The NPR Politics Podcast - As Heating Costs Increase, New Hampshire Senate Race Tightens

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

New Hampshire is a must-win state for Democrats in their campaign to keep control of the Senate. Sen. Maggie Hassan narrowly won her last race in 2016 by 1,017 votes. Recent polls show her ahead in the contest against GOP nominee Don Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general. But with inflation and energy costs top of mind for voters in the purple state, both candidates are expecting the race to be close.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, political correspondent Susan Davis, and congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Katherine, and I'm at the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This podcast was recorded at 106 p.m. on October 25th, 2022. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I will still be surrounded by 7,000 bobbleheads agreeing with everything I have to say. Okay, here's the show. I don't know whether to be surprised that there's 7,000. Like, is that a lot or not enough? I can't tell if this was picked for me. I had a bobblehead doll collection as a child. So this is like very, very exciting. Yeah, I had a bunch of them. I think I ended up with like 60 before I realized, well, this is a weird, weird hobby. But that's, that's really exciting. You need to go to Wisconsin to this bobblehead museum,

Miles. I do. I do. I need to make the pilgrimage. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And when it comes to which party is going to control Congress after this year's midterms, it feels like Georgia, Arizona, Nevada are getting all the hype. But today, we're going to focus on a much smaller swing state, New Hampshire. The incumbent Democrat there, Maggie Hassan, won her last election in 2016 by just about 1,000 votes. Republicans this time around have nominated Don Bolduc, a retired Army Brigadier General, as their candidate. And Deirdre, you were just in

New Hampshire. Tell me some things you heard from voters. I think far and away the economy is the issue that is top of mind to voters I talk to across the political spectrum. People at Baldock events, people visiting with Senator Hassan when she was on the trail, and undecided voters. New Hampshire is a lovely state to visit in the fall. The fall foliage is gorgeous, but it's getting cold. And home heating bills were something that came up over and over again. Groceries and gas also came up. And I talked to three voters in New Hampshire, Shelley Hansen, a Democrat who's undecided, Richard Allen, who said he probably isn't going to vote,

and Holly Novelsky, a Republican and a Baltic supporter. I mean, we can't, I can't afford to live like this. My head's still not above water. The prices are ridiculous. My home electrical bill went from 200 a month to 600 a month. So I would say the economy is the one thing I heard a lot about. Clearly, a lot of women are concerned about the issue of abortion and what flipping a blue Senate seat red would do if the issue of abortion came up in a Republican Senate and the idea of possibly a vote on a federal abortion ban. But I would say the economy was still sort of what animated most voters. Yeah, we've heard a lot about abortion being a driving thing that are going to send people to the polls. This is something Maggie Hassan actually said to you when you interviewed her, right? Right. I asked her if she was sort of overestimating how much the issue of abortion

was a big issue in the campaign overall. A lot of the ads, at least in the early parts of the race, when Baldick won the primary in September, were focused on his position on abortion and on the potential threat to abortion rights that a lot of Democrats are worried about. But she said, actually, a lot of people see it as more important because a lot of women she talks to view abortion as a fundamental right. You know, as I started to talk with women about inflation, they all changed the subject to abortion. They also said to me, but if my fundamental rights are gone, that's much harder to get back. Hassan also noted that she's talking about both issues.

And a lot of her ads that are out now, her most recent ads, focus on a bill she supported that would lower the price of prescription drugs. Where do you come down on that, Sue? I mean, the point Hassan's making is basically abortion trumps things like inflation. Yeah. Is that true? I mean, we'll find out. I've talked to strategists. And one of the theories I have heard is that abortion is absolutely a motivating issue, but it is much more of a motivating issue if you don't have economic concerns. If the rising

costs of gas and food are not immediate material concerns for you and your family, that abortion could be higher on that list. And it doesn't necessarily surprise me that that is ringing true in a state like New Hampshire. This is a state that tends to be pretty socially liberal and fiscally conservative. It's a state where you have, it's one of the most college educated in the country. College educated women also tend to support abortion rights. It's also a state, you know, it's the live-free-or-die state, right? It's like you keep government out of our lives, and I think feeling like government is controlling such a major aspect of your life resonates with

