6 primaries to watch in New Hampshire and Delaware

Much of the political world is understandably focused on tonight's presidential debate, but today also marks this year's final day of party primaries for downballot offices before the Nov. 5 general election. Voters in Delaware, New Hampshire and Rhode Island head to the polls to select their nominees for many offices, including the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives and governor.

And it's the primary contests for a group of four key seats — three in New Hampshire and one in Delaware — that we're closely monitoring today (sorry, Rhode Island). A cluster of Granite State primaries all involve contests that could be highly competitive in November, while the First State's lone race of interest is the Democratic primary for governor, which will likely decide the blue state's next chief executive.

New Hampshire

Races to watch: 1st and 2nd congressional districts; governor

Polls close: Most of the state at 7 p.m. Eastern, a few cities at 8 p.m.

New Hampshire is one of only two states that have two-year terms for governor (Vermont next door is the other), and that office tops today's Granite State primary docket. Popular Republican Gov. Chris Sununu isn't seeking reelection, which has left the governor's chair open for the first time since 2016 and created the conditions for competitive primaries on both sides of the aisle.

For Republicans, two familiar faces from statewide politics are fighting for the party's nomination. Former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who lost reelection by the thinnest of margins in 2016, has positioned herself as the front-runner against former state Senate President Chuck Morse, who lost a close primary for the same U.S. Senate seat in 2022. Ayotte has substantially outraised Morse, about $7.8 million to $1.5 million as of early September. Ayotte's haul includes nearly $2.8 million from a group funded by the Republican Governors Association, which has sided with Ayotte as the GOP's best chance to retain this seat. Tellingly, Sununu has also endorsed Ayotte.

To break through, Morse has tried to position himself to Ayotte's right. He has run ads attacking Ayotte's Senate record, deeming her "pro-amnesty" on immigration and soft on gun rights. Appealing to the party's base, Morse has also claimed that Ayotte "turned her back" on Donald Trump in 2016 when she said she couldn't vote for the GOP presidential nominee after Trump's remarks regarding pursuing women from the show "Access Hollywood" surfaced.

But Morse faces an uphill battle: Mid-August surveys of primary voters from Saint Anselm College and the University of New Hampshire both found Ayotte polling around 60 percent or better, while Morse was stuck in the low-to-mid 20s. For her part, Ayotte has mostly run ads focused on the general election, including spots pushing back on Democratic claims that she wants to ban abortion. She's also endorsed Trump this time around (after he won the GOP nomination), and walked back at least one of her more moderate stances on immigration.

The Democratic primary for this race, meanwhile, features a more competitive tilt between Cinde Warmington, who is currently the only Democrat on New Hampshire's powerful five-member Executive Council, and former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig, who led the Granite State's largest city for six years. Unlike the RGA, the Democratic Governors Association hasn't sided with either contender, instead investing $8.0 million in a group that's using its money to attack Ayotte for her abortion views and support for Trump.

Still, Craig may be a marginal favorite in this race. Although Craig has only outraised Warmington about $3.0 million to $2.8 million, Warmington has had to self-fund $1.1 million of her total to keep pace. On the polling front, Craig was in the high 30s in those same mid-August surveys of primary voters, while Warmington attracted around 30 percent support. Craig has also received the endorsement of Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, who defeated Ayotte in the state's 2016 Senate race. And Ayotte seems to view Craig as her most likely opponent: She's run ads against Craig, including a spot in which Ayotte cited an unsolved murder in Manchester as evidence of Craig's poor mayoral record — but Ayotte pulled the ad after it turned out the killing took place before Craig was mayor.

Craig has felt enough heat from Warmington's challenge to go negative, though. The former mayor has run ads criticizing Warmington's past lobbying career, including her work in the early 2000s advocating for the drug OxyContin, the abuse of which played a part in the development of the opioid crisis, which in recent years has hit New Hampshire as hard as or even worse than many other states. Warmington has pushed back, running her own spots that claim Craig is "smearing" her because Craig can't defend her mayoral record "of homelessness and overdoses." By contrast, Craig has promoted her time as mayor, arguing she reduced crime and defended abortion rights. Warmington has also highlighted her support for abortion rights, portraying herself as a last defense on the issue as the lone Democrat on the Executive Council.

Another highly contested Democratic primary has taken shape in New Hampshire's 2nd District, a light-blue seat left open by the retirement of Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster. Former Biden administration official Maggie Goodlander and former Executive Councillor Colin Van Ostern each hope to succeed Kuster and keep the seat in Democratic hands. Goodlander holds a sizable monetary edge, having raised $2.4 million to Van Ostern's $1.4 million, and has received far more outside spending support, $1.5 million to $204,000, according to OpenSecrets. But Van Ostern is perhaps a better-known quantity locally because of his Executive Council service and a narrow loss to Sununu in the 2016 gubernatorial election.

The race certainly looks close — the mid-August Saint Anselm and UNH surveys found Goodlander with a 6- to 10-percentage-point lead — which helps explain why it's taken a negative turn. VoteVets, which is backing Goodlander, attacked Van Ostern's business record and claimed that he'd accepted corporate donations to his campaign after saying he wouldn't. Van Ostern said that VoteVets was misleading viewers by referring to donations during his 2016 gubernatorial campaign, not the current one. For his part, Van Ostern's campaign has run ads featuring Kuster speaking to camera to endorse Van Ostern and claiming that Goodlander donated to anti-abortion Republicans while also having lived out of state in recent years. Going negative could come at a cost, though, as Van Ostern's attacks prompted former Gov. John Lynch, a longtime Democratic leader, to switch his endorsement from Van Ostern to Goodlander.

