WASHINGTON — New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan won re-election Tuesday, NBC News projects, defeating Republican Don Bolduc and keeping a critical seat in Democratic hands.
While the race attracted less attention than some others, Hassan won her Senate seat six years ago in one of the closest races in the country, and Democrats had grown increasingly nervous in recent weeks as Bolduc seemed to gain strength in polls.
Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general backed by former President Donald Trump in the waning days of the campaign, has advanced false conspiracy theories about Covid-19 vaccines and the 2020 presidential election. After winning the nomination, however, he waffled on 2020, saying the election had not been stolen.
He often feuded with fellow Republicans, including his state’s popular Gov. Chris Sununu, whom he called a “Chinese Communist sympathizer.” Sununu backed a different candidate in the GOP primary, calling Bolduc a “conspiracy-theory extremist.”
Several national Republican groups abandoned Bolduc, assuming he couldn’t win — it didn’t help that he criticized Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — but a late surge in polling led some national groups to step in and help.
Hassan, a former governor seeking her second term in the Senate, vastly outraised Bolduc, an inexperienced candidate and self-described “political outsider.” As of Oct. 19, he had spent just over $900,000, while Hassan spent more than $31 million, according to campaign finance reports.
Democrats actually helped the underfunded candidate win the GOP nomination when they spent more than $3 million criticizing his main opponent as a yes-man for McConnell, who is disliked by many Trump allies. Democrats meddled in the primary because they thought Bolduc would be easier to defeat in the general election.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