voters there. And an interesting dynamic of this race, too, I think is, I mean, it's competitive, Deirdre, but I wonder, do you think it would be even more competitive if Republicans had put up a candidate who wasn't, I don't want to say controversial, I don't think that's fair, but again, Baldick is one of these candidates that wasn't necessarily who the establishment wanted to put up Boldik's opponent, a state senator, Chuck Morse, in this race. So he was definitely not the first choice in this race. But over and over again, people kept reminding me, Sue, like you were saying, New Hampshire is a purple state, and statewide races tend to be close in New Hampshire. And the fact that Boldik has been able to keep it this close, even though he's a first-time candidate, he's not as well known in the state, and he has had to start explaining previous positions he took in the Republican primary on things like denying that Biden won the 2020 election, on previous statements

on abortion, previous statements on proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare. You know, the first choice for the candidate that Republicans wanted was Republican Governor Chris Sununu, but he took a pass. He is on the ballot. So that could help Baldick in terms of people coming out and deciding to vote Republican as a check against Democratic control in Washington. That idea of Baldick's pivot post-Republican primary. I mean, he has taken a lot of opinions, as you mentioned, Deirdre, on whether the 2020 election was stolen. It seems like lately he's mostly decided that, no, it was legitimate and Joe Biden is the legitimate president. But I think I wonder, Sue, about pivots nationally. I mean, have we seen Republican candidates? There was this thought that after Republican primaries everywhere, that candidates would be forced to kind of come to the middle when they weren't just trying to win over Trump voters. Have we seen that? What I think I have seen is not necessarily that we're seeing Republican candidates pivot and become more centrist.

It's just they're not talking about these issues, right? Like they're not running on opposition to abortion rights. They're not running on questioning whether Joe Biden is the legitimately elected president. I think Republicans, and you can understand why, because as Deirdre just said, when you ask people what they care about, economy, economy, economy. And in the closing weeks of these races, I think across the board, Republican candidates are not at all talking about those issues and they're just focused on the economy. That just makes sense. that they will be, you know, these are races that could be decided by thousands of votes, fractions of percentage points, that it's enough of a mover to appeal to those final undecided voters. And I think Hassan is trying to paint Baldock as extreme as across the board, not just on the issue of the 2020 election. And she's complaining that some of that isn't translating

because there has been, up until recently, a lot of outside money attacking Hassan. And she's complaining that some of that isn't translating because there has been, up until recently, a lot of outside money attacking Hassan. And she's saying it's concealing some of the extreme positions of her opponent. We'll see how that works in the final two weeks of the campaign. Okay, let's take a quick break and more in a second. And we're back. Now, as we mentioned at the top of the show, inflation is clearly the top of the Republican strategy heading into the midterms. And we heard that in Don Bolduc's kind of stump speech. Down comes the hammer from the Biden-Hassan agenda, which skyrockets inflation. Deirdre, I wonder, any thoughts on if this is a winning strategy? Boldik was campaigning

as much against Joe Biden as he was campaigning against Maggie Hassan. Over and over again, he tied Hassan to Biden, blamed Senator Hassan for the botched withdrawal in Afghanistan, for high prices, for issues that were going on overseas. You know, I think a lot of Republican candidates are trying to tie their opponents to a president who is right now unpopular. For her part, Senator Hassan distanced herself from Biden, especially on the economy, and said that she thought he was slow to respond and that she was among those who were pushing him to take action on gas prices, which he did. The administration did announce they were tapping additional oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which she said she was part of the reason he did it. Deidre, it's sort of funny to me to think about voters being really angry at Maggie Hassan, right? Like it's, the anger against the president and the incumbent party makes sense, but she is not a senator who I think of as someone who would provoke a lot of

passion one way or another. We're not talking about a Bernie Sanders type personality, a Ted Cruz type personality in which their voters have very strong feelings about them. She is just a very sort of genteel, polite person. Right. And people know her as, you know, she served as governor before she ran for Senate. And people, you know, tend to sort of say, oh, yeah, she's my senator. But, you know, the economy is bad. And the one voter talked about, you know, I think the whole system in Washington needs to be shaken up, even though she was a Democrat. Yeah. I mean, she's just got a low wattage personality, which I think can be good when you're trying not to make people angry, but can be bad when you're trying to have a brand that is separate or different from the party that's not very popular right now. I mean, I just wonder, Sue, how much of this race just comes down to the last two years? How well have Democrats more broadly been able to sell their accomplishments?

