New Hampshire GOP Shrugs Off Bolduc, Others Support For Pappas In U.S. Senate Race

By Michael Graham, NH Journal

Granite State political professionals say they would be more impressed by Don Bolduc’s Republican rebellion against U.S. Senate nominee John Sununu if it involved actual Republicans.

“There’s a time-honored political practice of scooping up endorsements from the opposing party’s has-beens, never-weres, and forgotten figures, all seeking a little renewed relevance. Don Bolduc and the others are simply the latest examples,” said state Republican National Committeeman Bill O’Brien.

O’Brien’s comments came in response to the Pappas campaign’s release of its “Country Before Party Steering Committee of Republicans and Independents”, featuring Bolduc, the 2022 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.

“Chris Pappas’s unwavering dedication to our veterans and his efforts to foster bipartisan cooperation set him apart as a leader who will prioritize the needs of all constituents,” Bolduc said in a statement.

Also featured are former Republican state Sen. Rick Russman and GOP congressional candidate Jim Steiner. The news was first reported by the Union Leader, which featured the story atop its website.

Like O’Brien, veteran GOP consultant Michael Dennehy was less than impressed.

“This may be the most overhyped non-story of the entire election cycle. Rick Russman and Jim Steiner have been reliably supporting Democrats for 20 years, so apparently, we’re now treating old news like breaking news.”

They may have a point.

Department of Natural and Cultural Resources Commissioner Sarah Stewart, who was driven out of the Ayotte administration due to her mismanagement of the office, is featured on the list. Her husband, Chris Stewart, is also listed as a cheerleader for the Cinde Warmington campaign.

In fact, public records show few of the 58 people on the steering committee are Republicans, and only a handful have recently voted in a GOP primary. At least 20 of them pulled Democratic ballots in the September primary.

In 2024, when Russman was part of “Republicans for Joyce Craig,” NHJournal reported that the alleged “lifetime Republican” publicly supported Democrats U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in 2020, Chris Pappas in 2018, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Barack Obama in 2012. In fact, Russman’s been a Republican supporting Democrats for so long, he wrote Shaheen a $1,000 check when she ran against John Sununu in 2002.

The same goes for Steiner, who served on Vice President Kamala Harris’ “Republicans” committee two years ago. Steiner finished third in the 2008 GOP NH-02 primary and has since become a frequent fan of Democrats running for office in New Hampshire.

Sununu shrugged off the news Thursday.

“Nothing can cover up the fact that Chris Pappas voted with Nancy Pelosi 222 out of 223 times while she was speaker of the House and lurched even farther to the left during his primary,” said Sununu spokesman Mike Schrimpf. “California Chris is even planning to campaign with liberal California Gov. Gavin Newsom this weekend. California already has two senators; it doesn’t need a third from New Hampshire.”

Pappas said he was “grateful to have earned the support of Granite Staters across party and ideological lines who are ready to build a freer, fairer future for our state.”

Some GOP insiders said that, whatever people think of Bolduc, it’s one more sign Pappas appears to have momentum in the final weeks of the campaign.

“It’s not good,” one Republican told NHJournal on background. “Look at the governor’s race. Which candidate can’t get an endorsement from her party’s last nominee? It’s not the one who’s winning.”

That’s a reference to Warmington, who has not been endorsed by the 2024 Democratic nominee for governor, Joyce Craig.

Political observers have also pointed to Bolduc’s bizarre attacks on another Sununu, John’s brother Chris.

After his failed attempt to win the 2020 GOP U.S. Senate nomination, Bolduc told radio host Jack Heath that Chris Sununu was a “Chinese Communist sympathizer” whose family business “supports terrorism,” and claimed he drove the governor from the U.S. Senate race.

In 2022, Sununu urged his fellow Republicans not to nominate Bolduc. “I don’t take him seriously as a candidate. I don’t think most people do.”

Now that Bolduc is backing Pappas, O’Brien says enough is enough.

“Having campaigned around Don Bolduc over the years, I often listened to him and wondered whether it was ignorance or the instincts of a closet Democrat that shaped his understanding of public issues. Now, with his endorsement of Chris Pappas, I have my answer: it was both.”

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.