New Hampshire
Christie banks on New Hampshire as he makes the case that only he can stop Trump: ‘I am the cavalry.’ – The Boston Globe
While he’s unpopular in national polling, some surveys here conducted in September suggest his support reaches the low double digits — on par with Trump’s other leading opponents, though still far behind Trump.
“Something’s happening,” Christie said in a wide-ranging interview last week in Manchester. “I can’t tell you how many airports I walk through where people say to me, like, ’Save us from him.′ ’You’re the only one telling the truth.’”
After running for president eight years ago and finishing a disappointing sixth in the state, Christie this time is a man on a mission. With minimal staff and a campaign largely powered by media appearances, the former governor and TV pundit is in his element, reveling in his role as attack dog and having what appears to be genuine fun.
“If I told you when I got in in June, that at the end of (September), I would be $700,000 behind Ron DeSantis cash-on-hand, you would’ve told me I was completely nuts. But here I am,” he said gleefully.
For Christie, who played a key role in Trump’s election, it’s as much about winning as redemption. Christie was the first major GOP official to endorse Trump in 2016 and went on to serve as a key adviser, leading Trump’s transition team and helping prepare him for debates. But after 20 years of friendship, Christie broke with Trump the night of the 2020 election when the then-president falsely declared victory while vote-counting was still underway.
Christie sees his role, in part, as warning the party about the dangers of supporting a man who has now been indicted four times and could very well be a convicted felon by the time the general election rolls around. As a former prosecutor, he tries to distill the significance of what can feel like a blur of developments across a dizzying number of cases.
“My job, because no one else will do it in this race — and I don’t think anybody else has the experience that I have to be able to really explain it — is to explain to people how bad this is going to be,” Christie said. “If he’s the nominee, it’s going to be a disaster for the Republican Party because he is going down.”
Christie is making a particular play for independent voters in New Hampshire following Biden’s decision to skip the state’s primary completely.
At his town hall events, Christie is in his element, cracking jokes and telling stories. He begins like a late-night talk show host, delivering a monologue focused on news of the day. Then he launches into a question-and-answer session during which he shares heartfelt stories, including of his aging father’s role as the sole caregiver for a spouse with Alzheimer’s. It’s a familiar role for Christie, who has helmed well over 200 town halls over the course of his career.
But beyond the one liners and punditry, Christie’s town halls are a place of catharsis for former Trump voters like him. He criticizes Trump while still lauding many of his accomplishments and offering a pep talk to voters who feel they have no place left in the party.
“I don’t want to hear that you’re defeated,” he told one dispirited voter at the Backyard Brewery and Kitchen in Manchester last week. “Look, it’s OK to admit Trump turned out to be a boor.”
Christie drew about 80 attendees, some of whom had voted for Trump but had grown tired of his antics. Others said they typically vote for Democrats but were looking for a non-Trump alternative to Biden.
They were people like Robin Stewart, a 67-year-old retiree who lives in Londonderry. She said she’d been a Democrat all her life but switched her registration to independent so she could vote for Christie in next year’s Republican primary.
“I think he’s the most honest and has a better chance of working with people,” she said. “We can’t have this constant division and fighting that we’re having now.”
Stewart doesn’t regret voting for Biden. He “did everything I wanted him to do,” she said.
But she believes his brand of politics is no longer effective ”because the nature of the people have changed. People aren’t willing to work as well together,” she said. “You have to be a lot tougher, I think, now.”
It was a similar story for Debi Rapson, 67, a teacher from Manchester. A registered independent, Rapson voted for Biden the last election but prays for better options this time around. She is particularly alarmed by Trump’s hold on the Republican Party.
“To be really honest, I don’t know what’s wrong with the American public’s brain,” she said, adding, “How people could even begin to still think that he is a viable candidate just blows me away, as an intelligent human being. I thought, as a country, we were smarter than that. It makes me sad.”
At a breakfast roundtable at Mary Ann’s Diner in Derry the next morning, Cynthia Mendez, a nurse, left her own table to sit at Christie’s and commended him for standing up to Trump.
