Governor Ron DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis will continue “Our Great American Comeback” Tour at an event in Rochester, N.H. on Thursday, June 1, 2023, at 11:30am at American Legion Post 7.
Join us on Friday, June 2, 2023, at 5:30pm for this magnificent and state-renowned annual event to benefit the Belknap County Republican Committee and its efforts on behalf of Republican candidates in 2024.
Governor Ron DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis will continue “Our Great American Comeback” Tour at an event in Laconia, New Hampshire on Thursday, June 1, 2023, at 9am at the VFW Post 1670.
Corey Lewandowski says he’s made his decision about a possible 2020 U.S. Senate race and, while he won’t say what it is, he does have a message for the New Hampshire Republicans already in the field:
Don’t bother. You can’t win.
“If I decide to get into this race, it’s going to send shock waves not just across New Hampshire, but through the country,” Lewandowski said on the John Fredericks radio show Thursday. “I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think I would be successful.”
He doesn’t have the same confidence in the rest of the GOP field: Retired Gen. Donald Bolduc, attorney Corky Messner and former NH House Speaker Bill O’Brien.
“I hear the other [NHGOP] candidates can’t raise money for a litany of reasons. If I said today ‘I’m out of the US Senate race’… it’s not like they’re going to raise $10 or $20 million tomorrow. Let’s not kid ourselves.
“The only person who potentially can get in this race who has a national profile is Corey Lewandowski. And the only person who’s going to send Jeanne Shaheen home permanently, if I do get in the race, is going to be me.”
“People can argue it,” Lewandowski added, “but that’s just the truth.”
Lewandowski, who says he’s currently advising the Trump/Pence 2020 campaign, told Fredericks he’s discussed his possible candidacy with President Trump, Vice President Pence and Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale.
Lewandowski also predicted that impeachment would make Democratic incumbent Shaheen easier to beat in November. “I’ve weighed my calculation based on what impeachment will mean for a U.S. Senate race and I think Jeanne Shaheen is very vulnerable because I believe she will vote in lockstep with AOC and Speaker Pelosi to remove a duly-elected president.”
When Fredericks said it sounds like Lewandowski’s decided to run, the former Trump campaign manager didn’t disagree.
“Well, I’ve been brushing up on foreign policy,” Lewandowski said. “I’ve spent an enormous amount of time understanding some issues that I wasn’t as well briefed in as an incumbent U.S. Senator would be. If that gives you an indication of what my decision is, I’ll leave it at that.”
Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld told a politically-savvy New Hampshire audience that he is forming an exploratory committee to challenge President Trump in the 2020 GOP primary to rescue the party from “Stockholm Syndrome.”
“Our President is simply too unstable to carry out the duties of the highest executive office,” Weld told the Politics and Eggs breakfast in Bedford, NH—a must-stop on the presidential campaign trail through the Granite State. “They say the President has captured the Republican party in Washington. As the president might say: ‘Sad.’ But even sadder is that many Republicans exhibit all the symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome, identifying with their captor.”
For Weld, who last held elected office in 1997, riding to the rescue of the GOP is an unexpected role. His most recent foray into American politics was as the Libertarian Party’s nominee for vice president, and he has long been at odds with the party’s conservative base. In fact, Weld often notes that the Gary Johnson/Bill Weld ticket in 2016 took votes by a three-to-one margin from otherwise GOP voters. “A Libertarian vote was a protest vote or change vote in 2016. Those votes were going to go to Donald J. Trump not Hillary Clinton,” Weld said.
But Weld has returned to the GOP because, he argues, Trump has put the country “in grave peril.”
Weld began his remarks to the crowd of New England business people and political insiders with a withering critique of President Trump, calling him a “schoolyard bully” who “virtually spat upon the idea that we should have freedom of the press,” and who “goes out of his way to insult and even humiliate ore democratic allies.”
“The situation is not yet hopeless,” Weld said, “but we do need a mid-course correction. We need to install leaders who know that character counts.
