Democrat Maggie Hassan Defeats Gen. Bolduc in New Hampshire’s Senate Race

Democrat Sen. Maggie Hassan was projected to defeat Gen. Don Bolduc in New Hampshire’s Senate race on Tuesday with 37 percent of the vote counted.

Hassan’s projected victory comes after she outspent the Republican by $9 million, according to third-quarter fundraising totals. The Sen. Mitch McConnell-backed super PAC notably defunded the general’s surge in mid-October, effectively sabotaging the race.

Overall, the Granite State race was the ninth most expensive Senate race, at $85,137,639, according to Open Secrets. Hassan’s campaign spent $36,180,756 million to defeat Gen. Bolduc.

Gen. Bolduc shot up 13 points in six weeks and closed the campaign with a slim lead in the polls. RealClearPolitics flipped its forecast last week to a GOP pickup. Politico updated its forecast on Friday from “lean” Democrat to a “tossup.”

Gen. Bolduc’s rise was initially bankrolled by Democrats in the GOP primary to the tune of $3.2 million. After winning the primary by less than 2,000 votes, the establishment media appeared to ignore the Republican. Seven weeks later, Gen. Bolduc claimed the momentum in the general election against Hassan.

While Hassan preferred to remain less publicly visible during the campaign, Gen. Bolduc ran a grassroots campaign with over 80 town halls since mid-September and over one million voter contacts via phone calls and door knocks.

During the race, Gen. Bolduc highlighted that Hassan voted for inflation-fueling, soft-on-crime, and open border policies. She voted for felons to receive coronavirus stimulus checks, the $1.9 trillion for coronavirus stimulus, and the “Inflation Reduction Act.” Over 230 economists warned the so-called Inflation Reduction Act will exacerbate inflation.

Hassan has also voted against Republican efforts to force a vote on an amendment to a coronavirus bill to reinstate Title 42 restrictions. She additionally has refused to oppose the Biden administration’s “catch and release” illegal immigration policy, along with opposing former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which Biden ended.

The New Hampshire Senate contest was one of seven fiercely contested battleground states that determined which party would control the Senate. To retake the chamber, the GOP needed to hold Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and retake either Arizona, Nevada, Washington State, New Hampshire, or Georgia to have a one-seat majority in the Senate.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.