Alexander: Warmington's Record Is Wrong For New Hampshire

By Joe Alexander, NH Journal

New Hampshire has a long tradition of nominating candidates who can build consensus and find common ground. Then there’s Opioid Lobbyist Cinde Warmington.

Let’s start with the obvious: Warmington’s candidacy is insulting. It’s insulting to the families who buried loved ones because of the opioid crisis. It’s insulting to the recovery community that has spent two decades cleaning up a mess she helped create. And it’s insulting to every Granite Stater being asked to hand the Corner Office to someone who spent her career cashing checks from the very industry that hooked their neighbors, their children, and their parents. Don’t take it from me, take it from her own party.

Recovery advocates who confronted her failed 2024 campaign put it plainly: “The truth is that she has directly contributed to and profited from the opioid crisis in New Hampshire for over two decades.” They didn’t mince words about where that money came from, either, calling it what it is, “blood money,” and telling her to “have some respect, have some decency, and end this campaign now.”

Former state Democrat Party Chair Kathy Sullivan noted that “the dangers of opioids were known — that’s why the legislature was acting” while Warmington, at that very same hearing, was calling OxyContin a “miracle drug” with “very few side effects.”

Former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig went further, laying out the whole sordid timeline: the Purdue Pharma lobbying, the “miracle drug” testimony, and then two more decades spent representing doctors and a notorious pill mill pushing opioids into New Hampshire communities, all while those bad actors funded her campaigns.

And perhaps most damning of all, Craig noted what Warmington still hasn’t done: “she hasn’t apologized or shown any remorse for the work that she’s done.” Even Somersworth Democrats have thrown up their hands, noting she already lost a primary once and “there’s no way she will beat Kelly Ayotte in the general election this year.”

That record hasn’t earned so much as an apology. Instead, Warmington’s answer has evolved from silence to spin to, now, “I was duped.” Sure. Duped into calling OxyContin a miracle drug with very few side effects. Duped into representing a pill mill for over a decade. Duped into taking tens of thousands of dollars from opioid profiteers. “Duped” is the most insulting of the excuses she has offered so far. If two decades of putting her own self-interest over Granite Staters can be waved away with one word, what exactly is she offering to run the state?

If her disqualifying record is embarrassing, the campaign built to defend it is somehow worse. Warmington has probably made more money for Big Pharma over her career than she’s managed to raise for her own campaign, which, judging by recent reporting, is not a high bar.

Her campaign sent supporters a fundraising email begging for cash to “keep her ads on the air.” One small problem: she didn’t have any ads on the air. Her only ad buy, a modest sum under $9,000, had already wrapped a week earlier, and nothing was booked to replace it. Unfortunately for Warmington, it tracks with everything else about her campaign: dress up a bad situation and hope nobody notices. When polling showed her down five points, her campaign made sure everyone knew about it, conveniently leaving out that voters viewed her unfavorably by a two-to-one margin. Now that public polling shows Governor Ayotte up eleven points and the opioid lobbyist still struggling to get voters to like her, the campaign has gone quiet. Funny how that works!

When Warmington’s campaign does show signs of life, it’s usually to attack ghosts, relitigating issues Gov. Ayotte has already addressed and delivered results on, rather than defending her own record or laying out a vision of her own. And what vision there is should worry Granite Staters: an income tax, a ban on gas-powered vehicles, calling common-sense, bipartisan public safety reforms “weird,” and support for commuting the sentence of a cop killer.

Compare that to what Governor Ayotte has actually delivered: record funding for schools, increased support for the state’s most vulnerable, a record year for housing production, common-sense public safety measures with bipartisan buy-in, and a steady hand preserving the New Hampshire Advantage that makes this state worth living in.

Opioid Lobbyist Cinde Warmington’s pathetic candidacy is an insult to a state that’s earned better.

State Rep. Joe Alexander (R-Goffstown) serves in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. He wrote this for NHJournal.com.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.