Exclusive: GOP Candidates Make Final Pitches in New Hampshire Battleground Race to Unseat Pappas

Republican candidates in New Hampshire’s competitive First District congressional primary race zeroed in on inflation, illegal migration, and America’s tense relationship with China in interviews with Breitbart News Saturday ahead of Tuesday’s election.

Top candidates, including Matt Mowers, who has been leading in polls, as well as Gail Huff Brown, who has been hovering in third place, spoke about top issues and each contended they were the candidate best fit to defeat incumbent Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH).

“I’m the only tested conservative candidate who can actually beat Chris Pappas, and polls show I’ll whoop Pappas in November. We can’t chance it with anyone else,” Mowers, a former senior Trump White House adviser in the State Department, told host Matthew Boyle.

Listen to Matt Mowers:

Mowers, who narrowly lost to Pappas in Pappas’s first bid for reelection in 2020, has been leading in primary polls, but the most recent Granite State Poll suggests the race has tightened.

In that poll, taken August 25 to 29, Mowers received 26 percent, former Trump assistant press secretary Karoline Leavitt received 24 percent, and Huff Brown, a longtime television journalist and wife of former Sen. Scott Brown, received 16 percent. Other candidates received single-digit support, and 26 percent of respondents said they were undecided.

Pappas, who is viewed as one of the most vulnerable Democrats heading into November, is a welcome target for the Republicans as he has voted in lockstep with President Joe Biden, a surprising voting pattern for a representative of a toss-up district.

“It’s very disturbing,” Huff Brown said of Pappas’s voting record. “Listen, I am an independent conservative, and I am not beholden to anyone,” she said, adding that Granite Staters “need a voice. They need to be able to trust again.”

Listen to Gail Huff Brown:

The late season primary battle has become contentious in its final stretch, as Mowers continues to take heat for a voting controversy from 2016 and his past work as an aide for Never Trump former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), and Leavitt comes under fire for her perceived insincerity and lack of life experience.

Huff Brown, an underdog in the race who touts her experience as a mother, grandmother, journalist for three decades, and military spouse, took a jab at her two top rivals, whom she said were also “beholden” to current House leadership based on endorsements they have received.

Mowers is endorsed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and is being boosted by the McCarthy-associated Congressional Leadership Fund, while Leavitt is backed by House GOP Conference chair Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Stefanik’s E-PAC. Huff Brown has the backing of Fox News’s Sean Hannity and the U.S. Border Patrol union.

Leavitt, for her part, has waged an aggressive campaign against Mowers, saying he is “bought and paid for by the swamp” and lacks loyalty to Trump because of his work for Christie.

Meanwhile, a group called Defending Main Street has spent more than a million dollars targeting Leavitt, who recently turned 25 and is now just old enough to join Congress. An ad from the group blasts her as a “woke Gen-Zer” who “records everything” and features candid footage of her laughing as she says, “Listen up, hoe bags.”

Mowers, who has been more focused on Pappas than on his GOP opponents, maintained that focus during his interview on Breitbart News Saturday as he spoke about his experience in the State Department preparing him for issues related to China.

Mowers said that in January 2020, when murmurs of coronavirus first surfaced, “I knew immediately where it was coming from, and I knew that the Chinese were lying about this stuff. The Chinese Communist Party lies about stuff all the time. They were buying off the World Health Organization, using them as a puppet mouthpiece for their routine, and we knew that we had to get to the truth of it all, and the only way to do that was to call for a complete and total travel ban from China at the time. My opponent Chris Pappas wanted to stop President Trump from doing that.”

“That’s why we need tested conservatives,” Mowers continued. “Too many people talk to death. Too many people are just trying to send out a tweet. We need people that have done this, and know what it takes to both put America first, protect our country, and then also make sure that Americans have their liberty preserved, because that’s what’s under assault right now from Washington, DC.”

Huff Brown, who visited the southern border this year, spoke about her priorities to tackle the illegal migration crisis, which has become direr under Biden.

“We close the border. We absolutely finish the wall, and we close the asylum loophole that allows for illegals to stay in our country indefinitely. They get free food. They get free health care. They get free housing. They get free education, free everything, while we have our veterans and our homeless and our elderly who can’t pay their bills. This is wrong. This is not American,” Huff Brown said.

Drug cartels seek the “path of least resistance” to traffic drugs, and Biden’s open border policies have therefore exacerbated the issue of drug addiction and overdose, particularly from fentanyl, Huff Brown added.

Both Mowers and Huff Brown also vowed to combat inflation, a consistent top issue among Republicans in polling.

“I’ve spoken to thousands and thousands of Granite Staters, and here’s what’s at stake: Their energy costs, the gas prices, the price of food, how much they’re going to be paying to heat their homes. I mean, people are really struggling,” Huff Brown said.

Mowers pointed to Biden and congressional Democrats passing multiple multitrillion-dollar spending packages, saying, “We’ve got to stop this socialist spending spree.”

“They are trying to remake the entire American way of life right now by trying to tell everyone a big ol’ lie,” Mowers said. “They’re trying to tell everyone you can have something for free and not ever have to pay for it. That’s a lie. In America, we know that everything comes with a cost. If you work hard and play by the rules, you can get ahead. That’s how you achieve your piece of the American dream.”