Republicans may still have an outside shot at this district, where recent polls found businessman Vikram Mansharamani and businesswoman Lily Tang Williams running neck and neck in the GOP primary, with more than half of voters still undecided and former energy commodities trader Bill Hamlen coming in third or fourth. Hamlen has actually led the money race, bringing in $538,000 (three-fourths self-funded), while arguing that he's the most electable choice for the party. By comparison, Mansharamani has raised $480,000 and Williams $349,000 (one-fourth self-funded). Still, Mansharamani sports endorsements from the previous two Republicans who held this seat and the campaign arm of Americans for Prosperity, while Williams is hoping her more "America First" outlook — which earned her a competitive third-place finish here in the 2022 primary — will win over voters.

The GOP also hopes to flip the 1st District, a light blue but slightly more competitive seat held by Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas, who is seeking his fourth term. Republicans have a crowded field of candidates to choose among, with up to five names worth mentioning. Former Executive Councillor Russell Prescott has led in fundraising by pulling in $939,000 (about half self-funded) while casting himself in ads as a pro-Trump candidate with a proven electoral record. Hollie Noveletsky, who runs a steelmaking firm, has raised the next most — $447,000 with a dash of self-funding — and has promised to "finish the border wall with American steel" as part of her America First agenda.

The other three contenders are more varied, but could surprise in a primary race that polls show has a large number of undecided voters. A wildcard may be Manchester Alderman Joe Kelly Levasseur, a pro-Trump Republican known for his combative antics, although he's only raised $139,000. Meanwhile, businessman Walter McFarlane has also self-funded most of the $307,000 he's raised, which he's used to send out mailers pitching him as a more moderate alternative, while business executive Chris Bright has also self-funded much of his $293,000 campaign haul while offering a less contentious conservative message.

Delaware

Race to watch: Governor
Polls close: 8 p.m. Eastern

Delaware has potentially history-making Democratic candidates on the ballot for Senate and House: Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester is favored to add her name to the list of Black women who've served in the Senate — just three so far — and state Sen. Sarah McBride is favored to become the first openly transgender member of Congress by winning the House seat currently held by Blunt Rochester. But neither front-runner has a competitive primary on the docket today.

Instead, it's the party's primary for governor that is the main race to watch in the First State. Two-term Democratic Gov. John Carney is term-limited (and is running to become mayor of Wilmington, the state's largest city). Seeking to succeed Carney are three Democratic contenders: Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer and National Wildlife Federation head Collin O'Mara.

Though Hall-Long has the state party's backing, this race has largely been dominated by headlines regarding her entanglements with state campaign finance law. Late last year, leading members of her campaign team quit following revelations that her pre-2023 filings had failed to include at least $200,000 in payments to her husband, which Hall-Long claimed were made to pay off money that she had loaned to her campaign. Yet those loans were also not included in her campaign finance documents as required by state law. A state investigation found in July that her campaign repeatedly ran afoul of campaign finance rules by not disclosing either the payments or the earlier loans. Additionally, WHYY found that her campaign had accepted more than 30 donations from 2021 to 2023 that were in excess of the state's $1,200 contribution limit, totaling roughly $25,000.

In the face of Hall-Long's troubles, Meyer has positioned himself as potentially the candidate to beat. As of Sept. 3, he'd raised about $1.9 million since the beginning of 2023 ($200,000 self-funded), boosted further by $1 million he already had in the bank before then. Hall-Long, meanwhile, had raised about $795,000 at the same time, bringing her total resources to about $1.5 million when we included money she already had at the end of 2022. For his part, O'Mara has self-funded about three-fourths of the nearly $1 million he's raised for his outside challenge.

Meyer has largely avoided attacking Hall-Long in ads, focusing his spots on raising taxes on the wealthiest households, protecting abortion rights and supporting schools. His allies, however, have done much of the dirty work going after Hall-Long. Citizens for a New Delaware Way has carried out a roughly $1 million campaign of ads and mailers hitting Hall-Long for her campaign finance scandal. Meanwhile, Hall-Long has talked up her track record fighting for rights such as abortion access and promoting her backing from Carney and the state Democratic Party. And her allies, including the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association, have also invested hundreds of thousands on her behalf. Additionally, O'Mara has attracted an endorsement from the Working Families Party while arguing that he's the best progressive choice on the primary ballot.

Despite Hall-Long's troubles, though, Meyer is not a sure thing to defeat her. Two polls in the first half of August did find Meyer ahead of Hall-Long, a shift from some earlier surveys that put Hall-Long in the lead. Still, the margins were not large: Concord Public Opinion Partners found Meyer up 30 percent to 23 percent, while a Slingshot Strategies poll conducted by Citizens for a New Delaware Way only found him ahead 27 percent to 23 percent. Meyer has a more progressive reputation — during his 2020 reelection campaign as county executive, he had to fight off a more conservative primary opponent — so we'll be watching to see if Hall-Long's institutional and party-based support wins the day.