Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan claims former Army Gen. Don Bolduc, her Republican challenger in battleground New Hampshire’s crucial Senate race, has been “casting doubt” on the integrity of the election.
After the senator charged that Bolduc “doesn’t think he has to accept election results,” Fox News asked if she’s concerned Bolduc may not concede if he loses by a razor-thin margin.
“He has been working to cast doubt on today’s election, which is an insult to the people of New Hampshire,” Hassan answered, after voting in her hometown of Newfields on Tuesday morning.
“We run some of the best elections in the country,” the senator said. “That Don Bolduc is casting doubt on today’s election integrity is really disturbing. But we’re going to keep standing up for the people of New Hampshire and standing up for democracy.”
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Hassan has been targeted by Republicans for close to two years, as the former governor seeks a second six-year term in the Senate, and her race with Bolduc is among a handful across the nation that will likely determine if the GOP wins back the chamber’s majority in the midterm elections.
The senator, her campaign, and allied groups have blasted the GOP nominee for weeks after he warned in an interview on a conservative radio program that “all of a sudden a late night or some sort of dump with ballots or some sort of dump that comes from machines and the next thing you know, you wake up in the morning and the election has changed. That is still real”
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Bolduc, voting a couple of hours after Hassan in the neighboring town of Stratham, New Hampshire, was asked by FOX Business’ Hillary Vaughn about Hassan’s comments and whether he’d concede if he narrowly lost to Hassan.
“Well, yes, of course. If she has such faith in the election process, and why is she doubting it so much? Why is she even worried about it? This is just another example of her being out of touch,” Bolduc answered. “She’s worried about something that hasn’t even happened yet. I’m worried about stuff that’s already happened and that’s really affected the livelihoods and future of our children”
Bolduc, who served ten tours of duty in the war in Afghanistan, is making his second straight bid for the Senate in New Hampshire. He’s run a populist-style campaign this cycle, emphasizing his MAGA-Republican and outsider credentials in a crowded and combustible GOP primary. In mid-September, Bolduc narrowly edged more mainstream conservative Chuck Morse, the state Senate president who was backed by popular GOP Gov. Chris Sununu, to win the nomination.
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And over the past eight weeks Bolduc has slowly but steadily eaten into Hassan’s once upper-single digit lead in public opinion polling. The final surveys in the race suggested it was a margin of error contest.
Bolduc, who said during the primary campaign that he supported former President Donald Trump’s repeated unproven claims that his 2020 election loss to Biden was due to “massive voter fraud,” quickly reversed course after his nomination victory. In a Fox News interview days later, Bolduc said that after speaking with Granite Staters, he had “come to the conclusion” that the 2020 presidential election “was not stolen.”
Trump, who stayed neutral in the Republican primary in New Hampshire, last week endorsed Bolduc but dinged him over reversing his views on the 2020 election.
“General Don Bolduc has run a great campaign to be the U.S. Senator from the beautiful State of New Hampshire. He was a strong and proud ‘Election Denier,’ a big reason that he won the Nomination, but he then disavowed,” Trump wrote on social media.
“He has since come back, at least on busing, but that is only a small part of N.H. Election Fraud. Nevertheless, Don Bolduc has asked for my Endorsement, and he’s got it, Complete & Total,” the former president added.
Hassan quickly used the Trump endorsement as further ammunition against Bolduc.