It seems like Hassan keeps wanting to come back to, no, I have actually done things to try to help the economy. Look at the Inflation Reduction Act, for instance, and things like that. But is this kind of a question of how well have Democrats been able to tout their accomplishments? Yeah, I think it is. But also, there's a really interesting dynamic I have found about the midterms in this particular cycle is that we have this relationship between governors races and Senate races. And a lot of these key states, they're competitive in those two regards. And I think New Hampshire is a really good example of this. I mean, Deirdre mentioned the Republican Governor Chris Sununu. He is one of the most popular governors in the country right now. The state likes him, voters like them, he's got big name ID. So if you're just sort of generally vibing on how you feel about a party right now, I imagine that not only is Joe Biden's unpopularity a factor, but probably is so having a really popular governor at the top of the ticket. I mean, we're seeing this dynamic in states like Florida, races in Arizona and Nevada, where they're competing at the very top of the ticket.

And there's a lot of overplay, right? Like you're either hoping, like Maggie Hassan, like we said before, is one of these candidates who probably needs some ticket splitters, right? Like she's going to, if she's going to win, she's going to need some people who are Sununu Hassan voters. And those kinds of voters are increasingly hard to find when people see the two parties as like, you know, just very binary, that there aren't that many people who like to split their vote anymore. I think the other thing that was interesting to me is that some voters did give credit to Hassan and Biden for some of the pandemic aid, for some of the small business loans that some of the business owners that we talked to remember kept them afloat. But in terms of the more recent things that Democrats are pitching, like their bill to lower prescription drug costs, to lower energy costs, a lot of those things aren't going to kick in right away.

So those are the things that people have to deal with every month in their budget, and they're not seeing their costs go down. So I think that is a bit of a challenge for Senator Hassan. You know, she does tout infrastructure and the CHIPS bill, which is boosting manufacturing in her home state for a lot of businesses. It'll be a contest to see in the end whether people actually start feeling any of those things. Can I ask you both just kind of a basic question? New Hampshire is kind of an oddity in that it is one of the only states in the country that allows no early voting, for instance. You mentioned, Sue, that this is a state with a very educated population. What do you guys think we can take away from the New Hampshire race

when we're looking at kind of the overall midterms picture? I think New Hampshire is a great state to watch on election night. To me, it's one of the bellwether kind of states. And they tend to count their votes pretty efficiently there. So if the polls close and Maggie Hassan is losing in New Hampshire, I think that that would be a warning sign to Democrats on election night that this is not going to be a good election for them. Conversely, if she's winning big, right, if she's, you know, her margins are good, if they declare the winner early, then I think that's going to tell us sort of what we think might happen is that a lot of these races are going to be really tight and control of the House and Senate is going to be something that we're going to be just watching really closely. Another sign that it's close is that Hassan is bringing in reinforcements. She distanced herself from President Biden, but First Lady Jill Biden, we learned today, is going to go up and campaign for Senator Hassan. And I think in a state with a big chunk of independents voters, about 40% of voters registered in New

Hampshire are independents. And women are a key swing block in this election. And maybe that's part of her way to reach out to women. Yeah. And also the top Republican super PAC is pulling out of that state, which could be an indication they don't think Baldick's going to win there. But if he is somehow defying that expectation, then to me, that would tell us that it could be a really, really good night for Republicans. All right, let's leave it there for today. We will be talking about New Hampshire a bunch in a couple weeks. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And thank you for listening to the MPR Politics Podcast.