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Two New Hampshire Republicans are stepping out of the midterm elections after getting dire medical news. 

Michael Yakubovich, a two-term state representative from Hooksett running for state Senate in the redrawn District 16, and Gary Hopper, a Weare state representative running for the Weare/Goffstown floterial district, both recently announced they are leaving politics to deal with health issues.

Yakubovich issued a statement Wednesday on his campaign website announcing his decision to step aside.

“As we approached (primary) Election Day, I began to get very sick, and my doctors were initially unable to determine why. After undergoing a battery of tests, I received an unexpected diagnosis and immediately began aggressive treatment,” Yakubovich wrote. “While my family and I are hopeful for my recovery, these treatments have temporarily incapacitated me, and I am unable to continue with my campaign.”

State GOP Chair Stephen Stepanek picked Keith Murphy, a Manchester businessman and owner of Murphy’s Taproom who is also a former state representative, to replace Yakubovich on the ballot.

“My thoughts are with Michael Yakubovich and his family during this very hard time, and I pray, along with the rest of our Republican team, for him to have a quick recovery,” Stepanek said.

Murphy said Wednesday that he is honored to take Yakubovich’s place.

“Michael knows that as a father and small business owner, I share his priorities for New Hampshire’s citizens: Lowering heat and energy costs, delivering high-quality services to Granite Staters, and fighting to keep our state government small, affordable and effective,” Murphy said. “I promise to work hard for every vote, if elected, to represent the district with integrity and enthusiasm.”

Reached Wednesday night, Hopper said he was in treatment for cancer when he signed up to run, but in recent days his cancer has taken a turn for the worse.

“The cancer treatments were working really good, and I had high hopes,” Hopper said. “But after that, the tables turned. I have terminal cancer.”

Hopper said his doctors now do not expect him to live long enough to reach the November general election.

“God has His plans,” Hopper said.

Hopper was replaced on the ballot with Liza Mazur, the Goffstown owner of an event planning business, Piper’s Cove, and a newly-nationalized American citizen from Canada.

Some Granite State politicos were surprised to learn a single person had the power to replace party nominees on the ballot. Substituting new candidates for Yakubovich and Hopper is possible under a law passed in 2013 that allows local and state party officials to change candidates after the primary election, former Speaker of the House Bill O’Brien told NHJournal. Before the 2013 law, candidates could not be removed from the ballot after the primary unless they died or moved out of their districts.

“We changed the language to allow someone’s name to be replaced if a medical condition causes the candidate not to be able to continue to run,” O’Brien said. Replacement can only occur when a candidate with incapacitation provides proof, via a doctor’s note and a sworn oath.

Under the law, a legislator with a single town or ward, the town or ward committee chair would appoint the new candidate, who must meet all conditions for candidacy.

“If it’s a multi-ward district, then the replacement is chosen by the county committee,” O’Brien said. “If it’s a state senate seat, then it’s the state party, acting through the chairman, who appoints the replacement.”

Hillsborough County GOP Chair Chris Ager picked Mazur to replace Hopper. 

“We’ve had the law since 2013 and never used it once,” O’Brien said. “Now we’ve used it twice in the same week.”

It’s becoming an Election Day tradition in the town of Windham, N.H.

Another election, another round of questionable election reporting, and another review in store for Windham election officials by the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office. 

Windham’s reported results from the Sept. 13 primary raised eyebrows when the reported results changed between election night and then later when results were given to the Secretary of State’s Office. At one point on Tuesday, Windham was “reporting” three different totals for the same elections: one from election night, one on the town’s website, and one from the hand recounts.

Republican state Rep. Julius Soti saw his total vote count in Windham drop by about 20 votes, from 1,080 on election night, to 1,063 during the week. “It’s a little bit odd they kept revising the numbers,” Soti said. “I’m not sure what happened.”  

The final tally? Soti edged Roger Filio in the GOP primary by eight votes, 2117 to 2109.