“He’s a narcissist. He wakes up every morning saying, ‘What can the world do for me?’” she said. “This isn’t about Republican or Democrat, this is about a man who did wrong.”
“The fact that you stand here against him, shows that you’re a man, and you stand up for what’s right,” she said.
“You just met Cindy, my running mate,” Christie quipped.
Mendez later said she liked what she heard but hasn’t settled on a candidate.
“I think I’ll give him consideration,” she said.
Still others questioned Christie’s approach.
Lou Abood, a 71-year-old Republican, sitting at another booth, said he hasn’t decided on a candidate but thinks the former governor needs to do more than criticize Trump all the time.
“He needs a different strategy,” he said.
An AP-NORC poll conducted in October found a majority of Republicans (56%) and Democrats (54%) view Christie negatively, with only about 1 in 5 holding a favorable view.
Christie, however, insists he has time and a pathway to the nomination. He believes a strong finish in New Hampshire and a solid performance in South Carolina, where he is also campaigning, will leave him the last man standing against Trump.
“The majority of the people in this party don’t want Trump to be the nominee,” he said. “It’s a matter of who’s going to be able to catch their attention and their excitement to coalesce the opposition. And that’s what the next few months are going to be all about.”
He and aides note he also has the resources to outlast many of his rivals, spending just one-tenth of what DeSantis does a day thanks to a lean operation that consists of just over a dozen people and is powered not by ads but by TV and radio interviews.
Asked whether he was disappointed that so many donors remain on the sidelines — with several groups running anti-Trump ads but still refusing to get behind a candidate — Christie said that was why he ran in the first place.
“I am the cavalry,” he said. “That’s the biggest reason I got in the race. … I was like, no one’s gonna take him on.” ___
Ramer reported from Derry.
New Hampshire
Missing NH woman found dead in Mass., police say, asking for information
Authorities are asking anyone with information to come forward after a woman who was reported missing from Keene, New Hampshire, was found dead in Warwick, Massachusetts.
Justina Steffy, 31, was last heard from in early October, Keene police previously said. Investigators said Thursday that human remains discovered in Warwick were identified as Steffy.
Police say they are investigating the circumstances of Steffy’s death.
Anyone with information about Steffy or knows where she might have been before her death is asked to call 603-357-9820.
New Hampshire
Should NH judges retire at 70 or 75? Some aren't sure that's the right question
On the ballot this election isn’t just who will be the next president or governor. Granite Staters will vote on whether state judges should be allowed to serve until they’re 75 years old.
Currently, judges are required to retire at age 70, according to a limit set by the state constitution in 1792. If a judge retires before age 70, they can serve as senior active judges, which means a judge can serve on the court they retired from but they can’t fully engage in law practice. After age 70, they can also serve as referees, working on cases in a facilitating manner, in the court they retired from.
(Here’s an official explanation of the ballot question from state officials.)
Across the country, age limits for judges vary widely, according to Bloomberg. Seventeen states have no limit. In Arkansas and North Dakota, serving past a certain age can cost a judge their retirement benefits. Eighteen states have a mandatory limit of age 70, and eight states set their age limits to 75. Vermont is a bit of an outlier, with an age limit of 90.
Supporters of the proposed amendment in New Hampshire say the increase in age could allow judges that want to serve continue to hold their positions. Critics counter that it could also keep judges who may not be fit to serve, or those whose ideologies are out of step with modern public opinion, on the court longer.
Two-thirds of voters would need to vote yes on the constitutional amendment in order for it to take effect. When voters receive their ballots, the question about the constitutional amendment also includes language about a retirement age of 70 for sheriffs — but the amendment will have no impact on that, since the retirement age is already 70 years old for that position.
If the measure does pass, it could further solidify Gov. Chris Sununu’s influence on the state’s courts before he wraps up his term in office. Nearly three quarters of the justices currently serving in New Hampshire’s courts have been appointed since Sununu became governor in 2017, including four out of five on the state supreme court.
