jon Kiper., a would-be independent candidate for New Hampshire governor, is pulling the plug on his campaign after failing to make the deadline to appear on the 2026 general election ballot. The Newmarket businessman collected only about 500 of the 3,000 signatures he needed to submit before Wednesday to qualify for the ballot.
“I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t attack it with the full effort that it needed, and we didn't have money to pay people or 150 volunteers to go to Market Basket and collect signatures,” Kiper said Thursday.
Kiper also ran for governor in 2024, as a Democrat, finishing third in the primary. When he first launched his latest bid last year, it was as an independent. Kiper then announced he would run as a Democrat, before switching back to independent after state Democratic leaders coalesced around the candidacy of former Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington.
Kiper had hoped collecting at least 4% of the vote in the general election would earn legal recognition for the “Community First Party,” the working class-focused political party he’s trying to start. But Kiper says he won’t mount a write-in campaign this year, because he does not want Democrats to be able to accuse him of playing spoiler if Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte wins reelection over Warmington, which Kiper says he expects.
“It would be more harmful to be on the ballot, get say 5%, and then allow Democrats to blame us, and not themselves, for picking bad candidates,” Kiiper said
Recent polls in the race for governor show Ayotte holding a single-digit lead over Warmington, who placed second in the 2004 Democratic primary won by former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig.
