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New Hampshire

NH’s Ayotte vs. Craig is closest governor’s race in US.: Experts explain why it matters

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NH’s Ayotte vs. Craig is closest governor’s race in US.: Experts explain why it matters


DURHAM — The New Hampshire governor’s race is now the most competitive gubernatorial contest in the country, experts say, and this may be an asset to both Republican Kelly Ayotte and Democrat Joyce Craig.

Earlier this year, North Carolina and New Hampshire were seen as the top two competitive elections in the United States. But after a CNN report linked Republican North Carolina governor candidate Mark Robinson to multiple disturbing comments on a pornographic website, prompting most of his staff to resign, the formerly toss-up race has been moved to a likely Democratic victory, according to the Cook Political Report. 

New Hampshire is now the only state gubernatorial race ranked a toss-up. According to recent polls from University of New Hampshire and Saint Anselm, the two candidates running for the office being vacated by Republican Gov. Chris Sununu are neck and neck.

The shake-up in the Tar Heel state may have opened up national funds that can help both Ayotte and Craig in New Hampshire. The Republican Governors Association current ad buy in North Carolina expired Tuesday, and multiple outlets reported the group has not planned any other placements.

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“(Ayotte) will get help from the Republicans … because there really isn’t that much to invest in,” said UNH political science professor Dante Scala. “I mean, you look at North Carolina, maybe three, six months ago, that looked like a competitive race, but especially after last week, (it) sure doesn’t look that way anymore.”

The recent events may also free up more money from the Democratic Governors Association to help Craig in New Hampshire.

The first campaign finance filing deadline for the general election is Oct. 16.

Andrew Smith, the director of the UNH Survey Center, agreed the Republican Governors Association is likely not going to “want to bother” spending money on the North Carolina race anymore. However, Smith also wonders how independent the organization is from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

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“I think the Trump people are going to want to take as much money as they can from any of the campaign organizations and use it on the presidential campaign,” he said. 

Money is just part of the puzzle in this tight race: Each candidate has multiple strengths and weaknesses that will contribute to how they perform in November.

How the presidential election may affect the NH governor’s race

The “Trump factor”’ is a weakness for Ayotte in New Hampshire, where polls have shown the former president losing to Vice President Kamala Harris by as much as 11%.

To win, Ayotte will to convince voters to split their tickets and run ahead of Trump by about 5-7%, according to Scala, who said that is difficult for a non-incumbent. Even Sununu, who benefited from a name that runs deep in New Hampshire tradition, barely won during his first campaign for governor in 2016, running just enough ahead of Trump to win the open seat. 

Ayotte’s rocky relationship with Trump may also play a negative role within her own party. The Republican Party in New Hampshire has many different factions, from Trump Republicans to free state libertarians to more mainstream traditional Republicans like Ayotte. There may be some voters who don’t like her because she isn’t close enough with Trump, while others may not want to vote for her to show their disdain for him. 

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However, a plus for Ayotte is Trump isn’t likely focus on New Hampshire as the presidential race no longer appears to be close in the state, meaning Ayotte can continue to keep her distance.

“Donald Trump is an anchor on all Republicans in the state. He’s not going to help them spread their message beyond that MAGA base, and could potentially hurt them if they get closely tied to Trump in the flow of the campaign,” Smith said. “So that split-ticket bogey is really going to be the key thing for her to be able to do to try to distinguish herself from Donald Trump without alienating those Republican Trump voters.”

While the Republican base is not as strongly in support of Ayotte as the Democratic base is for Craig currently, the polls revealed Ayotte appears to be more appealing to swing or independent voters, Scala said. That’s a positive sign for collecting the split ticket voters Ayotte needs. There’s also the possibility the full Republican base will coalesce around Ayotte as the election gets closer. 

“If she’s going to pull it out, she’s going to have to really kind of channel her inner Sununu,” Smith said.

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Conversely, Harris at the top of the ticket is a plus for Craig, whose positive polling numbers may be in part thanks to the vice president’s popularity in New Hampshire. The Democratic Party in New Hampshire has united around Harris, and by extension, Craig. Because of that, she might even be successful with a “generic Democratic campaign,” said Scala.

The NHDP has also tended to be better at getting voters out to the polls, Smith said. They have more money and organization than the Republican Party in New Hampshire, largely because of divides in the NHGOP like the Tea Party in the 2010s and Trump now.

How name recognition can be a boon – but other times a curse

One of Ayotte’s main strengths throughout this election has been her name ID. A former U.S. senator and New Hampshire attorney general, her strong name recognition was partially responsible for her dominant primary win over former state Senate President Chuck Morse. The experience of running those two statewide campaigns is also a strength for her in this election.

