On July 21, 2024, President Joe Biden became the first candidate in U.S. history to win his party’s nomination for president and then bail out of the election.
“While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for the remainder of my term,” Biden said in a statement posted on social media.
As he made clear at the time—and several new books have since confirmed—he wasn’t a willing accomplice in his own political demise. He thought Democrats were disloyal to dump him, and that he had a better chance of beating Trump than the alternative.
His son Hunter reiterated that message this week, telling former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, “We lost the last election because we did not remain loyal to the leader of the party.”
In another podcast released Monday, Hunter Biden added, “We all talk about the incredible popularity of Barack Obama. Barack Obama never got more than 69 million votes. My dad got 81 million votes.”
New Hampshire Democrats defended Biden, even after his disastrous performance in the June 27, 2024, debate, insisting he was competent to serve four more years. But once the national party had bounced Biden from the ticket, all four members of the federal delegation flipped on the spot and threw their support to Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Given her experience as a former prosecutor and senator, she has what it takes to lead and win at this critical time in our nation’s history,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said hours after Biden bowed out.
Were Joe and Hunter Biden right? Did dumping him from the ticket leave the Democratic Party stronger or weaker a year later?
The good news for New Hampshire Democrats was that they won both congressional races and carried the state’s four Electoral College votes with Harris atop the ticket.
The bad news was pretty much everything else.
They lost every significant competitive state election, including an open governor’s race — handing the GOP a supermajority in the state Senate along the way.
Also not great: In a New England state where the Republican brand has traditionally been weak, a new NHJournal/Praecones Analytica poll found more voters want the GOP to control state government (41 percent) than Democrats (38 percent).
And Republican activists point to the latest voter registration numbers showing 324,000 registered Republicans as of May 2o25 compared to 275,000 Democrats. The largest group — more than 380,000 — remains the undeclared vote.
Because New Hampshire has same-day registration, those numbers aren’t as significant as in other states. But Republican operatives say the trend is real, with new GOP registrations outpacing Democrats 23,000 to 15,000 since the start of 2024.
And then there’s the anecdotal data. No Democratic candidate for mayor of Manchester, less than a week before the filing deadline closes. Not even a rumor of a major Democrat running for governor next year, even as Democratic candidates flood the First Congressional District Democratic primary field.
Is the New Hampshire Democratic Party paying a price for the Biden-Harris presidential fumble?
New Hampshire marketing professional Scott Spradling offered a rosy assessment of the Democrats’ performance.
“I would say the New Hampshire Democratic Party showed its independence and its grassroots power by outflanking President Biden’s attempt to take away the state’s leadoff presidential primary status by ensuring Biden still won by write-in,” Spradling said. “Whether people agreed with it or not, it was an impressive ground game display.”
Tom Rath, a longtime Republican who has distanced himself from the party in the era of Trump, says the Democrats’ problem isn’t Biden, but their weak bench. Specifically, their inability to counter Gov. Kelly Ayotte.
“Democrats in 2026 will have to confront a ballot headed by Kelly Ayotte, who is clearly the dominant political presence in the state today. That’s their biggest challenge,” Rath said. “The governor has had as strong a first six months in office as any governor of recent vintage, and her polling numbers reflect that.”
Rath says Democrats will, as they tried with Gov. Chris Sununu, “to make all the races about Trump. But Ayotte’s strength negates much, if not all, of that argument.”
But how much of the Democrats’ struggles at the state level are attributable to the national party’s problems? Joe Biden didn’t make Mayor Joyce Craig a terrible candidate (though he did come to New Hampshire and campaign with her), and it’s hard to see a link between state Sen. Donna Soucy’s embarrassing defeat and Biden’s woes.
At the same time, the Democrats’ dominance at the federal level continues. If Rep. Chris Pappas paid a price for backing Biden, it didn’t show up in the election results.
In fact, as UNH Political Science professor Dante Scala notes, Democrats are set up for decades of dominance in the federal races.
“Jeanne Shaheen, the oldest member of the Democratic congressional delegation at 78 years old, announced she will retire. If Chris Pappas wins next year, he will be just 46 when he starts his first term in the Senate,” Scala said.
“Annie Kuster, the second-oldest member of the delegation at 68, retired last year, replaced by another Democrat 30 years younger, Maggie Goodlander.
“Assuming Democrats retain Pappas’ House seat, his replacement will be, at most, only slightly older. (Stefany Shaheen would be 52 when she entered Congress.)
“Succession, as the Biden debacle has shown, is one of the trickiest aspects in politics,” Scala concluded. “On the whole, for New Hampshire Democrats, succession has worked out about as well as they could have hoped — all in the space of a couple of years, and with minimal drama (credit to Kuster and Shaheen for that).”
But would any of that be different if Biden had stayed on the ballot? If Harris hadn’t been the nominee? Or, as most Democrats wish, Biden had been forced out of the race earlier, so the party could have had a primary?
As one Democratic veteran of New Hampshire campaigns told NHJournal on background, “We lost and control nothing, so I don’t think it would have mattered either way. Joe Biden was a corpse and Kamala Harris inspired no one.”
