New Hampshire
Pete Buttigieg stumps with Chris Pappas and other N.H. Democrats, fueling speculation about 2028 presidential race – The Boston Globe
“I voted for you last year,” one man said, as he gave Pappas a firm handshake.
“I might ask you to do it again this year,” Pappas replied.
“It’s going to happen,” the man added. “I hate Trump.”
Pappas has a commanding lead in the contested Democratic primary. He also appears to be ahead, albeit by a narrower margin, in hypothetical matchups with John E. Sununu and Scott Brown, the two contenders for the Republican nomination.
Sununu, whose family is seen as a political dynasty in New Hampshire, secured President Trump’s endorsement earlier this month. That further strengthens his position in the GOP primary, though it poses a potential challenge for the general election, since Trump’s job approval rating remains underwater in New Hampshire.
While the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on immigrants has been a point of contention nationwide, the topic has become especially urgent in New Hampshire in recent weeks. State and local leaders have struggled to get clear answers from the federal government about plans to convert an industrial warehouse in Merrimack, N.H., into a regional processing center where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to hold 400 to 600 detainees at a time, as part of a nationwide network of new detention centers.
When asked about the warehouse, Buttigieg noted that Republicans have joined in pushing back on plans for such facilities in New Hampshire and elsewhere.
“We all understand and accept the importance of proper immigration law and enforcement, but a campaign of mass incarceration and terror is not what most Americans believe is the right thing to do,” he said. “And I think the bipartisan resistance to this facility shows that.”
Pappas said he is eager to support legislation to end the partial government shutdown that’s impacting parts of the US Department of Homeland Security, but he wants to see additional guardrails on ICE, such as requiring warrants and deescalation training and ensuring officers identify themselves.
“This shouldn’t be about political leverage. It should be about getting the job done,” Pappas said. “And if we will see legislation come to the floor of the House, I want to make sure those accountability measures are in place, in addition to proper funding.”
Buttigieg said he came to New Hampshire because he is traveling around the country elevating causes and candidates worth supporting. He praised Pappas and New Hampshire in the same breath.
“I’ve seen his pragmatic style that’s very much characteristic of this state,” Buttigieg said, “and I also think he represents a welcome generational opportunity to have new voices in a more modern Senate.”
Buttigieg, 44, is popular among Democrats in New Hampshire. He finished second in the state’s presidential primary in 2020, which helped him climb from his prior job as mayor of South Bend, Ind., to a cabinet-level post overseeing the US Department of Transportation under former president Joe Biden.
His prior campaign experience was evident on Thursday, as some of the restaurant patrons regaled him with stories recalling the first time they had met him and his husband, Chasten, in 2019 at the house parties and meet-and-greet events for which the New Hampshire primary is known.
Buttigieg said campaigning in New Hampshire ahead of the 2020 primary made him a stronger candidate and influenced his views on presidential politics.
“I think it’s critically important for candidates on the national stage to have to have that experience of slowing down and talking to people in small communities, in intimate settings,” he said, “and New Hampshire is full of people who take their civic responsibility as an early state seriously.”
Looking ahead to the 2028 presidential race, Buttigieg ranks among the favorite potential candidates for likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire, according to early polling. Data that the University of New Hampshire Survey Center released Thursday showed Buttigieg in the lead at 20 percent, followed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and California Governor Gavin Newsom at 15 percent apiece, then former vice president Kamala Harris and Senator Mark Kelly at 10 percent apiece.
Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center, said Buttigieg’s activity in New Hampshire is a strong sign of his potential aspirations to launch another presidential bid. If that’s the case, then stumping alongside Pappas and others is a good opportunity to build connections and support among the politically engaged Granite Staters who would be interested in working for the 2028 campaign, he said.
Smith said the latest data on potential Republican candidates show Vice President JD Vance is the clear front-runner for the GOP’s 2028 primary in New Hampshire, which signals Vance is also well-positioned to win his party’s nomination. But there is no front-runner in the Democratic contest.
“There’s no clear leader here,” Smith said. “There is an open field.”
Buttigieg is far from the only potential presidential hopeful making noteworthy visits to New Hampshire. Newsom and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear are each expected to visit in early March, and several others — including Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and senators Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Ruben Gallego — have made similar treks in recent months.
After visiting with Pappas in Manchester on Thursday afternoon, Buttigieg attended a community conversation Thursday evening with Representative Maggie Goodlander in Nashua. He’s expected to join local leaders in Concord on Friday morning, then deliver a speech at Dartmouth College on Friday evening, before joining local organizers for an event on Saturday.
Steven Porter can be reached at steven.porter@globe.com. Follow him @reporterporter.