“As we move towards 2020 election we must uphold difference between the open heart, open mind and open handedness of patriotism versus the hard heart, closed mind and clenched fist of nativism and nationalism,” Weld said.
Weld laid out a series of his own policy proposals that were commonly heard in GOP circles in the 1990s but are rarely advocated today: a 19 percent flat income tax, baseline budgeting for the federal government and individual retirement accounts for “millennials who may never receive the benefits of Social Security.” But it wasn’t Weld’s policy proposals that generated the massive media attention his speech received. It was the premise of a primary challenge against President Trump.
Weld repeatedly suggested that other candidates might enter the 2020 race, both as third-party candidates and as Republicans, which he clearly saw as a positive development. When asked if his entrance into the GOP primary “would make the dam break,” Weld answered “If I get traction and cracks begin to appear, you may see a gold rush.”
This possibility—that Weld’s candidacy will open the door to a more traditional Republican challenger– may pose Weld’s most significant danger to Trump. Trump’s poll numbers, both nationally and in key early primary states like New Hampshire, have actually risen in recent months. Emerson College’s Director of Polling Spencer Kimball tells InsideSources that “We were just in the field in Iowa testing Trump vs. [Ohio Gov. John] Kasich and Trump was up 90-10 percent. It’s not going to be any easier there for Bill Weld.”
And in New Hampshire, which border’s Weld’s home state of Massachusetts, Trump’s approval rating among Republicans is 82 percent, and his approval among all Granite State voters has risen from 36 percent a year ago to 43 percent today in the latest NHIOP poll. When asked if they would encourage Trump to run for re-election in 2020, 77 percent of New Hampshire Republicans said yes.
Which may explain why multiple Republican strategists told InsideSources that they see little if any path forward for Weld in the Republican primary (“He misses on some of the attributes I think are needed to run a successful national effort,” New Hampshire-based GOP consultant Dave Carney tells InsideSources.)
Pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson of Echelon Insights says “Bill Weld is fighting an uphill battle on two fronts. First is that President Trump remains quite popular within the party, and rank-and-file Republican voters do not want to see a primary battle that could impair President Trump in a general election against a Democrat.
“Second is that Weld’s particular brand of Republicanism is now very rare in the party. Lots of voters in America are socially and fiscally progressive or are socially and fiscally conservative. But among those who ‘mix it up’ a bit, you find more people who are fiscally progressive but socially conservative – the opposite of a sort of ‘New England Republican’ formula.”
And even if the GOP base were in the mood to make a change, it’s hard to imagine the Republican Party of 2020 embracing Weld, with his history of pro-abortion and pro-amnesty policies, and his support for liberal politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“The Republican Party is a big tent, but someone who endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 as the Libertarian Party’s Vice Presidential nominee really needs to think about how welcome he is in the Republican Party,” said Steve Stepanek, chairman of the New Hampshire GOP.
“I don’t expect his campaign to get very far among Republican primary voters.”
Weld announced that he plans to stump across New Hampshire and other states in coming weeks, but emphasized that he has not made a final decision to run.
“If people won’t buy dog food, then I won’t advance,” Weld conceded. “That’s how it is in showbiz. If the dogs won’t eat the dog food, it doesn’t matter how good the promoter is.”
The following is an op-ed from Wayne MacDonald, outgoing chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party:
I never planned to be Chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee. I have sincerely enjoyed my involvement with the Party over the years and just sought out new ways as time passed to serve. Those “ways” ended up becoming the rungs on the ladder that took me from being the Chairman of the Londonderry Republican Town Committee to being State Chairman, with numerous stops in between. Chairman Warren Henderson resigning in 2006, Chairman Jack Kimball resigning in 2011 and Chairman Jeanie Forrester resigning in 2018 resulted in surprised tours of duty in an office I always admired, but had not coveted.
As I look back on these periods that I have been honored with the Chairmanship, I do have some thoughts to share. I want to thank NHJournal for this opportunity to do so.