In the end, the final reported results were nearly identical to those reported on election night, with just a couple of votes net difference. So, why the moving-target tally? Town officials struggled to offer a cogent explanation.

“Any changes between the two sets of numbers can be accounted for by the continuation of the reconciliation process which involves the review of the marked checklist, hand tally sheets, write-in tally sheets, new voter registration, and checking the absentee ballot report along with various supporting spreadsheets,” said Windham’s Town Clerk Nancy Merrill in the statement. “The reconciliation process is a common, complex process that is performed not only in Windham, but all New Hampshire communities.”

But no other community had multiple results reported for the same election, critics noted.

“The votes they need to count are the ones that elected these [expletives] who run their elections,” one frustrated GOP state legislator told NHJournal. “They’ve got to go.”

Town Administrator Brian McCarthy downplayed the issue when contacted. He said the reconciliation process is in place to make sure the accurate totals are recorded, though that does not always happen the night of the vote. More time can be necessary to get all of the votes counted and the totals reconciled.

“Those reconciled numbers are the correct numbers,” McCarthy said.

That contradicts both the New Hampshire state constitution, which says all the votes will be counted on Election Day and the results from Windham where the reconciled numbers remained incorrect for part of the day Tuesday.

Not surprisingly, the state’s top election official is curious about Windham’s wandering results as well.

Secretary of State David Scanlan’s spokesperson Anna Fay said the election night counts were confirmed on Tuesday during the recount. The discrepancies in the totals will be investigated.

“The office is looking into issues related to the additional reporting that occurred after the election,” Fay said.

Windham became the epicenter for New Hampshire election conspiracy theories after the 2020 election when vote totals changed drastically in several races after the initial election night count. The months-long controversy ended with the outside audit that found the way town election officials folded the ballots caused the problems.

The folds in the paper ballots made it difficult for optical scan vote counters, AccuVote machines, to record the votes properly, hence the counting errors.

A subsequent state review also faulted local officials for compounding the errors by cutting corners ahead of the 2020 election according to a January letter from New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and Secretary of State William Gardner to Windham town officials. Windham officials reportedly used an uncalibrated machine to tabulate the votes and skimped on a practice run that would have likely caught the issue before the election.

“(S)imply put, town election officials cut corners. Some of those shortcuts created errors—such as using an uncalibrated folding machine—which were unintentional and perhaps unforeseeable, but ultimately resulted in ballots not being accurately counted,” the letter states.

So far, no other major voting errors or discrepancies have been reported in other communities, though there were several recounts due to the high number of close elections.

Soti said the entire incident shows more oversight is still needed in Windham.

“We’re going to investigate this a little further,” Soti said. “I’m sure the secretary of state is going to ask a few questions.” 

Here we go again. 

On the eve of the primary election came reports out of Windham that ballots are being folded with the crease going through the voting oval, apparently repeating the same errors that led to an extensive audit of the town’s ballot system after the 2020 election.

According to reports, absentee ballots sent to Windham voters ahead of Tuesday’s primary have been folded twice, with the creases going through the ovals. The same improper folds on absentee ballots in 2020 resulted in anomalous results and new state oversight of the vote.

Windham Town Clerk Nicole Merrill could not be reached for comment Tuesday. Town Hall staff said she was away at Windham High School setting up for the election.

Both Anna Fay with the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office, and Michael Garrity with the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office said state election monitors will be on hand Tuesday to make sure the election goes off smoothly.

“There will be an election monitor at the Windham polling place tomorrow. If there are any problems with improper folds or other issues, they will act accordingly,” Fay said.

Windham is one of three communities that will have state monitors in place to oversee the primary election due to multiple errors found in the 2020 voting process.

Windham, Bedford and Ward 6 in Laconia will all have election monitors in place In Windham, the audit found the vote total discrepancy was due to the improper folds. The folds in the paper ballots made it difficult for optical scan vote counters, AccuVote machines, to record the votes properly.