Many of Sununu’s appointees are on track to serve until at least 2040, even without the change in retirement age. If the retirement age is extended to 75, five circuit court judges could theoretically serve until 2060.
What do retired justices think?
The age limit proposal was co-authored by Rep. Bob Lynn, a retired chief justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court who now represents Windham at the State House. The Legislature, unlike the courts, does not set a mandatory retirement date.
Lynn, a Republican, said he thinks the current age limit is too young. He said life expectancy was much lower when that cutoff was established, in 1792, and is an antiquated cutoff.
“As a result of that,” Lynn said, “we’ve lost talent of a number of really very, very good judges, very qualified judges who would have stayed beyond age 70 if they were able to.” Lynn said a couple of judges come to mind that should have been able to serve a little longer on court, including his former colleague on the New Hampshire Supreme Court, Carol Ann Conboy.
“She was my epitome of a wonderful judge,” Lynn said. “She was smart and hard working and incredibly fair minded and empathetic.”
Lynn said they had plenty of “vigorous disagreements,” but he was sorry to see her leave the bench.
“To see her have to retire when she didn’t want to – I think that was a real, a real tragedy for the citizens of the state,” Lynn said.
Conboy, meanwhile, said she always joked with her colleagues that they’d have to pry her fingers off the door to get her to retire. Now 77 years old, she lives at an independent continuing care community in Manchester. She started her term on the state’s highest court at age 62 and said she would have liked to serve at least a few more years on the bench, ideally retiring around age 73.
“It was very sad to me to pack up my books and my office furniture and say, ‘You’re done. You’re just, you can’t do it anymore,’” she recalled. “I wasn’t fired for incompetence. I was fired because the calendar turned to a certain day and that was the end. It was extremely disconcerting.”
Conboy said she would have been open to a competency test, as a way to ease public concern over judges’ capabilities.
But she also suggested there are other factors, beyond age, that could influence a judge’s capacity to serve. Judges might face marital and familial problems that divide their attention, she said, and that might require them to take a break until things are resolved.
“Let’s say a judge is going through a very traumatic personal experience, a spouse dies or a child is in a terrible accident that may require that that judge take some time to deal with it, just as we would hope that people in other walks of life would be given an opportunity to deal with it,” Conboy said.
Judges also face mental and physical health concerns, she said; some of those could impact their performance in the court, while others are more easily managed.
Conboy said ensuring judges remain connected to their communities, to technology and to social advances is an important factor for justices. She gave the example of how cellphones have introduced new ways of thinking around crimes committed not just in physical spaces, but also digital.
For her part, Conboy said by the time she reached the New Hampshire Supreme Court, she had accumulated a lifetime of experience, not just in the legal field: working in the U.S. Air Force, as a high school teacher, working with the state to address drug and alcohol issues, as well as 13 years as a practicing lawyer and 17 years as a trial judge.
“I handled murder cases all the way down to arguments over where garbage cans were going to be put in a common driveway,” Conboy said. “Those kinds of experiences actually expanded my understanding of the problems of all strata of society – from sophisticated business decisions or problems to very mundane things such as arguments with town officials as to whether you can build a screen porch on your house.”
Some say term limits, evaluations could help
Some others in New Hampshire’s legal field said the constitutional question brings up other questions about how well our justice system is functioning.
Buzz Scherr, a seasoned New Hampshire defense attorney who teaches at the Franklin Pierce School of Law, said the question of age isn’t quite the problem — he can think of some judges who he was sorry to see retire, and others he was glad to see leave the bench.
At age 72 himself, Scherr said he’s found himself paying more attention in general to how people talk about older adults, for good and for bad. He’s allowed to work until he’s 80 as a professor and plans to slowly phase out his work over time. He is also running for a seat at the State House this fall, as a Democrat.
Judges, Scherr said, are in public-facing positions, so it makes sense that people would be interested in whether they are fit to serve.
A better system, in his view, would be to hold evaluations of judges and their work after age 70, but that would be a tall order. A review on a case by case basis of who is fit to serve would take a lot of time, resources and consideration to execute, Scherr said, so a blanket age limit is more practical.