There has been serious discussion for about a decade regarding the Chairmanship being a full time, paid position. Particularly after this past cycle, this idea makes abundant sense. The question persists as to whether the New Hampshire Republican State Committee will ever raise the kind of money that makes this possible, without sacrificing staff positions and support for candidates and programs. It will benefit the next Chairman immensely that they will have a full term to chart the course in which they want to lead the Party. It was always a definite handicap to come in after the tenor of the term had been established.
Regardless of the circumstances however, it’s important that any candidate for the office realize the job is full time, with or without pay. The hours that the Chairman spends interacting with the staff, media and others in the course of a typical day and week easily equals–and usually surpasses–eight or forty hours, respectively. Because most Chairmen to date have worked at a regular job, myself included, the times devoted to the Chairmanship are mixed in with that other job and not visible to the public and Party activists.
Raising money will be difficult, even during the best of times. The notion that there is a “pot of gold” with New Hampshire’s name on it in some as yet undisclosed location, is inaccurate.
Equally incorrect is the notion that the Party organization will flourish by simply taking a sharp turn in a particular ideological direction and demanding that everyone who wants to have an “R” next to their name follow suit. Our Party is large and diverse and needs to be, if it’s going to be successful. We will not elect senators and representatives and other public officials in sufficient numbers across this very diverse state to be in the majority and remain there if we adopt a narrow and polarizing political philosophy. Financial success for the Party will come only as the result of effective public policy and service, prudent Party spending, well run events, a good mail program and online program and a good solicitation effort.
Good media relations and good internal communications (newsletters, e-mails, etc.) are critical to the overall success also. The development and support of local committees and county committees are crucial. Everything can’t be run from Concord, nor should it be. Local and county committees need to understand how important they are in the goal of furthering Republican objectives and electing our candidates. That means being fully involved in the candidate recruitment process and helping to support the candidates politically and financially.
Again, everything cannot be done by the State Party, which is really the Chairman and however many staffers who are there (and there are never enough).
The off year is when the grassroots organizing, candidate recruiting and the bulk of the fundraising for the election year need to take place. The eight months prior to the September primary don’t afford an adequate amount of time to leave it all until then. Unfortunately, this is what often happens.
I have said over the years, both seriously and jokingly, that the only real job of the State Chairman is to keep everyone happy at the same time which is, of course, impossible. I suspect that there have been times when every Chairman has felt this was the expectation, and I will be surprised if the next Chairman doesn’t feel the same way.
I wish my successor and the Party the best and intend to be involved for many years to come.
It’s official: Republican Bruce Breton, a Windham, NH selectman and enthusiastic member of the Trump 2016 campaign team, will proposa a change in the New Hampshire GOP party bylaws allowing party officials to support President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
“This is a fatal flaw in our bylaws that keeps party officials from supporting our party’s president. It’s ridiculous,” Bretton told NHJournal.
“History shows that when Republicans don’t back the incumbent, we lose the seat. We saw it in 1992. We work so hard as a party to secure the presidency–then we’re not going to support our president?”
NH state Rep. Fred Doucette, a member of the incoming House GOP leadership and New Hampshire co-chair of Trump for President, agrees. “It’s just common sense. If our party doesn’t unite, if we don’t all pull together, we lose.”
“I was at the bottom of the escalator in New York when he came down and announced his presidency, and I took a lot of abuse during the campaign. But he won, and he’s doing exactly what we elected him to do. President Trump deserves our support.”
Both Breton and Doucette told NHJournal they were still working on the best way to bring the rule change about, possibly during the GOP state convention in the spring. “It probably can’t happen [at the NHGOP convention] in January, but we could have a vote on a change in bylaws in the spring. Or there might be some other way to accomplish the same thing. We’re not sure. We’re just having a discussion,” Doucette said.
Breton says he brought up the idea at the Rockingham County Republican Committee Caucus earlier this month and “there was tons of support. I was really surprised. The ‘Never Trumpers’ don’t like it, but the grassroots love it,” Breton said.
