Matt Mowers handily defeated four other candidates on Tuesday to become the GOP nominee in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, helped by an endorsement from President Donald Trump and a background working in the State Department and Republican politics.
Mowers, 31, was an influential senior adviser at the State Department until his departure in early 2019, and his work there has been a central part of his biographical pitch in his campaign.
That role was no doubt a major reason that Trump backed Mowers, who ended up raising more than $700,000 ― four times as much as his closest competitor in the primary.
But Mowers’ time at the State Department was also marked by controversy. In November, the agency’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) ― which is charged with rooting out waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement ― named Mowers as one of the staffers who targeted a career civil servant for her perceived political beliefs, ethnicity and lack of loyalty to Trump.
The inspector general concluded that Trump administration political appointees unfairly removed Sahar Nowrouzzadeh from her position in the Office of Policy Planning after conservative media started smearing her in March 2017, calling her a “trusted” aide to President Barack Obama who had “burrowed” into the State Department and accusing her of questionable loyalty to the United States. An article in Conservative Review with those claims was sent around at least four times to political staffers in the agency, according to the OIG report.
The Office of Policy Planning is a prestigious team that works closely with the secretary of state. Nowrouzzadeh was on a detail there from her regular position in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs ― far more removed from the center of power ― that was not supposed to end until July 2017. Trump administration officials terminated her assignment three months early.
According to the OIG report, Julia Haller, the acting White House liaison who helped coordinate political personnel, claimed (incorrectly) in an internal email chain that Nowrouzzadeh could be easily removed from her position and added, “As background, she worked on the Iran Deal, specifically works on Iran within [the Office of Policy Planning], was born in Iran and upon my understanding cried when the President won.” (Nowrouzzadeh was born in Connecticut to Iranian immigrants.)
Mowers forwarded that email chain to Brian Hook, the director of the policy planning office, with the comment “additional info,” although he later told the inspector general that he didn’t take Haller’s comments seriously because she had a history of “nutty theories.”
Mowers was never cited as disparaging Nowrouzzadeh’s political beliefs or ethnicity in emails, and other State Department employees talked far more openly about cleaning out the agency of “Obama/Clinton loyalists.” But he is named in the OIG report as a participant in the removal of the civil servant, who had been serving in the federal government since the presidency of George W. Bush.
The OIG faulted Mowers and others for not saying at the time that Haller’s “comments were inappropriate or otherwise of concern,” even if they didn’t buy into her theories.
In another email exchange on March 15, 2017, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R) sent the Conservative Review article to Margaret Peterlin, chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, along with a note from a onetime adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney about “cleaning house” at the State Department. Peterlin forwarded that email to her deputy, Christine Ciccone, and to Mowers.
“Thanks,” replied Mowers. “We’re working with Brian [Hook] on how best to organize his team and have discussed where [Nowrouzzadeh], a career employee detailed to that office previously, may be of best use to the agency if not in [policy planning].”
The OIG also pointed to an April 7, 2017, email in which Hook’s deputy emailed him to say, “Brian, I just spoke with Matt Mowers, who said he has spoken with you. He asked me to initiate the process of wrapping up [Nowrouzzadeh’s] detail and returning her to [the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs]. Unless I hear otherwise from you, I will do so today.” Hook agreed.
There’s a discrepancy over who made the call to remove Nowrouzzadeh. Hook told the inspector general that in April 2017, Mowers and Ciccone told him that Nowrouzzadeh “did not belong” in policy planning and asked whether he objected to ending her detail. He added that they did not provide any rationale for their decision.
Mowers and Ciccone both denied making that comment, placing the decision in Hook’s lap.
“OIG concludes that Employee One’s perceived political opinions, perceived association with former administrations, and her perceived national origin played at least some role” in Nowrouzzadeh’s removal, read the report.
While Hook was the one who terminated Nowrouzzadeh’s detail, the OIG report concluded that he would not have done so “without being prompted by others.”
Mowers is now running against Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) in a swing district that went for Trump in 2016 but now leans “likely Democrat” in the House race according to the Cook Political Report.
“Matt is proud of his time at the State Department working to stop the spread of AIDS and improve the lives of millions in Africa,” Mowers campaign manager John Corbett told HuffPost. “These are issues that enjoy strong, bipartisan support, and they were his primary focus at the State Department. Unfortunately, now that he is the Republican Party’s nominee for Congress in a battleground district, it’s clear the Democrats will stop at nothing to save Congressman Pappas, including spreading false rumors about him. It’s political silly season, and par for the course from Pappas and his cronies.”
Pappas’ campaign declined to comment for this article, but in a post-primary memo on Wednesday, the New Hampshire Democratic Party chair, Ray Buckley, made clear that Democrats are going to tie Mowers and other GOP candidates in the state to Trump and the extreme parts of his agenda.
Mowers won his primary by “aligning [himself] with Trump’s extreme views on women’s reproductive rights, denying Granite State workers a livable wage, and taking away health care for Granite Staters. Mowers’ main so-called credential is his experience working for Donald Trump and Chris Christie, two corrupt hyper-partisan politicians who have pursued a political agenda at the expense of their own constituents,” Buckley said.
During the primary, Matt Mayberry, who was Mowers’ main competitor, hit him for being from New Jersey and moving to New Hampshire only recently.
“He is a New Jersey politician who came to New Hampshire, saw a seat, tried to grab it and I think that is wrong,” Mayberry said. “You can’t buy 12 flannel shirts from L.L. Bean and say you are a Granite stater. You have got to be here for a while.”
But Mowers leaned into his alliance with Trump and noted that he had experience in New Hampshire politics, from his time as New Hampshire Republican Party executive director from 2013 to 2015 and from running then-New Jersey Gov. Christie’s presidential primary campaign in the state in the 2016 election.
“Voters across the First District have severe buyer’s remorse with Chris Pappas, who campaigned as an independent voice and then sadly went to Washington and voted with Nancy Pelosi and her liberal agenda 100% of the time,” Mowers said after his win Tuesday. “I’m humbled at the support from Granite Staters, and pledge to offer a new vision of leadership that will deliver results for middle class families.”