A state review also faulted local officials for compounding the errors by cutting corners, according to a January letter from New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella and Secretary of State William Gardner to Windham town officials.

“(S)imply out, town election officials cut corners. Some of those shortcuts created errors — such as using an uncalibrated folding machine — which were unintentional and perhaps unforeseeable, but ultimately resulted in ballots not being accurately counted,” the letter states.

The state ended up paying at least $123,000 for the outside experts to audit Windham’s voting totals.

In Bedford, a months-long controversy over 190 ballots that were never counted resulted in the Secretary of State deciding the town will have a state-appointed official to oversee the September primary.

“As a result of the concerns and shortcomings described in this and our prior correspondences, the Attorney General makes a finding that the November 2020 General Election returns from Bedford had significant deficiencies,” Myles Matteson of the state Attorney General’s Election Law Unit wrote to Bedford town officials.

In Laconia, a joint investigation conducted by the Attorney General’s Office and the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s Office found that 179 ballots went uncounted after the 2020 general election. The errors in this case were blamed on Ward 6 moderator Tony Felch.

“The ballots in the side compartment were not counted because Laconia Ward 6 Moderator Felch did not understand the basic functions of the ballot collection box,” according to the Attorney General’s release on the matter.

Felch was forced to resign from his volunteer position as part of the resolution of the incident.

For months, Gov. Chris Sununu kept the NHGOP frozen in place as it awaited what many had thought was his certain decision to enter the 2022 U.S. Senate race. Instead, he announced he will seek a fourth term as governor, which sent Granite State Republicans scrambling.

For the first few days, the rumor mill revolved around the “usual suspects” of potential Senate candidates, namely a trio of former U.S. senators. But Kelly Ayotte, Scott Brown, and Judd Gregg all said they’re not entering the race.

Now a new list is emerging — one that is almost certain to grow in the coming days — of potential Republican candidates. NHJournal asked 10 Republican strategists, officeholders, and activists to give their impressions by ranking the possible candidates in order of their strength. We also asked for a comment or two about the would-be contenders.

To foster brutal, intra-party honesty, NHJournal is not disclosing the names of the GOP panelists who participated.

We will be updating this list as events warrant, but here are the first NHJournal GOP Senate Primary Power Rankings:

The NHJournal GOP U.S. Senate Primary Power Rankings

1. State Sen. Chuck Morse
2. Londonderry Town Manager Kevin Smith
3. Commissioner of Education Frank Edelbut
4. Matt Mowers
5. Rich Ashooh
6. Bill Binnie
7. Phil Taub
8. Corky Messner
9. Tom Moulton
10. Jeff Cozzens
11. Former congressman Frank Guinta
12. Ret. General Don Bolduc

TOP TIER:

Senator Chuck Morse: Senate President Morse made the top three of all but one of the GOP panelists’ rankings. The consensus is he’s the “safe” pick for New Hampshire Republicans.

On the plus side, “Morse is the most likely to run on the Sununu accomplishments platform, which the polls show is a winner,” one Republican noted. On the less-than-plus side, “every time he has tried to go beyond Salem he flops,” said another. “Highly credible, but not really known outside of Concord and Salem.”

Londonderry Town Manager Kevin Smith: In what must be a surprise to nearly everyone — including Kevin Smith himself– the Londonderry town manager’s name also appeared near the top of nearly every list.

Smith hasn’t run for office since losing the GOP primary for governor in 2012, which the panelists viewed as both a strength and a weakness: Lower name ID, but also a harder target for the Hassan campaign to hit. “A star just waiting for the right moment to shine. He has a great economic development record. And he scares Democrats,” one panelist said. But another noted that, while “he’s young and ambitious, smart and well-spoken. — what has he done lately?”

Commissioner of Education Frank Edelblut: The Commissioner of Education and one-time gubernatorial candidate has made no secret of the fact that he has political ambitions. And as many of the panelists noted, Edelblut would start with the most inspired, motivated base. He would likely own the Trump/conservative lane in a primary, and that’s a pretty big lane.

