OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc won the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night after battling establishment Republicans who backed his conservative rival in the primary.
Now, the retired Army brigadier general will face off against incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan, who won the Democratic Senate primary.
New Hampshire will be a closely-watched state going into November’s midterm elections that may determine if the GOP wins back the U.S. Senate, which is currently deadlocked at 50-50.
“You sent the biggest signal to the establishment tonight. They are going to work for you,” Bolduc said late on Tuesday night, after declaring victory in New Hampshire’s GOP Senate primary.
“Bolduc was part of a trio of supporters of former President Donald Trump – joining Karoline Leavitt in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District and Bob Burns in the Second Congressional District – who edged out rivals backed by more establishment Republicans to secure nomination victories as the Granite State, Rhode Island, and Delaware held the final primaries of the 2022 election cycle,” Fox News reported.
“Additionally, New Hampshire was host to the final in a series of high-profile and competitive Republican primaries, which throughout the past six months have often pitted conservative candidates supported by mainstream Republicans against far-right contenders often aligned with Trump and his legions of MAGA loyalists. And while Trump uncharacteristically stayed neutral in all three federal primaries, all three MAGA-style, populist, outsider contenders in New Hampshire prevailed – in primaries where only a plurality of votes was needed to win – even as they were targeted and massively outspent by more mainstream GOP super PACs and pro-Democratic groups meddling in the Republican primaries,” the report added.
Bolduc's apparent win comes as Republicans poured millions into the race to try to prevent his victory — as party leaders fear that he's too extreme to win the November election against Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. https://t.co/VRUqNP6AQ3
— Axios (@axios) September 14, 2022
Trump responded to the results out of New Hampshire with a post on his Truth Social website, writing: “Nice! The ‘Trumpiest’ people ALL won in New Hampshire last night. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
“I have taken the arrows from my fellow Republican candidates, and I’m standing strong,” Bolduc told supporters at a town hall on Saturday in Laconia, New Hampshire, where he was born and raised. “When God made Bolducs, he made oak trees, not willow trees.”
“The reason they’re afraid of me is they can’t control me…. I scare them,” Bolduc said when asked about outside GOP groups spending big money to defeat him in the primary by backing his opponent.
Republicans are aggressively targeting Hassan given her seat may allow them to regain control of the U.S. Senate in November’s midterms.
“Maggie Hassan is in fact, one of the most vulnerable, if not the most vulnerable Democrat Senate candidate, Democrat incumbent in the country,” said Danielle Alvarez of the Republican National Committee.
“The fate of the United States Senate in some degree could rest on a campaign and a candidate named Don Bolduc,” said Neil Levesque of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.
Embattled Democrat Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) over the weekend claimed to oppose the Biden administration’s open border policies while ignoring its “catch and release” policy. https://t.co/BLmTRrtZY4
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) September 12, 2022
Raphael Warnock, Catherine Cortez Masto, Maggie Hassan, Mark Kelly, Patty Murray and 45 other Senate Dems voted against:
*Title 42
*The border wall
*18,000 Border Patrol agents.…and for 87,000 IRS enforcers instead.
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) September 10, 2022