GOP businessman Russell Prescott is preparing to make another run for Congress in the First Congressional District, multiple sources tell NHJournal. He would be the first Republican to take concrete steps toward entering the race.
Prescott, 62, previously served as a state senator and executive councilor. His political claim to fame is that he defeated U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan in head-to-head state Senate races — twice — most recently in 2010. However, he finished in fourth place with 10 percent of the vote in the 2022 NH-01 primary.
“Russell Prescott is just the type of person we should be sending to serve us in Congress,” said veteran GOP strategist Mike Biundo, who is advising Prescott. “He’s a small business owner with a history of winning the tough races. He’s a public servant and a man of the highest integrity.”
Prescott owns R.E. Prescott Pump Company in Exeter and is a professional engineer. He holds several patents for products that remove arsenic and radon from water. As a result, he was able to largely self-fund his 2022 campaign.
In that hotly-contested five-way primary, Prescott pledged to run a “Golden Rule” campaign and declined to criticize any of his opponents in the GOP primary. That approach would starkly contrast with the frontrunner for the top of the ticket, former President Donald Trump.
Newcomer Karoline Leavitt won the primary and went on to lose to two-term incumbent Rep. Chris Pappas in the general election. Pappas is widely expected to be the Democratic nominee again next year.
There has been very little chatter about the NH-01 GOP primary yet. Two names that have made the rumor mill are Executive Councilor Janet Stevens and businesswoman Hollie Noveletsky, CEO of Novel Iron Works Inc.
Looming over the NH-01 GOP primary and every other 2024 race in the Granite State is the Trump candidacy and its possible impact on the rest of the ticket. Opponents of renominating Trump point to his eight-point loss to Joe Biden in 2020 and the former president’s poor poll numbers in the Granite State.
Trump’s defenders point out that even as he was losing, Republicans won back both the state House and Senate in 2020, and by solid margins — the only state GOP to do so in the 2020 cycle.
