When Kelly Ayotte jumped into the New Hampshire governor’s race last year, she seemed to have clear advantages.
Ms. Ayotte, a Republican, served as a United States senator from 2011 to 2017 and had much better name recognition than in the state than Joyce Craig, the former mayor of Manchester who became her Democratic opponent. Ms. Ayotte had also been the state’s attorney general, and was an adept fund-raiser. The popularity of the outgoing Republican governor, Chris Sununu, would also help a lot, the thinking went.
So far, though, none of that has been enough to give Ms. Ayotte a decisive edge in the race. Polls have shown the candidates locked in a tight race, with no clear leader. In interviews, some analysts and voters said that the explanation may lie in Ms. Ayotte’s record on abortion, and in aggressive advertising by Democrats suggesting that Ms. Ayotte might seek to restrict access in New Hampshire. Strong support in the state for Vice President Kamala Harris could be another factor.
Ms. Ayotte voted as a senator to defund Planned Parenthood and helped guide Neil Gorsuch, the conservative Supreme Court justice, through his confirmation process in 2017. She has also expressed support for the court’s decision in 2022 to eliminate the constitutional right to abortion — in which Justice Gorsuch sided with the majority — and turn the issue over to the states.
New Hampshire bans abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy, with a few exceptions. Ms. Ayotte has said she would not entertain changes to the law, but some voters remain worried.
“She has said the law won’t change, but there is no guarantee,” said Marie Mulroy, 77, an independent voter in Manchester who has not yet decided between Ms. Ayotte and Ms. Craig. “I think there is distrust among women.”
Ms. Mulroy pointed to another reason that independent women like her might have qualms about Ms. Ayotte: She is supporting former President Donald J. Trump in the presidential race, albeit quietly, eight years after she announced that she could not countenance doing so.
In October 2016, when she was seeking re-election to the Senate, Ms. Ayotte pledged to write in Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s running mate at the time, for president after the leak of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape that captured Mr. Trump boasting about grabbing women’s genitals.
“I’m a mom and an American first, and I cannot and will not support a candidate for president who brags about degrading and assaulting women,” Ms. Ayotte said at the time. A month later, she lost her Senate re-election bid by 1,000 votes to Maggie Hassan, a Democrat who has held the seat since.
Voters in New Hampshire have reliably favored Democrats in recent presidential elections, while choosing both Republicans and Democrats for governor. But Mr. Trump appeared to be gaining traction in the state as support for President Biden plummeted after his disastrous debate performance in June.
That moment passed when Mr. Biden was replaced by Ms. Harris. She leads Mr. Trump by an average of six points in the state, according to 538’s polling average. And that is a problem for Ms. Ayotte, said Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the state Republican Party who describes himself as a “Never Trump” Republican.
“Trump isn’t spending money in New Hampshire,” Mr. Cullen said, adding that “there’s no big turnout effort for Republicans and there’s no evidence that there are a lot of ticket splitters” who would back both Ms. Harris and Ms. Ayotte.
Karen Hicks, a veteran Democratic strategist in the state, said the Harris campaign has invested in coordinating get-out-the-vote efforts with down-ballot candidates in New Hampshire, a difference that she called “a big advantage” for Ms. Craig.
Ms. Craig has also tapped a powerful roster of New England women for campaign support. In a cramped field office in Manchester on Tuesday, she rallied her campaign workers with help from both New Hampshire senators, Ms. Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen; Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts; and Gina Raimondo, the former Rhode Island governor who now serves as U.S. secretary of commerce.
Ms. Craig, a fourth-generation Manchester resident who used to work in advertising, has been forced to defend her record as mayor of the city, which is New Hampshire’s largest, with 115,000 residents. Ms. Ayotte has accused her of failing to address issues with “runaway drugs” and homelessness there.
In downtown Manchester on Tuesday, Travis Janvrin, 32, a registered Democrat who supports Ms. Harris for president, said he will vote for Ms. Ayotte for governor because Ms. Craig did little, in his view, to help Manchester’s poor and homeless residents.
Stanley Drewniak, 67, a registered Republican, is also supporting Ms. Ayotte, because her positions are more in line with his own conservative views.
Mr. Drewniak said he did not believe that the race is as close as polls suggest; he suspects that they are underestimating support for Ms. Ayotte. “A lot of people I know who are conservative are less likely to talk about it,” he said.
Elsewhere in the city, other residents said they backed Ms. Craig because she had built relationships that went beyond politics. “She’s one of the few mayors who wanted to get to know our community,” said Sandra Almonte, a business owner who hosted a campaign event with Latino voters at her restaurant on Tuesday.
Ms. Ayotte’s private sector work since she lost her Senate seat has also drawn attacks from Democrats. Ms. Craig has charged her with profiting from the state’s housing crisis while serving on the board of Blackstone Group, a global investment firm and real estate asset manager, and of supporting the phaseout of the state’s interest and dividends tax because it benefited her financially.
Ms. Ayotte defended her résumé at a debate last week, arguing that her experience in the private sector would help her run the state more effectively.
She has criticized Ms. Craig for opposing the tax phaseout, and has warned that if elected, Ms. Craig would make New Hampshire more like Massachusetts, with “higher taxes and less freedom.”
The most pressing task the new governor will face, according to Ms. Hicks, the strategist, is balancing the state budget at a time when pandemic-era federal funding is going away and the state has a deficit that could reach $1 billion.
“It’s not sexy,” she said, “but that’s the job they have to do.”
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