All eyes on the Granite State
So goes NH, so goes the Senate
If you take the fundraising emails coming from U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan’s re-election campaign as any indication, New Hampshire’s pivotal race is still very much up in the air with control of the Senate on the line.
“This is a major development — POLITICO just downgraded our chances of winning this makeor-break Senate seat to a toss-up,” the campaign said in a Monday morning email. “Back-to-back polls this week show me losing by one point. We’re being outspent 2:1 by GOP dark money groups and super PACs. We could lose this race.”
Hassan’s bid to secure a second term in the Senate has met sudden and perhaps surprising resistance in the form of Ret. U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, whose unexpected primary victory in September has been followed by a slow climb in polling against the former New Hampshire governor.
According to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight, Hassan’s lead now stands at just two points, down more than two points from last week. RealClearPolitics shows Hassan up by one, with the race labeled a “toss-up” ahead of Tuesday’s general election.
“Our senate majority is one the line,” Hassan’s campaign tells donors — and they aren’t wrong.
Races elsewhere, in Arizona and Pennsylvania for example, may well tip the balance toward Republican control of the Senate, but the GOP will almost certainly hold a majority in January if Hassan is unable to pull out a victory against her outsider opponent, according to Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
“If Don Bolduc beats Maggie Hassan, that’s the precursor to what’s going to happen across the country,” he said while campaigning for Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker in Georgia this weekend.
Despite Senate leadership, namely the super PAC run by Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnel, pulling millions in planned ad buys from the state last month, Bolduc’s campaign says he hasn’t stopped trying to get across the message that Hassan will continue the policies of the Biden Administration.
“With only a day to go before Election Day, General Don Bolduc has held over 80 town halls interacting with the citizens he is seeking to represent,” Kate Constantini, a Bolduc for Senate spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement.
His message is resonating, she said.
“The crowds are growing at every stop, and we are feeling the momentum,” she said. “Granite Staters believe the Biden Administration has failed and they are tired of Senator Hassan’s enabling his agenda every step of the way. They’re looking for a change of direction and they will make their voices heard tomorrow night, and we feel good about where we stand.”
Hassan’s team, for their part, used Monday as a campaign workday, visiting a small business in Exeter in the morning before a pair of afternoon events in Manchester. Hassan hit five towns and cities on Sunday alone, according to her campaign schedule.
“With one day to go until Election Day, Senator Maggie Hassan will continue to work to get out the vote and lay out the stark contrast between her record of fighting for New Hampshire with Don Bolduc’s extreme, out-of-step agenda,” her campaign said in a morning release.