Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan has been projected to win reelection in New Hampshire, beating out Republican Don Bolduc in what was once seen as a strong pickup opportunity for the GOP.
Hassan’s victory is key for Democrats in their quest to maintain control of the evenly divided Senate.
Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general, was not the preferred choice of establishment Republicans to take on Hassan. Their first pick was GOP Gov. Chris Sununu, but he passed on running. GOP-allied groups spent millions on ads during the primary attacking Bolduc as a weak candidate and boosting state Senate President Chuck Morse.
But Bolduc won the Republican nomination in September anyway — and without the support of former President Donald Trump, a key mark of his appeal with GOP primary voters in the Granite State.
There’s a reason why GOP operatives didn’t consider Bolduc a strong candidate. He holds a variety of extreme beliefs: He wants to eliminate the FBI and the Department of Education, backs Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, and called Sununu a “Chinese Communist sympathizer.”
The GOP candidate sought to moderate some of his positions during the general election campaign, including his false claims about election fraud. Trump dinged him on that, but still endorsed Bolduc late in the race.
“General Don Bolduc has run a great campaign to be the U.S. Senator from the beautiful State of New Hampshire. He was a strong and proud ‘Election Denier,’ a big reason that he won the Nomination, but he then disavowed,” Trump said on his social media platform. “He has since come back, at least on busing, but that is only a small part of N.H. Election Fraud. Nevertheless, Don Bolduc has asked for my Endorsement, and he’s got it, Complete & Total.”
The issue of abortion also became a major flashpoint in the race. Although Bolduc said he opposed a federal ban in the wake of the Supreme Court decision repealing Roe v. Wade, he also made several comments mocking Democrats for talking about it and urging them to “get over it.”
Hassan was first elected to the Senate in 2016 after beating GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte in an election decided by fewer than 1,000 votes. She served as the state’s governor in 2012.
In Washington, Hassan is known for keeping a low profile and voting with Democrats most of the time. She has broken with her party on certain issues, however, including immigration and raising the minimum wage to $15.
Like other Democratic candidates this cycle, Hassan was put on the defensive over inflation and the high cost of living. The senator played up her work passing legislation that will cut the cost of prescription drugs and warned that Bolduc would have cut entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Hassan led in polls for much of the race, but the margin between the two candidates narrowed just days before Election Day.