Breton is right about the divide in the party. Prominent conservative Trump opponent Bill Kristol tells NHJournal:
“Trump is wrong to threaten the integrity of New Hampshire’s First in the Nation Republican primary. But he and his supporters wouldn’t head down this disreputable path if they weren’t worried. What are they worried about? They’re worried about free and fair competition on a level playing field. They’re worried about Granite Staters making up their own minds and deciding for themselves, as they’ve always done.”
The current frontrunner to become the new NHGOP chairman in January, Trump backer Steve Stepanek, has already declared that he would remain neutral in the 2020 primary if elected chair. “Where the party needs to be neutral, I will be neutral,” Stepanek says.
But will it even happen? Local GOP strategist Tom Rath told Politico it’s “all talk,” and even strong Trump supporter Rep. Al Baldasaro tells NHJournal “I don’t support a rule change.”
Other Republicans, like local GOP strategist Dave Carney, are more concerned about the impact of an “endorse the incumbent” policy on New Hampshire’s “First In The Nation” primary. Carney, like many Granite State Republicans, believes the state’s #FITN status narrowly missed a major blow when longtime Secretary of State–and aggressively non-partisan Democrat–Bill Gardner was re-elected earlier this month by a one-vote margin in the legislature. They’re concerned that other states might use the perception of a rigged primary as leverage to bump the Granite State from the front of the line.
“People in New Hampshire don’t realize just how endangered our primary is,” Carney told NHJournal.
Doucette rejects the description of his proposal as “rigging.”
“Are all 50 state party’s neutral? Do they all have a policy against endorsing? This is just an idea we’re discussing, and right away the RINOs are trying to rock the boat,” Doucette said. “We’re Republicans. We should all be supporting our president. He deserves it.”
The new Morning Consult poll of President Trump’s state-by-state approval ratings for November show that, while the president remains unpopular in New Hampshire, his numbers here have edged up slightly. In fact, New Hampshire–which long had a more negative few of the president than the nation as a whole–is now close to the national polling average on the Trump presidency.
Trump’s November numbers in New Hampshire are 42 percent approval/55 percent disapproval among registered voters a net – 13. In September those numbers were 40-57 percent, a net -17 percent. In September of 2017, Trump was underwater by 19 points--quite a turnaround for a candidate who lost New Hampshire to Hillary Clinton by just 0.4 percent of the vote a year earlier.
By comparison to New Hampshire’s 42/55, Morning Consult put Trump’s national average at 43 approve/52 disapprove, a 9-point deficit. So while Trump is still less popular in New Hampshire (hardly a surprise in deep-blue, anti-Trump New England), the gap between the Granite State and the rest of the nation has narrowed.
Trump’s numbers across most of New England are abysmal, ranging from -16 in Rhode Island to -25 in Vermont. The notable exception in Maine, where Trump’s under water by just 9 points, matching the national average.
So in a state where the incumbent Republican president is unpopular and Democrats just won a crushing victory, how should the NHGOP respond?
Longtime Republican strategist Mike Dennehy tells NHJournal that how Trump governs in the new era will be important:
“People will be paying very close attention to how Trump interacts with the new Democrat Senate Majority Leader and the Democrat Speaker,” Dennehy said. “And in similar fashion, people will be looking to see how Governor Sununu gets along with the new Democrat majorities in the State House. People are looking for action, but the current political environment doesn’t appear to allow for it so it will take strong leadership at the top.”
Dave Carney, another veteran NHGOP consultant, says “President Trump is in a decent position today, but in this new political world 18 months is like five lifetimes. The world will change many time before the electoin rolls along.”
Carney warns that both Republicans and Democrats in the Granite State should avoid overreaching when it comes to Trump and 2020, for the sake of the First In The Nation primary.
“That means not trying to tilt the tables in the primary,” Carney told NHJournal. “New Hampshire is unique in that anyone can run for president and get a fair hearing from our voters. Any perception that the game is rigged will help the other states undercut our position.”
“The people of New Hampshire should not underestimate how many other states want to take our FITN status away from us,” Carney said.