“I think we over rely in society on people who are advanced age and too often credit them for being wise just because they’re older, old, rather than credit them because they are wise,” Scherr said. “I think it’s easier to have an artificial limit when you’re worried about people who are not as wise or capable as they used to be as they age.”
Edward Gordon, a former New Hampshire circuit court judge and former state lawmaker, also questioned if age is the appropriate measure on whether a judge should serve. Gordon retired before he reached the age of 70 and worked in senior judge status until he reached the age limit. He said that he loved his job.
“I sat primarily in Franklin, and I enjoy the community as a circuit court judge,” Gordon said. “You’re close to the community and you set standards for the community.”
Gordon said he knows of other circuit court judges that retired before they reached their 70th birthdays, so he said the increase in age might not propose immediate changes for Granite Staters, at least not in the circuit court.
There are things judges consider when serving and plan on stepping off the bench, Gordon said, like whether they can retire with benefits, which depends on both their age and how long they’ve served.
While Gordon thinks age is less of a concern, he is a believer in term limits.
“The question is, is there some advantage of having turnover as opposed to keeping judges or politicians in place for long periods of time?” Gordon proposed. “It’s good to have new blood at times. I think those are issues I think that I would raise when it comes to the issue of whether we should extend the age.”
New Hampshire
Harris picks up endorsements from New Hampshire Republicans 6 days before election
Vice President Harris on Wednesday picked up endorsements from three longtime Republican leaders in New Hampshire who supported former President Trump’s rival Nikki Haley in the Republican primary.
Former U.S. Senator Gordon Humphrey, former U.S. Congressman and former New Hampshire Supreme Court Justice Chuck Douglas and former New Hampshire Attorney General Thomas Rath condemned Trump as a divisive and unstable candidate in statements declaring their support for Harris. Her campaign said the endorsements reflect growing enthusiasm for the vice president among registered Republicans both in the Granite State and the rest of the nation.
“I voted Republican for fifty years, but I’m voting against Donald Trump and I plead with all Republicans to do the same,” Humphrey said in a statement. “As a father, a grandfather, a veteran, and a former United States Senator, I cannot vote for Trump. He’s dangerous to our democracy.”
Douglas said that Trump “believes in himself over service” and views the election “as the change to jail his political opponents.” Harris would be a “steady hand at the ship of state” in contrast to Trump’s “fragile mental state and anger,” according to the former lawmaker.
BIDEN CALLS FOR TRUMP TO BE ‘POLITICALLY’ LOCKED UP AT NEW HAMPSHIRE EVENT
Rath likewise condemned Trump’s “campaign of division, anger, thinly veiled prejudice, and rejection of our core values as a nation.”
The Harris-Walz campaign welcomed their support and noted that hundreds of current and former Republicans across the country have backed Harris, including former GOP Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
IT’S A TIGHT RACE IN THE BATTLE TO SUCCEED POPULAR SWING STATE REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR
In New Hampshire specifically, the campaign said there has been a 47% increase in registered Republican volunteers compared to 2022 and a 76% increase in the number of GOP voters who have told canvassers they plan to vote for Democrats next week.
“While Vice President Harris has made clear there is a home in her campaign for all Americans – including Republicans and independents – Donald Trump continues to double down on his extreme agenda,” the campaign said in a news release.
NEW HAMPSHIRE MAKES PRIMARY PICKS FOR GOVERNOR AND HOUSE RACES
Reached for comment, the Trump campaign noted that Haley is supporting his candidacy, along with former Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii.
“President Trump is building a historic and diverse movement to make America great again,” Trump national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “He’s been endorsed by many respected leaders from Nikki Haley to RFK Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard. We welcome anyone who wants to secure our border, restore law and order, and end inflation to join our team.”
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New Hampshire has been an important swing state in prior presidential elections, although Harris has held a consistent lead over Trump in public opinion polls this year. Fox News’ Power Rankings rate the state as “Likely D.”
Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
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