Snow is giving way to mud after temperatures peaked into the 60s and 70s across the state over the past week, and experts are paying attention to how the snowmelt will affect flood risk and the state’s long-running drought.
While this year may have felt like a classic New England winter, it was the eighth driest December through February since record keeping began in the late 19th century, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
That means there’s not much hope that melting snow will alleviate the drought that’s covering 80% of New Hampshire.
Conditions have been essentially “locked in place” since winter began and the ground froze, said Ted Diers, who leads the water division at the state Department of Environmental Services.
“Any snow that falls is on top of the ground, it’s not soaking in,” he said.
The state’s water debt is so big that even if snow penetrated soils during the winter or now as it melts, it isn’t enough to resolve the drought outright.
“The water that’s stored in that snowpack is only a couple inches, and we have deficits of a foot to a foot and a half that have carried over from the summer drought,” said Sarah Jamison, a senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine.
Since surface water levels are low across the state, the snow melt will first fill up ponds and wetlands before it reaches rivers and creates problems.
“Overall flood risk for the state is actually below normal, because the drought conditions just seem to be the more dominant factor,” Jamison said. “It’s going to take a heck of a lot more water to raise the river up to flood stage than it would otherwise normally need,” she said.
But even with low water levels, ice jams could still pose a problem this mud season. When ice melts, it causes blockages on rivers and they can overflow rapidly. Most rivers in New Hampshire have enough ice to create a risk, according to Jamison.
“Ice is the ‘it’ factor. It’s the wild card. It’s unpredictable,” she said. “Even with low-flow rivers like we have across the state, it doesn’t necessarily need that much water to cause flooding because it can become an instant ice jam.”
Experts say a slow and steady snow melt that can trickle into soil and replenish groundwater would keep flood risk low and help improve drought conditions.
Too much rain too fast on top of the snowmelt could create a flooding event but fail to fix the drought, because a lot of the water would end up as run-off.
Diers, with the state’s environmental services department, said a steady period of consistent rain over several weeks would replenish aquifers and wetlands.
While NOAA is forecasting the state’s drought will continue through May, Diers said, weather can be hard to predict this far out.
And the predictions are getting tricker to make as climate change increases the variability in weather, said Mary Stampone, New Hampshire’s climatologist .
“We’re also seeing…a lot of ups and downs,” she said. “And so the transition seasons like fall and spring are where we can get a lot of that.”
New Hampshire springs are seeing earlier and earlier warm days, followed by late-season cold snaps. This can put a strain on local ecosystems, which rely on snow melt as a crucial water source, especially during growing seasons.
Diers said it’s important for people to be prepared and be thoughtful about their water consumption as we approach warmer months.
“It’s several months away until the really high water use season occurs,” Diers said. “Now is the time to reassess your water use and figure out ways that you could use less.”
Republicans in the New Hampshire House have passed a bill to require local voters to consider capping school property taxes every two years. The proposal, which cleared the House along near party lines Wednesday, is the latest in a series of efforts by Republican leaders to curb growth in local school spending.
Under the bill, voters across New Hampshire would weigh in at every November election on whether to block increases in school spending by capping local tax increases and SAU administrative spending.
Before the House adopted the plan, its lead sponsor, Weare Republican Rep. Ross Berry, argued that the more people vote on a tax cap, the better local spending decisions would reflect the will of people.
“The ultimate form of local control is allowing the most voters to opine on the issue,” Berry said.
But critics of the proposal, including Londonderry Republican Rep. Kristine Perez, said the policy’s bottom line objective is less about maximizing voters’ participation than reducing school distinct spending, regardless of local circumstances.
“Putting a cap on the school portion of property taxes is just another way of saying ‘cutting school budgets,’ ” Perez said.
GOP leaders in the House have for the past few years pushed policies aimed at limiting local local property tax increases by giving voters new tools to curb government spending. But voters have largely rejected these.
After the vote, House Majority Leader Jason Osbornse said this policy will be different.
“Today we delivered. If school boards want to jack up your property taxes, they’re going to have to convince voters at the ballot box, not outlast them in a gymnasium at midnight,” Osborne said.
But Megan Tuttle, who leads NH-NEA, the state’s largest teachers union, said this bill would only harm schools that are already under strain due to rising healthcare and special education costs.
“Instead of fixing our state’s broken public education funding system, these politicians are pushing yet another attempt to implement arbitrary school budget caps that will make it very difficult for school districts that are already underfunded,” she said.
The bill now moves the New Hampshire Senate. Republican leaders there have been leery of past efforts by the House to impose caps on local school spending.
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