'The president comes up in most conversations': New Hampshire GOP Senate contender navigates Trump

David M. Drucker

September 10, 09:06 AM September 10, 09:06 AM

ROCHESTER, New Hampshire — Republican Senate contender Chuck Morse acknowledged Donald Trump is a polarizing figure in the Granite State but said the former president’s agenda was a boon for the country while declaring he “would love to have his endorsement.”

Campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s primary, Morse told the Washington Examiner in an interview Trump has been a hot topic as Republicans vie for the right to challenge Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) in the general election. Most Republican voters Morse talks to want a return to Trump policies, he said, while conceding not all of them miss the constant controversy the former president stirred up with his provocative attitude.

“The president comes up in most conversations throughout the state of New Hampshire,” Morse, the president of the state Senate and a key ally of Gov. Chris Sununu (R), said Friday in Rochester, a town of 35,000 people 40 miles northeast of Manchester that is something of a political bellwether in statewide elections here.

“In almost every conversation, people want to get back to Trump’s policies,” Morse added. “They believe what he did on the border, what he did with energy, what he did with budgeting, was the right way to head as a country. What they didn’t like was the way he presented it, so I get both sides of that when I’m out on the campaign trail.”

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Morse spent the day touring local businesses, talking to owners and their employees about their top priorities and, of course, asking for their votes in a nominating contest just four days away. Morse visited a sophisticated, homegrown manufacturer of automotive, military, and other components that employs 600 people; and he stopped by a family-owned tire shop run by two brothers that has been in the same spot, in downtown Rochester, for decades.

Winning them over, and making sure they get to the polls for this late summer primary, is crucial for Morse.

He has trailed the front-runner for the GOP Senate nomination, retired Army Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, since entering the race in January. Bolduc ran for Senate in 2020 but fell short in the primary. The most recent public opinion polling available in this contest, conducted in August, gave Bolduc a double-digit lead over Morse. But earlier this week, a Republican operative in New Hampshire estimated Morse was down to Bolduc by high single digits.

The state senator is confident he can pull out an eleventh-hour win.

“This one’s going to come down to Sept. 13,” Morse said. “Really, if you look at what’s going on in New Hampshire, we’ve created a ground game since January — I don’t think any of the other [campaigns] are doing what we’re doing.”

Morse claimed an extensive voter turnout program targeting his “universe” of supporters will have knocked on 50,000 doors come Tuesday, complimented by an ongoing phone bank operation. He declined to reveal how much money his campaign has invested in the effort, or how many field staff and volunteers are working for his campaign.

Trump, not shy about endorsing in competitive Republican Senate primaries this cycle, has kept his powder dry in New Hampshire, a state he lost two years ago by more than 7 percentage points to now-President Joe Biden. Other top Republicans have not been as hesitant as the former president about wading into the race, which features several Republican candidates, not just Morse and Bolduc — although the rest of the field is not in contention.

Sununu, a popular figure here, endorsed Morse Thursday.

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White Mountain PAC, a hastily formed group aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), is delivering a late advertising blitz for Morse, believing Bolduc would have difficulty defeating Hassan. Meanwhile, Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), is meddling in the GOP primary with its own multimillion-dollar advertising buy — for the same reason.

“They think I can beat Maggie Hassan, and we know that,” Morse said of the Democratic opposition he has encountered in the primary. “That’s what we’re fighting off right now.”