But, as one panelist asked, “Has he drunk the Kool-Aid? Is it too close to the ReOpenNH crowd?” Another commented: “Edelblut owns the number one issue of the moment — education. But he snuck up on everyone in 2016. That won’t happen again.”

SECOND TIER:

Matt Mowers: Mowers is in the second tier largely because most of the panelists believe he’s going to hold onto his front-runner status in the First Congressional District GOP primary rather than risk a U.S. Senate race. “Unless one of the other candidates catches fire, he has a clear path to win the primary for CD1 and become the next Republican congressman from New Hampshire.”

Rich Ashooh: “People like him, which is why he’s near the top of the list” summarizes one view of Ashooh. “He’s conservative and he gets along with everyone.” But sources inside Trumpworld NH say Ashooh’s a non-starter for some because they believe he was less-than-loyal to the president in whose administration he served. “He worked for Trump, but his instincts are all Warren Rudman. Those days are over for the GOP.”

Bill Binnie: Anyone who can write a check for $25 million to kick-start his campaign is going to be taken seriously. And while the media magnate’s 2010 race may not have gone well (“disastrous,” one panelist calls it), that was 12 years ago. And another added: “He’s got a great story — business built from scratch, a former race car driver, it’s great. But he told it once before and it didn’t work. What’s changed?”

Phil Taub: The most volatile name on the list. Some insiders had him near the very top, others nearly at the bottom. The consensus is his fundraising is appreciated, as is his work on behalf of veterans. But he’s also described as “a moderate who endorsed Jeanne Shaheen in 2014.”

Corky Messner: He’s got millions of dollars in name ID left from his 2020 bid, and he’s been working both hard and smart for the NHGOP since losing to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen last year. However, he did lose badly and the general consensus is being the guy in front of the camera, as opposed to working for the GOP backstage, may not be his skill set.

UNKNOWNS:

Tom Moulton (NOTE: On 11/16, Moulton announced he’s not considering a run): He was the University of New Hampshire’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2021 and he owns a successful company, Other than that, most of the political insiders put Moulton down as a TBD.

Jeff Cozzens: Jeff Cozzens got a lot of buzz when he entered the GOP primary for Second Congressional District and Gov. Chris Sununu promptly tweeted out his encouragement for the Littleton brewery owner’s candidacy. There are rumors the governor would be happy to see Cozzens switch and run for the Senate, and strategists say he’s got a great story to tell. But most of the panelists put him in the “wait and see” category.

BOTTOM TIER:

Former Congressman Frank Guinta: Lots of talk that former Congressman Frank Guinta is looking seriously at a run. Not a lot of talk that it’s a good idea. “A retread who lost his last race while being called a ‘Damned Liar’ on the front page of the Union Leader isn’t the answer,” said one panelist. Another added: “He’s been a D.C. lobbyist since leaving office – you can’t drain the swamp when you’ve planted your roots in it

Ret. General Don Bolduc: Phenomenal bio, horrible candidate. Short an endorsement from Trump — which is always a possibility — Bolduc’s candidacy is already over. Calling the most popular Republican in the state, Gov. Chris Sununu, a “Communist Chinese sympathizer” isn’t widely viewed as a winning strategy. One panelist called him “one of the worst candidates for major office our state has ever seen.” Plus, as one panelist put it, “He already lost to a guy named ‘Corky'”

Three months ago this week, Senator Elizabeth Warren looked like the 2020 frontrunner so many Democrats dreamed she could be. After months of languishing in the New Hampshire polls — a must-win state for the Massachusetts senator — she had roared back to the top of the pack. She was leading in Iowa, too, five points ahead of second-place Joe Biden. She had even managed to raise more money than Bernie Sanders in the previous quarter.

Today? Warren is fading — and fast.

