She likes to catalogue the lengthy checklist of payments handed throughout this Congress with each Democratic and Republican votes — on infrastructure, science and semiconductors, postal reform, gun security, and assist for veterans uncovered to poisonous substances — and insists that that is the way in which her state’s voters need politics to be performed.
“There’s a palpable sense of pleasure and aid about that,” she mentioned in an interview right here after visiting an area tech enterprise. “Individuals actually would really like a way of neighborhood once more. … Individuals resolve issues on a regular basis on the neighborhood stage with out asking one another what political celebration they belong to.”
And Hassan provides a thought much more more likely to be embroidered on a sampler than shouted out on Twitter: “You’ll be able to’t care extra about successful the argument than about fixing the issue.”
The proudly purple reelection marketing campaign Hassan is waging is a reminder that to win a majority in a U.S. Senate that structurally tilts towards conservatives — Wyoming and South Dakota have the identical variety of senators as California and New York — Democrats have to prevail in states which are under no circumstances reliably progressive.
This makes bipartisanship an excellent calling card for probably weak Senate incumbents, and it’s helpful in swing Home districts, too. Hassan’s two Democratic Home colleagues right here, Reps. Chris Pappas and Ann Kuster, are additionally stressing the bipartisan victories in Congress.
On this very swingy state, nobody on this trio pretends that 2022 can be straightforward for any of them. However all of them sense a temper swing within the Democrats’ favor.
A few of it owes to a invoice handed in a completely partisan manner, the Inflation Reduction Act, notably its provisions combating local weather change and controlling prescription drug costs. “I’ve been campaigning for 10 years on controlling drug costs,” Kuster informed me. Having the ability to ship issues, she mentioned.
As for Hassan, the truth that congressional Republicans unanimously opposed the invoice — and that her main GOP opponents vying in a Sept. 13 main have criticized the invoice — permits her to offer her moderation a populist tilt. She assails “excessive” Republicans who’re “regurgitating Huge Pharma’s speaking factors and Huge Oil’s speaking factors.” Rely on “Huge Pharma” and “Huge Oil” to play starring bad-guy roles in Democratic campaigns everywhere in the nation.
And if there may be any state the place the Supreme Courtroom’s overturning of Roe v. Wade is more likely to change the political winds, that is it. A ballot this month by the Saint Anselm School Survey Heart discovered that 71 % of New Hampshire voters recognized themselves as “pro-choice” whereas simply 25 % picked “pro-life.” Solely 38 % mentioned they supported the Supreme Courtroom’s ruling.
Pappas mentioned in an interview at his household’s restaurant in Manchester that the abortion ruling was motivating some Republicans to modify sides. “I had somebody come as much as me and say they by no means voted for me earlier than, however had been voting for me this time.”
The Democrats’ hope that abortion can be a wedge situation amongst libertarian-leaning conservatives — they loom giant right here — was underscored by the evocative tag line of a Hassan television ad towards the courtroom choice. “Defending our private freedoms isn’t simply what’s proper for New Hampshire,” she says. “It’s what makes us New Hampshire.”
Republicans, in fact, nonetheless consider that prime costs and President Biden’s unpopularity will push the whole lot else apart. Hassan has been pummeled on the airwaves by pro-Republican advertisements assailing, amongst different issues, “Joe Biden and Maggie Hassan’s War on American Energy” and charging that she supported “wasteful spending that led to skyrocketing inflation.”
The advertisements are echoed by her potential GOP foes (when they aren’t criticizing one another). One in every of them, former state consultant Kevin Smith, mentioned in an interview that the election “is totally going to be on the economic system” and what he referred to as “Hassan’s help for each spending invoice in Washington.”
Demonizing Hassan as an ideologue can be laborious, not solely as a result of voters right here know her effectively from her 4 years as a reasonable governor, but in addition as a result of she tried to immunize herself on costs by criticizing Biden for not doing extra about inflation and by calling for a fuel tax vacation.
The Republican assaults additionally really feel, effectively, so six months in the past. Kuster mentioned that the abortion choice, the Jan. 6 inquiry and rising concern about gun violence have altered the phrases of the election.
“For the primary time, I’m operating on freedom and security, which was bedrock Republican points,” she mentioned. “The Republicans are operating on chaos.”
Depraved independents aren’t massive on chaos.
