HANOVER — Cinde Warmington wasn’t long into her interview when Reece Sharp, a Dartmouth junior and executive director of Dartmouth Democrats, asked her to address the elephant that has haunted her campaign since she first attempted to secure the Democratic nomination for governor in 2024.
On Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte’s campaign website, her opponent has the rather unflattering title, “Opioid Lobbyist Cinde Warmington.”
Throughout her entire gubernatorial campaign, Warmington has had to defend her work history to the public. The Concord native practiced health care law for 20 years, and in 2002 represented Purdue Pharma in its efforts against a bill that would limit access to OxyContin, a highly addictive opioid. She insisted Monday night she had no idea about the fraud the company was committing or its payments to doctors to boost prescriptions of OxyContin.
“If I had known, I would most certainly have had nothing to do with that work,” Warmington said. “Knowing what we later learned, I certainly regret ever having anything to do with [Purdue Pharma].”
The Democratic nominee answered questions about the cost of living, education funding, energy sources and her career history Monday night at Dartmouth’s Rockefeller Center for Public Policy. “The Rocky” included Warmington in its speaker series focused on the upcoming Nov. 3 midterms.
In front of a small crowd of mostly older attendees, Warmington exuded confidence about her path to election as New Hampshire’s next governor. Incumbent Ayotte leads in most polls, and New Hampshire governors have very high re-election rates after their first terms in office.
Yet Warmington emphasized that she is “closing the gap” in nearly every poll tracking the race. She told the room that she and Ayotte are statistically tied in the latest Granite State poll from the University of New Hampshire, which came out Sept. 24. This doesn’t mean the two candidates are actually tied — Ayotte maintains the lead she has held since the beginning of the race — but rather that the four-point difference between them falls within the survey’s margin of error.
“I think [Ayotte] had the advantage coming into the race, no question about it,” Warmington told the Valley News after her event. “I’ve been the underdog since day one, and she’s had a lot of money from out-of-state donors and big businesses. But to me, it’s about what is important to the people of our state, and that is how much everything costs.”
Indeed, the former executive council member tackled New Hampshire’s rising cost of living before anything else. Warmington narrowed in on housing, naming it as the issue she has heard the most about from voters.
“Every day, Kelly Ayotte has made this worse,” she said.
She pointed to the Housing Champions program, which awards grants to municipalities to incentivize building more homes. Warmington said Ayotte “defunded” the Housing Champions program. The current governor, however, has been a vocal supporter of the program during her first term in the corner office.
John Corbett, Ayotte’s campaign spokesman, responded to Warmington in a written statement to the Valley News Wednesday: “Voters can’t trust a word Opioid Lobbyist Cinde Warmington says. She lied on behalf of Purdue Pharma when she called OxyContin a miracle drug and on behalf of a notorious pill mill that bankrolled her campaigns. Now, she’s lying about Governor Ayotte.”
Ayotte does, on the other hand, have a connection to private equity, which Warmington also named as a reason that Granite Staters are struggling to afford housing. The governor previously served as a board member of Blackstone, one of the largest alternative asset management companies in the world, which boasts a lucrative private equity branch. Warmington said she would “put some guardrails on private equity” buying properties in New Hampshire, a practice which she said drives up rent.
Warmington stressed, too, that Ayotte signed House Bill 60 into effect last August, allowing landlords to evict tenants at the end of their lease periods without cause.
Fuel prices also contribute to New Hampshire’s rising cost of living, and for Warmington, renewable energy is the answer — more so than nuclear energy, which has been a major focus for Ayotte. Warmington said nuclear power is “a decade away” from being useful, and Granite Staters need energy sources now. If elected, she would invest in renewable energy sources right away, she said.
“The sun shines and the wind blows, whether or not the Strait of Hormuz is closed,” Warmington said, getting a laugh out of her audience.
“Governor Ayotte is fighting every day to make New Hampshire more affordable, including taking on the utility companies and pushing for them to return millions of dollars to Granite Staters,” Corbett wrote Wednesday. “Warmington will say anything to distract from the fact that she supports an energy plan that would ban natural gas and home heating oil, and send electric bills through the roof.”
Other than the cost of living crisis, Warmington spoke most fervently about New Hampshire’s school choice program. Education Freedom Accounts award state money originally set aside for public school funding directly to families, who can use their grants to send their children to private schools or for tutoring, online services or homeschooling materials.
“The voucher scheme … should be seen as pickpocketing,” Warmington said.
Last June, Ayotte signed a bill that expanded access to Education Freedom Accounts, eliminating the income cap that previously restricted them to lower-earning families. Now, anyone in the Granite State can use public funds for their child’s education in any way they choose. Warmington told her audience that this allowance has caused property taxes to go up: The state is diverting public school funding to the voucher program, which puts the burden on towns to raise the rest of the money needed for their schools. Therefore, Warmington argued, those towns will have to increase property taxes.
After speaking to the crowd, Warmington told the Valley News about ensuring that bills don’t “downshift” costs to taxpayers and standing up to President Donald Trump, which she said Ayotte has not done. The Democrat argued that her opponent should have sued the Trump Administration when it revoked approximately $81 million in funding from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services in May 2025. Under Ayotte, however, the state filed an administrative appeal to the White House to reclaim the funding.
With election day on Nov. 3, Warmington has just three weeks to turn her statistical tie with Ayotte into an advantage.