Outgoing New Hampshire GOP Chairman Wayne MacDonald tells NHJournal he has “major concerns” over ending the policy of party neutrality in the 2020 POTUS primary and supporting incumbent President Donald Trump.
“Anyone should be able to run for the nomination. Donald Trump is the president, and his record should be considered. But until our nominee is chosen by a vote of the people, the party leadership needs to be neutral,” MacDonald told NHJournal.
Not everyone agrees. Bruce Breton, who was very active in Trump’s 2016 campaign in New Hampshire, finds the party’s policy of neutrality “deeply flawed.” He has abandoned his bid for NHGOP Vice Chair in part because running for the office “would be contrary to my continued support of President Trump. As per our bylaws I would have to remain neutral in the upcoming 2020 campaign. It is my strong belief that those bylaws should be changed to reflect that the NHGOP would support an incumbent president.”
But MacDonald was adamant. “I understand the logic of wanting to support an incumbent president in your own party. But the nomination is something that is bestowed upon them by the voters,” MacDonald said, adding that the candidates and offices are irrelevant.
“This has nothing to do with Trump. We were neutral in 1992 when George H. W. Bush was president [and challenged by Pat Buchanan]. And it’s not just the presidency. Governor, senator, what have you—the party needs to remain neutral.”
MacDonald has served as state party chair three times, always as an appointee and never as an elected candidate. On Tuesday, he announced he won’t be running to keep the job.
“I’ve always enjoyed it, but it’s never been easy. People don’t leave the job when things are going well,” he noted wryly. “It’s an intense and exhausting experience.”
When news broke of MacDonald’s decision, Gov. Chris Sununu released a statement offering “sincere thanks to Chairman MacDonald for his steady leadership over these past few months. He had to step up to take on a tough challenge, served admirably, and I sincerely hope Wayne stays involved in the years ahead — the Republican Party is better off with Wayne MacDonald at the table.”
MacDonald told NHJournal he agreed with those who say the job should be a paid, full-time position for the GOP as it is for the New Hampshire Democratic party, adding: “I’m Scottish, so if they had offered to pay me, I wouldn’t have said ‘no.’”
“One big advantage Democrats have had is continuity. They’ve been able to build on their experiences from one cycle to the next. We’ve had very few chairmen serve back-to-back terms.”
MacDonald is right. Former NHGOP chair Fergus Cullen tweeted out the list of state party chairs since 2000. There have been eleven already, and only one—Jennifer Horn—served two consecutive terms. “During this time, NHDems have had just two. They stuck with Kathy Sullivan and Ray Buckley not only after wins but after losses too,” Cullen tweeted.
MacDonald declined to endorse anyone to replace him, but he did share his biggest concern for the next chairman: “Fundraising. That’s got to be the number one job.”
“And I don’t have a problem with going to Washington, DC for funding, as the Democrats do, that’s fine. The problem is that there isn’t this pile of money waiting for us in Washington to just scoop up and take back to New Hampshire. We’re going to have to compete for money there too,” MacDonald said.
He pointed out the example of former party chairman John H. Sununu. “He really was in a class by himself when it comes to state chairmen. He had been governor, he had all the contacts, and he raised a lot of money for the party. But even he didn’t meet the $1 million fundraising goal he set for himself.”
“No matter who becomes the next chairman, fundraising is always hard.”
So what happened in New Hampshire on Tuesday? Here are all the numbers you need to know:
RECORD SETTING TURNOUT
Total turnout was about 580,000 ballots cast, “the first time we’ve broken the half a million mark in a midterm,” Secretary of State Bill Gardner told NHJournal, “and the first time we’ve had a midterm turnout higher than any presidential primary.”
“All that, on a day when we had bad weather, too. If people have the will to vote, they will make the effort–rain or no rain.”
NEW HAMPSHIRE VOTERS LOVE TO SWING
There were 573,735 votes cast in the race for governor: Gov. Chris Sununu, 302,838; Democrat Molly Kelly, 262,408.