But her strong name ID may also be contributing to her negative favorability ratings: -5% according to the Saint Anselm poll and -17% according to UNH. 

Craig, a former Manchester mayor, on the other hand, is less well known. But this can also be a strength as she hasn’t been caught up in as many “cross-party wars” as Ayotte, said Smith. Her favorability numbers are also positive — although Smith thinks that might change as the race gets closer and negative advertising ramps up.

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The battle lines: Abortion and the city of Manchester

Craig’s biggest weakness, “fair or unfair,” Smith said, is the way Manchester is perceived to have been governed under her. 

“You can see this has already been played out back in November last year,” said Smith, referring to last year’s mayoral race, when Republican Jay Ruais won over Craig’s endorsed successor. “That’s a harder problem for her to overcome, because that’s a policy issue. It’s not a personal issue.”

During the primary, Craig faced attacks about Manchester’s homelessness and drug issues from both sides of the aisle.

Craig will also have to address questions on taxes, crime, and immigration, all tried and true attacks Republicans use against Democrats.

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Ayotte’s weakest issue is abortion, a consistent topic used by Democrats across the country. Both sides have put in a lot of effort trying to inform voters about how the governor’s race would affect abortion policy in New Hampshire: Ayotte even put out an ad saying she would not change New Hampshire’s current 24-week abortion law.

“It is something on which her voting history is to the right of what I would say is your average New Hampshire voter,” Scala said. As a senator, Ayotte supported a 20-week abortion ban as well as the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

More: Craig would give NH education chief Frank Edelblut the boot. Ayotte backs his policies.

The question for Scala, though, is if Democrats will open another line of attack against Ayotte.

“Abortion is a problem for Ayotte, but Democrats have already spent a lot of money going after Ayotte on abortion,” Scala said. “How much more is there to get out of that issue? And I think that’s a fair question.”

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New Hampshire

NHPR, NH PBS set to lose federal funding after cuts clear Congress

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NHPR, NH PBS set to lose federal funding after cuts clear Congress


New Hampshire Public Radio and New Hampshire PBS are among the media outlets who will see major cuts to their funding streams following votes in Congress this week to defund public broadcasting.

On a near party-line vote, Republican lawmakers approved a rescission package backed by President Trump that will cut $1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB, in turn, awards grants to local stations across the public radio and television network.

For New Hampshire Public Radio, the cuts amount to more than $400,000, or 6% of the station’s annual budget. In a fundraising appeal sent Friday morning, NHPR CEO Jim Schachter said the rescission puts a “permanent gap” in the station’s budget.

“Our short-term response includes cost-cutting, of course; the demand for efficiency is greater than ever,” he said.

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New Hampshire PBS receives 18% of its budget — or $1.3 million — in the form of grants from the CPB. Earlier this week, vice president Dawn DeAngelis said the loss of that money won’t be easy to make up, but that the organization is hoping to avoid layoffs or a reduction in local programming.

“We’ve been preparing for this eventuality for a while,” DeAngelis said. “We’ve been communicating with people across the system. So I feel that we’re better prepared to handle it. Will it be difficult? Yes.”

Cuts to ripple across the country

Roughly 2% of NPR’s budget comes through federal funds. For PBS, that share comes to about 15%. Both NPR and PBS also receive additional federal money in the form of payments from member stations that receive government funds.

The reliance on federal funding by local stations varies considerably across the nation. Stations in more rural or remote parts of the country tend to rely far more heavily on federal funding to stay afloat.

While public broadcasting has enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington for decades, Trump has repeatedly accused NPR of political bias. The network has denied those allegations, but was unable to convince the Republican majority in Congress to protect its funding.

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Big financial impacts for other New England stations

Regionally, other New England public media organizations say they are still assessing the impact of the funding cuts on their bottom lines.

Boston’s two public media outlets — WBUR and GBH — say they expect to lose millions of dollars from the funding cuts. GBH was set to receive about 8% of its budget — or $18 million — from the CPB in the coming fiscal year. For WBUR, about 3% of its annual budget, or $1.6 million, comes from that source.

But for both news organizations, the financial losses could mount much higher, as both GBH and WBUR take in millions of dollars in sponsorships and syndication fees from other stations that pay to air their programs, including Here and Now, The World, and Frontline. Stations could decide to drop that programming as part of their own cost-cutting efforts.

“This is a painful moment,” said WBUR CEO Margaret Low. “We may be defunded but we feel determined to carry on and continue to serve the city and the country with high-quality journalism.”

Elsewhere in New England, Maine Public says it will lose about 12% of its budget due to the loss of federal funding. And Vermont Public says it gets about 10% of its annual funding from the CPB — or about $2 million a year.

