races two years ago. Other Republicans sensed the growing anxieties of voters: Rep. David Brat of Virginia beat Eric Cantor, the incumbent congressman and a member of the Republican leadership, in their 2014 primary race by combining worries about immigration and terrorism. And Sen. Thom Tillis used a similar message in North Carolina.
“Trump is hitting a message that has been building in the country for some time,” said Greg Mueller, a Republican strategist who advised the conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan when he challenged President George Bush in the Republican primary in New Hampshire in 1992. Candidates positioning themselves otherwise in the primary, such as by supporting immigration reform, he added, “may as well be committing political suicide.”