Republican Sununu’s margin over Democrat Kelly: 40,430.
A total of 560,034 votes were cast for the major-party Congressional candidates: 310,320 for the two Democrats; 249,714 for the two Republicans.
The Pappas/Kuster margin over Edwards/Negron: 60,606.
That’s a 100,000 “swing vote” margin just in the top-tier races–about 18 percent of voters split their tickets for governor and Congress.
Or put another way, Republican Chris Sununu outperformed the two GOP congressional candidates by 53,000 votes, while Molly Kelly underperformed her Democratic colleagues by 48,000.
“It’s not that unusual, actually,” Gardner told NHJournal. “When Ronald Reagan ran in 1980, he won New Hampshire by a 2-1 margin. The same year, the Democrat running for governor won 2-1, too.”
(NHJournal checked, and Gardner was right: Reagan got 58 percent of the vote in New Hampshire in 1980, and incumbent Democratic governor Hugh Gallen got 59 percent.)
GOP TURNOUT WAS GOOD. DEMOCRATIC TURNOUT WAS BETTER
“The Democrats did an unbelievable job of drilling down into the lower-tier GOTV universes,” Greg Moore, Executive Director of Americans for Prosperity-New Hampshire, told NHJournal. “Net-net, they brought out 320,000 of their folks and the conservatives brought out 260,000.
“To put that into perspective, Eddie Edwards in the NH-01 race got 6,000 more votes than Republican Frank Guinta did in 2014–and Guinta won by 9,000 votes. Edwards lost by 24,000.”
THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT. AND MOSTLY DEMOCRAT.
Billionaire Tom Steyer has been bragging for more than a year about the $1 million or so he planned to spend in New Hampshire getting college students out of their dorms and into the polls. His organization NextGen America had almost 40 paid workers covering the campuses, and according to NextGen’s New Hampshire comms person Kristen Morris, it worked. She tweeted:
THE GOP NEEDED A BIGGER WIN BY SUNUNU
It’s easy after a wave election–and that’s certainly what happened in New Hampshire–to simply be grateful the party held onto the governor’s office. But several NHGOP pros have noted that the governor’s race was closer than it should have been, and the rest of the ticket suffered.
“With a popular incumbent governor running for re-election against a hitherto unknown former state senator, Molly Kelly significantly out-raised and outspent him,” veteran GOP strategist Tom Rath told NHJournal. “And that should never happen. Keeping the governor’s race close allowed the Democrats to make big gains down ballot.”
SHOW THEM THE MONEY
Final numbers aren’t in, but it’s clear that New Hampshire Democrats had a huge financial advantage, in part because of a massive amount of money donated through the ActBlue program at a national level (more than $1 billion in small-dollar donations alone), some of which made its way to New Hampshire. And in part because Republicans did not raise the resources they needed.
“We’ve been outspent in the past,” outgoing Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley told NHJournal, “but not like this. This time it would appear our Democratic colleagues had so much money that it almost didn’t matter how they spent it.”
“Drilling down as deeply in their GOTV efforts as the Democrats did takes tons of money,” Greg Moore notes.
And GOP strategist Mike Dennehy is even more blunt: “If New Hampshire Republicans don’t figure out fundraising, they can kiss this state goodbye.”
ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL, NH VOTERS WANTED TO VOTE DEMOCRAT.
At the Union-Leader, Kevin Landrigan picks up on the fascinating story of Manchester Republican Ed Sapienza.
“A lifelong Democrat, Sapienza changed his party affiliation to the GOP last spring to run for Hillsborough County Register of Deeds,” Landrigan reported. When nobody filed to run as a Democrat, some friends of Sapienza wrote him in during the primary and so his name appeared on Tuesday as both the Republican and Democratic nominee.
“In rock-ribbed Republican Merrimack for example, Sapienza the Democrat got 500 more votes than Sapienza the Republican did,” Landrigran noted.
That’s 500 more votes simply for being a Democrat. That number pretty much sums up the 2018 midterm election in New Hampshire.
