It was the bear hug that buried the hatchet.
Shortly after retired Gen. Don Bolduc’s speech calling for Republican unity, he jumped out of state and rushed to a surprised Gov. Chris Sununu, who called him into a just weeks after the two descended to the roll call embraced.
At the Republican Unity Breakfast Thursday morning, rivals in hard-fought primary campaigns joined forces, shaking hands, taking selfies and delivering speeches that showed they are ready to transcend political divisions. Hundreds of candidates, supporters and family members gathered around tables at the Grappone Center in Concord and loudly cheered the nominees.
But as Republicans sought unity on the goal of ousting New Hampshire’s Democratic members of Congress, some also warned candidates not to focus on the issues to avoid and how to reach voter-distrustful voters .
Speaking to attendees, Sununu had a clear message: stick to business.
“We need to hear what these voters are feeling today,” Sununu said. “‘It’s about the economy, fool.’ I think that was a famous line from someone. It’s about inflation. It’s about natural gas. Electricity. It’s about those things that hit absolutely everyone.”
It was a standard statement from a governor who, during the last three elections, has placed economic issues at the center of his address to voters and has often avoided making public statements about abortion. But it came as Republicans nationally turned social issues like critical race theory and LGBTQ rights into electoral battlegrounds. And it also came as New Hampshire Democrats aimed to overthrow Roe v. Making Wade — and a proposed federal abortion ban — a key issue for the fall.
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“Here is the test, if you will,” Sununu said. “The real discipline test, right? As I said, it’s not about candidates. It’s about what we’re going to talk about.”
“The discipline,” Sununu continued, “is not getting distracted by what the Democrats want to talk about. … They talk about the social issues and all that and all that, and that’s fine. But at the end of the day, that’s not what the vote will bring home.”
Senator Hassan attacks Bolduc on the abortion issue
On Wednesday, a day after the primary, Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan released a campaign ad attacking Bolduc, her Republican opponent, for supporting the decision by the women’s health organization June Dobbs v. Jackson, in which the Supreme Court found the rules laid down in Roe abolished abortion rights v. Calf.
“Don Bolduc and anti-choice Republicans say we should ‘rejoice’ in the ruling denying women access to abortion,” the ad reads.
Bolduc, a self-proclaimed “pro-life” candidate, had praised the decision, which overturned constitutional law and allowed states to set their own abortion laws. In a media briefing Wednesday and a planned press event in Concord Friday, Hassan also claimed that Bolduc “would be a yes vote for a nationwide ban on abortion.”
Hassan’s campaign has referenced previous statements in which Bolduc said he was “unapologetic about life” and that he would “not vote against life,” arguing that the candidate had already made clear marks in the past.
Bolduc denied that claim Tuesday night, telling an ABC reporter that he “won’t take a positive view” when asked about a proposal from South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham to pass a 15-week federal abortion ban. “The Supreme Court has already said it’s a state matter, so let it be a state matter,” Bolduc told ABC. A spokesman for Bolduc did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
More:NH Republican Don Bolduc is backing a 15-week abortion ban. Senator Hassan takes up the issue.
Hassan’s ad — and a similar one by Rep. Chris Pappas against Leavitt — suggest Democrats will focus on opposing Republican candidates’ anti-abortion views.
Leavitt pushed back on Pappa’s advert on Thursday, arguing she had consistently opposed state abortion laws in a bid to pass tougher abortion bans at the state level.
Sununu urged Republicans to back down.
“We need to unite on the important issues,” he said. “And it’s really easy to get distracted by that, and there’s 10,000 topics we could talk about, right? But we don’t have to talk about what the party wants, not even what the candidate wants to talk about,” but what the voters want, he said.
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Sununu wasn’t the only one to issue warnings on Thursday. In his speech, Bob Burns urged Republicans to work to meet November turnout and said confidence in the election could be a hurdle.
“You have to find the Republicans who aren’t showing up, who are sitting around complaining, talking on talk radio, talking about their vote not being counted, talking about how the election was stolen, and you have to say, ‘Get out . what will it cost you Five minutes. 10 minutes,’” Burns said.
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Burns noted that he has a long history of involvement in New Hampshire politics, having worked on presidential campaigns for everyone from Mike Huckabee to Newt Gingrich to Donald Trump and winning elections for local positions, including Hillsborough Borough Treasurer.
“And that made one thing clear to me when I used to look at the math of down ticket and upper ticket: Republicans tend to skip votes more than Democrats,” Burns said.
The comments underscore a potential problem for Republican candidates in the general election after years of rhetoric used by former President Donald Trump to cast doubts about the election.
A June 28 University of New Hampshire poll found that 28% of New Hampshire Republicans and 17% of independents are either “not very confident” or “not at all confident” that their vote was accurately counted in 2020. The poll also found that 32% of Republicans and 22% of independents were “not very confident” or “not at all confident” that their votes would be accurately counted in 2022.
And 39% of Republicans believe voter fraud is a “very” or “somewhat” serious problem in the state, the poll found.
Secretaries of state and election observers have consistently found that the 2020 elections were conducted fairly.
Leavitt herself has publicly stated that she disagrees with the results of the 2020 presidential election, and made her position clear in a debate in the final days before Tuesday’s primaries.
Bolduc has declared the election fraudulent but reversed course in comments this week.
Stopping that distrust, keeping Republicans out of the election, will be a key goal, Burns told the Republican crowd. He cited former Gov. John H. Sununu, who he said helped spur a Republican wave in New Hampshire in 2010 by emphasizing commitment. “What he said was ‘talk, talk, talk’; What he said was, ‘Go out there and tell 10 people they have to come to the vote.’”
A spokesman for Leavitt declined to comment on the concerns raised by either Burns or Leavitt’s previous comments Thursday, instead referring to Leavitt’s own speech Thursday morning.
Leavitt made no mention of the 2020 election in her speech to the party, projecting a more positive tone. But she touched on social issues like immigration and critical racial theory.
“Right now in Washington, the Democrats may have the power, but we have the politics,” she said. “More money in the pockets of the people here in the Granite State, strong borders, law and order, respect for our men and women in blue, electoral integrity, and an education system that puts our children first and teaches them to read, write and do math . not (critical race theory).”
Bolduc also spread his bad luck to the party.
“People are concerned about our democracy, about our constitutional republic, about self-government, about the very existence of this nation, about the sacrificing of its values and principles,” Bolduc said. “Life, freedom, the pursuit of happiness, a ‘don’t step on me’ attitude that has made this country great. That goes beyond everything.”
This story was originally published by the New Hampshire Bulletin.
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