Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire secured re-election on Tuesday, narrowly defeating Republican challenger and on-again-off-again election denier Don Bolduc.
Despite Hassan’s seat initially appearing to be one of the most vulnerable for Senate Democrats, Bolduc’s victory in the Republican primary changed the dynamic of the race and eventually his poor performance in polling led to GOP ad buys being pulled.
But in the final weeks of the election, New Hampshire appeared to be in play—particularly if the Republican red wave, as expected, materialized. As of 11 p.m. EST, when ABC, NBC and CNN called the race for Hassan, that red wave wasn't looking very real.
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Bolduc, a retired brigadier general who unsuccessfully ran for Senate in 2020, earned former President Donald Trump’s endorsement just two weeks before Election Day.
A steady influx of wealthy, college educated retirees has generally favored Democrats as the Granite State’s demographics have shifted after the turn of the century.
Hassan only won by 1,017 votes the first time around, but came into her re-election fight with ample fundraising resources and drastically outspent Bolduc.
Looming over the entire campaign was the Republicans’ failure to recruit the state’s popular GOP governor, Chris Sununu, to run against Hassan.
The governor publicly humiliated Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky by not informing him beforehand of his decision not to run.
Sununu also lambasted Senate Republicans for their obstructionist tactics.
“I said, ‘OK, so if we’re going to get stuff done if we win the White House back, why didn’t you do it in 2017 and 2018?’” the governor told The Washington Examiner.
“Crickets,” Sununu said of the conversation. “Yeah, crickets.They had no answer.”
