Tom Sullivan and Susan Lloyd were the first to quietly pull up chairs in front of the television as they watched the results of their efforts play out on cable news.
They spent hours volunteering at the polls on Tuesday and arrived at the watch party in Concord to support Karishma Manzur, a progressive candidate running against Chris Pappas in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, in hopes that she would pull off an upset.
What supporters saw as a movement turned into “heartbreaking” results, as Sullivan put it, as more people trickled toward the television to see Pappas, not Manzur, clinch the Democratic nomination.
“It’s the way our elections go, right?” said Sullivan, who lives in Contoocook. “Every winner tonight is an incumbent or has the name recognition of a lifetime in politics.”
Familiar names in New Hampshire politics swept the primary election. While some swing states have favored anti-establishment candidates in this year’s midterms, Granite Staters went the other way.
The mood was light in Manchester, where four-term congressman Pappas celebrated a decisive primary win against Manzur, who is a Democratic socialist and scientist from Exeter. The Associated Press called the race for Pappas around 8 p.m. on election night, and he led Manzur 65% to 32.7% as of Wednesday morning.
Come November, the four-term congressman will face Republican candidate John E. Sununu, who held the seat for one term before Jeanne Shaheen.
Pappas centered his campaign on bringing down costs and rooting out corporate and political corruption. He pitched himself as the one who will “challenge the broken ways of Washington.”
“It is time to turn the page in America to a better day,” Pappas said. “We’ve got to turn the page on Donald Trump’s reckless leadership, on corruption, on the rigged economy, and on costs. And this is not the time to turn it back to a failed politician from the past. It is time to look ahead to the future, and that’s what we’re fighting for in this campaign.”
Manzur, in her concession speech, called for Democrats to unite against Republicans.
“In order for Chris Pappas to win this seat, he must earn the support of the voters who chose our campaign tonight,” Manzur said. “We have to work together to defeat the Republican establishment in the general election, but we also have to unite to change the direction of the Democratic Party.”
Those who voted for Pappas viewed him as a fighter for their interests and felt that he had the best chance of beating Sununu in the general election.
“People just want to be sure that their senators are fighting for them on economic issues,” said Mark Paige, a Democratic state representative from Exeter who attended Pappas’s party on Tuesday. “Pappas has done that as a Congressman. I think he has the record to demonstrate that.”
Sununu was heavily favored to clinch his party’s nomination and did so with 68.6% of the vote. His primary opponent, former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown, had 26.6% of the vote as of Wednesday morning, according to the AP.
Sununu sought to brand Pappas as a career politician and challenged him to a debate in every county.
“When it comes to standing up for NH, I take a backseat to no one. I’m not running for any other job. I don’t want to make anyone in Washington happy,” Sununu told supporters. “I know that as your senator: to stand up for the people of New Hampshire every single day.”
Brown said he plans to support Sununu in the general election. The point, he said, is to get a New Hampshire Republican down to Washington.
“I think it’s important that we have some representation in DC, because right now we don’t, and quite honestly, we deserve it,” Brown told reporters on Tuesday.
Familiarity, electability wins out
Many Democrats went to the polls with one presiding factor in their choice: electability. In a general election match-up with Sununu, Democratic voters said broadly that they want to keep New Hampshire’s Senate seat blue.
“Karishma Manzur, I thought was good, but I wanted to go with who I knew,” said Dawn Berry, who lives in Hopkinton. “Plus, I think in this race, especially if they run against Sununu, we need somebody with some name recognition and a record.”
Manzur spent many months and dollars attacking that record. She denounced him for accepting donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and for not co-sponsoring legislation for universal health care.
Criticisms of Pappas worried Stephanie Green, who also wanted a viable candidate to run against Sununu but landed in Manzur’s camp after lots of back-and-forth. She said she likes Manzur’s more progressive message.
“It was really, honestly, a toss-up. I went electability because so much is being thrown at Chris Pappas, but I’m not sure that she’s any more electable, you know what I mean?” Green said. “I could make the argument for either one of them on any given day.”
For Reece Grano, a Bennington resident, a vote for Manzur was more about policy.
“She’s a socialist. So am I,” Grano said as he exited town hall on Tuesday. Lots of things are on his mind these days, he added, but “we have to stop the engine of capitalism from destroying the planet, pretty much.”
Voters were also divided over whether Pappas’s time in Congress should come to an end.
“I think he does not fight hard enough for my values,” said Chris Healey, who lives in Antrim. “I think some people like his bipartisanship, particularly centrists and moderates. I think he goes along to get along too much, so he votes with the Republicans on issues that I think are much more Trump-friendly.”
Berry, on the other hand, believes Pappas and his second-district counterpart, Rep. Maggie Goodlander, have “strong, clear voices” when it comes to opposing the president.
“I am really disgusted, really angry, and that’s why I think Pappas and Goodlander will stand up and be bold,” Berry said.
Name recognition won out in the Republican race, too. In a primary against former Massachusetts senator Brown, GOP voters said Sununu felt more familiar, given the family’s decades-long prominence in New Hampshire political office.
“I’ve been voting for his brother and his father for years, so we’ll just keep it in the family, I guess,” said Claude Tremblay, who lives in Weare.
Brown supporters said throughout the campaign that they liked his experience in the military and his accessibility to voters.
The race was not close, however. From the beginning, said former GOP Chair Chris Ager, Sununu’s campaign was focused more on Pappas than on Brown. It means little has changed for the former senator hoping to reclaim the seat, Ager said.
“This wasn’t a primary campaign,” said Ager as the polls closed around the state. “This was, ‘How am I going to help people in New Hampshire if I win in November?’ And I think that’s the right way to run.”
This story has been updated to include the latest election information.