The former frontrunner is in fourth place in both Iowa and New Hampshire. In the Granite State, her support has fallen by a jaw-dropping 50 percent. In a sure sign that the campaign is struggling, the Warren camp is celebrating the endorsement of former HUD Secretary Julian Castro as a big win.

The Washington Post referred to it as a “timely boost.” The New York Times says the endorsement “could help Ms. Warren reignite excitement at a critical moment.”

But in the last New Hampshire poll taken before he dropped out, Castro was polling at 0 percent.

How did Warren, a one-time Democratic rock star who seems to fit her party’s 2020 mood so well, wind up trailing a relatively unknown Midwestern mayor in her own New Hampshire back yard?

Some campaigns struggle with message. That’s Sen. Cory Booker, who’s offering an optimistic vision of unity and partisan reconciliation to a Democratic base that’s ready to rumble with the Republicans.

Some campaigns have structural problems: Not enough money, too little name ID, no natural political base. Would governors like John Hickenlooper and Jay Inslee have made good nominees? We’ll never know.

And then there are the campaigns facing the most daunting obstacle of all: Their own candidate. (See “O’Rourke, Beto.”)

The first two problems can be fixed. The last one can’t.  And every day the evidence builds that the Liz Warren campaign’s biggest problem, is Liz Warren.

“She got an authenticity problem,” one DC political operative told NHJournal. “It’s the one thing about her that’s real.”

The authenticity issue appeared again this week when Warren amended her views on the U.S. military strike that killed Iranian Quds Force leader Qasem Soleimani, after blowback from progressives. Her first reaction was to declare Soleimani a “murderer responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans.”

Within 24 hours she was calling him a “senior government official,” who had been “assassinated,” and she repeatedly refused to concede that Soleimani is a terrorist. (He was declared the leader of a terrorist organization by both the Bush and Obama administrations.) Rather than celebrating his demise, Warren was suggesting that Soleimani only died because Trump is facing impeachment.

“Wow. We went from ‘murderer’ to ‘wag the dog’ in the space of a few days,” quipped CNN’s liberal commentator Chris Cillizza.

Why the shift? Because progressives like Sanders were denouncing the Trump administration’s action as illegitimate, and were uncomfortable with criticism of Soleimani that might support Trump’s case.

“Given where she is in the race, Warren simply could not withstand that sort of criticism from the left,” Cillizza wrote.

The Soleimani story is small potatoes. But it’s part of a growing list — her claims of Native American heritage, her debunked story about being fired over a pregnancy, her misleading statements about her children attending public school and her backtracking on Medicare For All — that suggests Warren is willing to say whatever it takes to get elected.

“She started off as a candidate with a strong message: ‘I want to fight for you, I’m going to take on corruption.’ She sounded like someone who knew exactly what she wanted to do,” Democratic strategist Joel Payne told NHJournal.

“Now she sounds like a candidate who’s still looking for a message, and that’s not good.”

Some Democrats disagree. “I don’t think the Native American thing or these other stories are hurting her. I think she’s got an explanation for all of them,” said Bob Shrum, director of USC’s Center for the Political Future and a veteran of multiple presidential primaries. “I think it’s one thing: Medicare For All.”

That’s a common explanation for Warren’s weakness. Democrats and pundits point to the release of Warren’s poorly-received $52 trillion healthcare plan as the moment her campaign began to founder. “It’s not true that New Hampshire Democrats don’t like Warren,” one senior Democratic Granite State source told NHJournal. “They just hate her Medicare For All plan.”

But even the Medicare issue highlights Warren’s authenticity problem. One reason she was forced to release the politically-damaging specifics of her plan was because she’d spent weeks refusing to say whether her proposal would require a middle-class tax hike. She gave so many obviously evasive answers that late-night TV host Stephen Colbert begged her on the air to find a better response.

Warren supporters are quick to suggest that she’s the victim of misogyny, that conversations about authenticity and likeability are just code words for being uncomfortable with a woman nominee. But that hardly makes sense in New Hampshire, where three of the four Democrats in the congressional delegation are women, the two previous governors were women and where Hillary Clinton won both the 2008 primary and the 2016 general election.

