In mid-July, The Wall Street Journal highlighted a polling report from Blue Rose Research, a Democratic firm, that found President Joe Biden not only losing every battleground state, but also struggling in states he won with relative ease four years ago. The list included New Hampshire, which the Democrat won by more than seven percentage points in 2020.
A great deal has changed since mid-July. The Boston Globe reported over the holiday weekend:
Tom Mountain, who had served as one of several vice chairs for the former president’s effort in Massachusetts, wrote in an email to Trump volunteers in the state that “the campaign has determined that New Hampshire is no longer a battleground state,” and advised supporters to instead direct their attention to Pennsylvania. … In the email, Mountain, a former official with the Massachusetts GOP, said Trump was “sure to lose by an even higher margin” in New Hampshire than in 2016 and 2020, citing “campaign data/research.”
The same message added that, according to Mountain, resources would be diverted away from the Granite State, and the Republican campaign would not send the nominee or his top surrogates to the state.
The reporting was based on an email obtained by the Globe, but it has not been independently verified by MNSBC or NBC News.
Nevertheless, the report did not go unnoticed. In fact, the Trump campaign and its allies downplayed Mountain’s role and said he will “no longer have any involvement going forward.” Brian Hughes, senior advisor to the Trump campaign, added that the Republican operation continues to believe that New Hampshire is “in play.”
For his part, the former president himself published an item to his social media account insisting that Vice President Kamala Harris is seeing “problems” in New Hampshire, which is something he appears to have made up in order to respond to the Globe’s reporting. Trump went on to argue in his missive that Harris “never showed up” for New Hampshire’s presidential primary, which was an odd thing to say given that (a) Harris wasn’t running for president at the time of the primary, and (b) the state wasn’t home to a competitive primary anyway. Regardless, the most recent polls appeared favorable for the Democratic nominee in the state, and neither campaign has devoted significant resources to New Hampshire in recent weeks. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
