WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Voters in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware will pick candidates for the U.S. Congress and other offices on Tuesday in primaries partly defined by former President Donald Trump’s lasting influence.
Following are three key races:
NEW HAMPSHIRE U.S. SENATE, REPUBLICAN PRIMARY
Don Bolduc, a retired U.S. Army general, is the front-runner for the Republican nomination to take on Democratic U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan in a November election that could decide which party controls the Senate. Bolduc has attracted attention for calling New Hampshire’s Republican Governor Chris Sununu a “Chinese Communist sympathizer” and for falsely claiming that Trump was the true winner of the 2020 presidential election, echoing Trump’s false claim that Democrat Joe Biden won because of fraud. In polls ahead of Tuesday’s primary, Bolduc has had double-digit leads over Chuck Morse, president of the state Senate.
NEW HAMPSHIRE 1ST CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT, REPUBLICAN PRIMARY
Two former Trump administration officials are the front-runners in the race to take on Democratic U.S. Representative Chris Pappas in New Hampshire. Matt Mowers, a former State Department official under Trump, lost to Pappas in a close election in 2020, and this year is endorsed by U.S. House of Representatives minority leader Kevin McCarthy. Mowers’ main opponent in the primary contest, former Trump White House aide Karoline Leavitt, has backed Trump’s false election fraud claims and has blasted Mowers for publicly acknowledging that Biden won the most votes in the 2020 presidential contest. The two were neck-and-neck in a recent University of New Hampshire poll.
RHODE ISLAND 2ND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT, DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY
The Rhode Island contest is seen by analysts as competitive in November as incumbent Democrat James Langevin is retiring. Allan Fung, a moderate former mayor of Cranston, is running unopposed in the Republican primary. He’s disavowed Trump’s false election fraud claims and says he would have backed a major gun reform passed by Congress in June. On the Democratic side, leading candidates include state Treasurer Seth Magaziner, who has led the field in fundraising, and Sarah Morgenthau, who served in the Commerce Department in the Biden administration.
(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Scott Malone and Jonathan Oatis)
