With New Hampshire’s primary election just days away, one top race where the outcome had long seemed a foregone conclusion — the Democratic Senate contest — is shaping up to be tighter than expected.
The race pits veteran Congressman Chris Pappas, one of the most successful politicians in recent state history, against progressive Karishma Manzur, a first-time candidate with little financial support or name-recognition.
For much of the campaign season, this race had largely flown under the radar. Pappas, who has held office at various levels for two decades, was seen as all but certain to secure the Democratic nomination to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. And while recent Democratic primaries across the country have seen progressives upend candidates from the party’s establishment, the possibility of that happening here has long appeared farfetched. It may still be. But some close observers of Democratic politics say a narrow outcome between Pappas and Manzur feels increasingly possible.
“For months, nobody was really thinking of it as competitive,” said Steve Marchand, a longtime Democratic strategist and former candidate for New Hampshire governor. “But I think the bar has been raised.”
A UNH Survey Center poll from last week bears this out. It showed Pappas leading Manzur by 13 points, down from the 43 point margin Pappas enjoyed in a UNH poll taken in April.
A 'broken' system
There are indications that Pappas, who’s lost just once in 12 previous bids for elective office in New Hampshire, is aiming to blunt some of Manzur’s perceived momentum. Pappas isn’t doing this by contesting Manzur’s policy agenda, which includes calls for universal health care, a $25 minimum wage, and ending all military aid to Israel. Instead, he appears to be trying to co-opt the argument at her campaign’s very core: that Washington politics, and American democracy itself, needs to break from the control of “corporations and billionaires.”
In an interview with NHPR this week, Pappas deployed the rhetoric of a political outsider, not someone who has spent his entire adult life climbing the rungs of political power and whose spouse is an executive at Uber who worked as a DC lobbyist for Amazon..
“Our political system is rigged. The system is broken, and it's skewed in favor of corporate special interests,” Pappas said.
Manzur, campaigning on the Seacoast this week, said Pappas was simply trying to blunt her rise by mimicking her message.
“He is basically copying my talking points,” Manzur said Tuesday. “It’s so annoying.”
As she led a group of volunteers canvassing a Durham neighborhood Tuesday, Manzur said her success will depend on them.
“Every single person who cares about this campaign has to tell their families, their friends, their coworkers,” Manzur said. “That is the only way we can get this story out.”
National party support
But on the same day Pappas railed against the “broken” political system, he also announced he’d been endorsed by former Vice President Kamala Harris, who he called “a leader who is resilient.”
Harris remains a polarizing figure for many progressives, but her backing could help Pappas leverage fresh support from national Democratic donors. Pappas’s willingness to tout Harris’s support — something some candidates she’s endorsed in other states have chosen not to do — may be a sign that Pappas remains more focused on ensuring he has the resources to take on likely Republican nominee John E. Sununu, than on the challenge posed by Manzur’s shoestring campaign.
July campaign filing showed Pappas holding more than $5 million in cash on hand — roughly 100 times Manzur’s total.
“Follow the money and see where it leads,” Manzur said in Durham. “We have to stop this. This whole paradigm has to stop. It has to be completely dismantled.”