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Editor’s note: This story was edited by NHPR’s Dan Barrick. No other NHPR staff or management provided input or reviewed the story before publication.





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New Hampshire

Man accused of leading police on chase from MA to NH faces charges – Boston News, Weather, Sports | WHDH 7News

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Man accused of leading police on chase from MA to NH faces charges – Boston News, Weather, Sports | WHDH 7News


SALEM, N.H. (WHDH) – Scott Sullivan, the man accused of insinuating a car chase that started in Massachusetts and ended in Salem, New Hampshire (NH), opted not to appear in Salem court Thursday morning.

Investigators say the 34-year-old suspect was driving a Hyundai Santa Fe and led police on a chase Wednesday afternoon from Lawrence to Salem, NH, running cruisers off the road before crashing into a utility pole along the route 28 trail.

Sullivan and his passenger, identified at Sarah Ann Jacobs, 27, both took off on foot but were captured a short time later.

SKY 7 HD was overhead when Jacobs was cuffed and taken into custdy.

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Investigators say Sullivan is a person of interest in connection with several break-ins last month in Salem, NH, including one where a rifle was stolen from an off-duty Hampton police officer’s personal vehicle.

Police say the rifle was an A.R. 15 style. They say it was taken along with dozens of rounds of ammunition, and according to court documents, those items have yet to be located.

For now, police believe this is an isolated incident.

(Copyright (c) 2024 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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New Hampshire

New Hampshire’s New Booze Law Will Hamstring the State’s Brewpubs

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New Hampshire’s New Booze Law Will Hamstring the State’s Brewpubs


The rationale behind New Hampshire’s new brewpub regulation is more headache-inducing than the beer.

On Friday, New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) signed House Bill 242 into law. The bill, sponsored by state Rep. John Hunt (R–Rindge), will take effect in August and limits brewpubs in the state to self-distributing their beer to only one additional restaurant or business outside their premises. The bill is a follow-up to H.B. 1380, also sponsored by Hunt in 2024, which limited the amount of beer or cider a brewpub could sell to 2,500 barrels a year and permitted licensed brewpub owners to obtain licenses to sell their product on their premises in bars and at off-premise locations like grocery stores, so long as they didn’t have a manufacturing license.

If the law sounds like it will keep brewpubs small, that’s because it’s intended to do so. “This is what we call a very inside baseball bill,” Hunt told the New Hampshire Bulletin

Hunt said that H.B. 242 was designed to preserve the state’s current regulatory system, describing New Hampshire as a “three-tier state,” where businesses operate as either beverage manufacturers, distributors, or retailers. By restricting brewpubs from becoming a one-stop shop that acts as a “bottler…distributor” and “retailer,” Hunt said the bill is intended to safeguard the “monopoly” held by beer distributors in the middle tier of this system.”Frankly, I think the relationship between the distributors and the licensees (retailers) is pretty sacred, and it works well, and there’s no reason to upset them.”

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The bill was supported by the state’s restaurant and lodging trade group. “You have to understand, in order for one of these brewpubs to make enough beer to self distribute to more than one additional location, they would have to make an enormous amount of beer…and frankly, most of them didn’t think they could make enough beer to even distribute to another location,” Mike Somers, president and CEO of the New Hampshire Lodging and Restaurant Association, told the New Hampshire Bulletin. “Most of the folks in the industry that I’ve talked to didn’t really feel that the restriction was much of a restriction, because they could now own multiple brewpubs and restaurants.” 

Rather than having the freedom to ramp up production and distribution, Somers contends that brewpub owners would rather start new brands and businesses from scratch.

This wasn’t the only booze-related bill that passed the governor’s desk: Ayotte also signed H.B. 467 and let H.B. 81 become law without her signature. H.B. 467 allows municipalities to create designated “social districts” where people can legally consume alcohol outdoors. These areas must be clearly marked with signs indicating the permitted times and boundaries, and all alcohol must be purchased from businesses within the district. Separately, H.B. 81 permits restaurant patrons to bring their drinks with them to the restroom.

While both laws ease some restrictions on consumer alcohol use, they stop short of meaningfully reducing the state’s overall control of alcoholic beverages. And now, New Hampshire’s brewpubs will face more hurdles to scaling up the production and distribution of their beer. 

In keeping with that spirit, the state would be better served by promoting policies that encourage innovation, rather than anticompetitive laws like H.B. 242 that restrict consumer choice and unfairly penalize brewpubs for their market success.

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The post New Hampshire’s New Booze Law Will Hamstring the State’s Brewpubs appeared first on Reason.com.



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