Former President Bill Clinton came to the Granite State Friday to campaign for Democratic women up and down the ballot. And if any of those women were troubled by his notorious treatment of women, it didn’t show.
While Republican women called out Democratic hypocrisy at a Nashua presser, both gubernatorial candidate Joyce Craig and NH-02 candidate Maggie Goodlander enthusiastically appeared at Nashua Community College to praise the former president before he took the stage.
“Loved welcoming President Bill Clinton — the greatest Explainer in Chief America has ever known — back to Nashua tonight,” Goodlander posted on social media.
U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan (D) reminded the crowd that “New Hampshire made Bill Clinton the comeback kid.”
A few hours earlier, a group of Republican women — both elected officials and candidates — joined state party chair Chris Ager to remind Granite Staters about Clinton’s record and ask why Craig and Goodlander were campaigning with him.
A group of NHGOP women participate in a press conference in Nashua, N.H. on November 1, 2024.
“As women, we reject the fear-mongering of the Democrats and the disgraceful way Bill Clinton treated women when he was in political power,” said Kristie Hart, vice chairwoman of the Nashua Republican City Committee.
Republican National Committeewoman Mary Jane Beauregard said Clinton’s appearance in New Hampshire on behalf of Craig and Goodlander “illustrates his hypocrisy.”
“It’s evident that Bill Clinton does not genuinely care about women,” she said. “Rather, he and the Democratic Party have historically exploited women for their own gain.”
And Ager called the pick of former President Clinton to campaign in New Hampshire in this election cycle “perplexing.”
“He’s not the type of surrogate that we would expect for candidates who are making gender a centerpiece of their entire campaigns,” Ager said.
Clinton’s inappropriate treatment of women is well-documented and led to his impeachment in 1999. In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Clinton’s name was stripped from the party’s annual fundraising dinner, along with fellow womanizer President John F. Kennedy, after Democratic women complained.
U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the first woman in America to be elected both a governor and Senator, wasn’t bothered. She thanked Clinton for coming Friday and, like current president Joe Biden, she made incarceration part of her pitch.
“Kamala Harris wants to give people who disagree with her a seat at the table,” Shaheen said. “Donald Trump wants to put people who disagree with him in jail.”
Last week, Biden gave the Harris campaign heartburn when, talking about Trump to a group of Democrats in Concord, he said, “We gotta lock him up.”
Granite State Republicans didn’t just talk about Clinton’s record of boorish behavior toward women. They also used Friday’s presser to point out the differences between Clinton’s policies as president and the Biden-Harris administration.
“While president, Clinton established a prevention through deterrence border security policy. He actually tried to control the border,” said state Rep. Vanessa Shaheen (R-Milford). “Harris has ignored it until polling made it politically expedient.”
State rep candidate Sara DeVito (R-Danville) talked about the foreign policy differences. “Unlike President Trump and President Clinton’s terms, the world is more dangerous today thanks to policies of Biden-Harris.”
Clinton is just the latest high-profile Democrat to campaign in New Hampshire, a state Democrats insist is solidly in the Harris camp. So why, Republicans ask, is it one of the few states to have been visited by Harris, Biden, vice presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies and now former president Clinton?
The Harris campaign did not respond to emails from NHJournal.
Ager offered an answer.
“Because Democrats don’t want Joyce Craig to talk. Because whenever she opens her mouth, her poll numbers go down.”
Democrats pushed back, saying Trump hasn’t returned to New Hampshire since winning the state’s First in the Nation primary, and no prominent national Republicans have stopped by, either.
Asked about the lack of national GOP firepower, Ager said, “Our people are already highly motivated. They don’t need external celebrities to get them motivated. We are motivated because we understand what’s at stake.
“The Democrats, on the other hand, need that stimulus to get their people out.”