These are voters who are more than willing to vote for a woman. At the moment, however, they appear reluctant to vote for Liz Warren.

And that’s a ‘candidate’ problem.

Is there really a bout of BetoMania spreading through the New Hampshire Democratic party?

Democratic Party activist Jay Surdukowski sure hopes so.  The Concord attorney has been pushing for the Texas congressman, Senate candidate, and political phenom to make his way to the Granite State.  Thus far, Rep. O’Rourke (whose real name is Francis Robert) hasn’t responded to any of the invitations from New Hampshire, but the conversation alone is generating news at Politico and CNBC.

(Longtime New Hampshire media hand James Pindell crankily tweeted “Didn’t realize unanswered invites were news but here we are.”)

So, is O’Rourke a real player in New Hampshire? The obvious–and obviously true–answer is that it’s way too early to say. “There’s a lot of chatter and a lot of buzz about a lot of people,” one Democratic insider told NHJournal. “Have I heard Beto’s name? Sure. I’ve also heard Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown.  Most New Hampshire Democrats are waiting to meet these people, look them in the eye, watch them campaign.”

On the other hand, how many of those people have fans posting Facebook pages about them? Or have political activists in New England start a PAC (“Draft Beto 2020”) to encourage them to run?

And then there’s the fact that, despite being a political unknown just a year ago, Rep. O’Rourke is near the top of (very early) polling for the Democratic nomination, ahead of big names like Warren, Harris and Booker.

This weekend, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard–who has actually talked about possibly running in 2020— is coming to New Hampshire to talk to voters. And yet it’s safe to say that more Democrats this week will be talking about the outgoing Congressman from Texas than the incumbent Congresswoman from Hawaii.

Why? In part it’s because O’Rourke is a legitimate political talent.  Jeff Roe, Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign manager, said after his candidate’s narrow victory over Beto: “The Democrats don’t have anybody like him,” Roe said. “I’ve seen all of them. They don’t have anyone of his caliber on the national stage. I pray for the soul of anyone who has to run against him in Iowa in 453 days.”

But it’s also more than that. O’Rourke is a talented progressive politician, at a moment when the party’s base is hungry for progressive leadership.  Bernie Sanders hit the right notes, but voting for Bernie was voting for the progressive platform alone. O’Rourke brings the Left’s ideology, but adds charisma, skills and–let’s face it–sex appeal.

“Beto is exciting, he’s articulate, he’s passionate,” New Hampshire progressive activist and broadcaster Arnie Arnesen told NHJournal.  “But he also used his time in the limelight to speak to the future. So even though he was running against one of the most hated Republicans there is, he didn’t use that fact as an excuse to moderate his message or soften his agenda.”

“And that’s a wonderful thing,” Arnesen said.

Not everyone agrees. Chicago Mayor and former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel responded to the Beto craze this way:

“If Beto O’Rourke wants to go and run for president, God bless him, he should put his hat in and make his case. But, he lost. You don’t usually promote a loser to the top of party.”

Longtime New Hampshire Democratic player Jim Demers, who has publicly expressed support for Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ),  is more moderated in his views:

“I think Beto O’Rourke has a few interesting options. Some people would like to see him run for President, others think he is in a very strong position to challenge John Cornyn for the Senate seat in Texas in 2020,” Demers told NHJournal.

“Regardless, I hope Democrats will take the pledge not to devour each other in the presidential race and to stand united when the nominee is selected. The goal is to change the occupant in The White House, period.”

Are New Hampshire Democrats ready to give that job to a guy from Texas? Whose entire political resume is three terms in Congress and a losing bid for the US Senate?

“I’m not sure I couldn’t be convinced Beto O’Rourke should be President,” the Democratic insider told NHJournal.

And given how many big Democratic names are on the 2020 list, and how little New Hampshire Democrats actually know about O’Rourke, that’s something.