Smackdown

New Hampshire's other smackdown

Democrat Maggie Hassan is ditching her job as governor to take on GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte. The outcome could decide which party controls the Senate.

By Burgess Everett

Maggie Hassan didn’t have to do this.

The Democratic governor probably could have skated to reelection and kept the state’s political order intact. Instead, she decided to ditch her post to take on GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte in one of the most bruising and expensive Senate races this year.

The move by Hassan, perhaps the Democratic Party’s best Senate recruit of 2016, has produced the rare spectacle of a popular sitting governor taking on a well-liked incumbent senator. The clash might decide which party controls the Senate next year, but it will definitely deprive the Democratic or Republican party of one of its top female officeholders after Nov. 8.

In a 30-minute interview last week in her governor’s suite here, her first with a national outlet since she announced her campaign in October, the former business attorney and state legislator broke with her party by backing more scrutiny of Middle Eastern refugees in her state and cast Ayotte as a tool of the right wing. But Hassan also hewed relentlessly to talking points and political bromides about a Washington that’s “rigged” against the people.

“What this race will be about is whether we’re going to continue to have a senator who just protects special interests,” Hassan said. “Or whether we’re going to have a senator, me, who will stand up for the people of New Hampshire.”

She repeated some variation of that 10 times. The strategy, of course, denies her opponents fodder for attacks. But it opens Hassan to criticism that she’s running a generic campaign and is looking to ride Hillary Clinton’s coattails to Capitol Hill. Ayotte argues that the state’s doing just fine with her in the Senate and that Hassan hasn’t made an affirmative case for her candidacy.

“Since she came out of this race, it’s all been negative about me. What’s her compelling reason for running?” Ayotte said in a recent interview outside the Senate chamber. “She has an important job right now. And that job is one that deserves the full focus for the state of New Hampshire.”

Each candidate raised $2 million in the last quarter of 2015 and people following the campaign expect the race will ratchet up after the February presidential primary. Limited polling so far shows Ayotte with a slight edge. Already, $2 million in outside money has dropped in the state, more than during the entirety of Ayotte's first campaign in 2010, and millions more is predicted by party strategists.

Hassan’s paradox – the bold decision to jump in, and now the play-it-safe campaign — may yet work out. The race will test whether Ayotte's efforts to position herself as a voice of independence in the "Live Free or Die" state can withstand a Democrat-friendly electorate and attacks that she's beholden to the National Rifle Association and the Koch brothers.

And Hassan isn't just any Democrat: Her steady approval ratings, boosted by the state's low unemployment rate, got her reelected in 2014, when Democratic gubernatorial candidates lost in far bluer states.

But Hassan, now in her second two-year term as governor, has a long record for her foes to pick over. And it starts with her response to a full-blown opioid crisis.

She and her state have been dogged by the overdose epidemic, which according to official estimates takes the life of at least one person a day in the state. The governor called a special session of the legislature in November to address it, but the "drug czar" she appointed recently resigned after just a year amid complaints he was absent on the job.

For months Hassan wasn't "really heavily engaged at all" in tackling the problem, said Ayotte, who's pressed for legislation in Congress to boost funding for heroin addiction treatment. In turn, Hassan says she could use more resources from Washington.

On the day her office invited POLITICO for the interview, Hassan held a signing ceremony for two bills designed to combat the opioid epidemic. She said she plans to appoint a new drug czar soon, but Hassan is also looking toward broader solutions like expanding drug courts and treatment services.

The way to do that, Hassan argues, is to keep the state’s Medicaid expansion intact beyond the end of this year, when it's set to lapse. It's a major point of contention in the state legislature this year and a soft spot for Ayotte. The Republican senator just voted to repeal the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, while allowing for a two-year transition period.

“I hope very much that Senator Ayotte will stop politicizing this and I hope she will not try to interfere with the reauthorization of Medicaid expansion at the state level,” Hassan said. “I’m disappointed that Sen. Ayotte has voted to repeal it repeatedly.”

Defining Ayotte

Even as both pitch themselves as pragmatic centrists, Hassan and Ayotte exhibit contrasting temperaments and styles. Hassan, 57, is deliberate, rote and relaxed when she speaks; Ayotte, at 47 the second-youngest female senator, has a more intense presence. The Republican grew visibly agitated when confronted with the accusation from Democrats that she’s reshaping her profile for an election year: “I’m not rewriting my record. My record speaks for myself. It’s so absurd.”

The race to characterize Ayotte’s five years in the Senate could very well decide who wins. Ayotte, a former state attorney general who John McCain says is the “most valuable member” of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, argues she has a similar maverick streak. She’s bucked the party line by endorsing the president’s Clean Power Plan, backing paid sick leave and giving same-sex couples full access to government benefits.

While Ayotte has historically aligned with Americans for Prosperity, she has sharply broken with the Koch-backed outfit over the past six months over clean power regulations and reviving the Export-Import Bank. That’s good for her brand as a Republican rooted in the party’s center, but bad for her hopes of air cover from the conservative powerhouse. She may even end up with a primary challenge from the right. Former state House Speaker Bill O'Brien, whom Ayotte opposed in a recent leadership race, is searching for a candidate to take on Ayotte over her support for the nomination of Attorney General Loretta Lynch and some of President Barack Obama's environmental priorities.

“It’s ironic that she is being hit on all sides for her votes, but that’s to be expected when you abandon principle and try to play politics,” said Levi Russell, a spokesman for AFP, which spent money hitting Hassan just last year.

Meanwhile, Democrats have compiled a dossier on Ayotte’s votes on abortion, guns, the economy and the environment — votes that they say prove she’s aligned with the most extreme elements of the GOP. Among the ammunition: her votes to defund Planned Parenthood, reject new gun background checks and repeal Obamacare.

“She has voted with the Koch brothers nearly 90 percent of the time. She has voted to cut Pell Grants … to keep students from refinancing their student loans … to defund Planned Parenthood multiple times … to privatize or to voucherize Medicare and against protecting Social Security,” Hassan said, ticking off her campaign bullet points. “You can go down the list.”

As for Medicaid, Ayotte is staying out of the fight over expansion that’s playing out in the statehouse, trying to square her votes to repeal Obamacare with her stated hopes that government doesn’t “pull the rug out” from under low-income people who’ve received health insurance.

“People think she’s Susan Collins,” referring to the moderate Republican senator from Maine, “but her voting record’s closer to Ted Cruz,” said one Democratic lawmaker granted anonymity to discuss party strategy.

Seeking to minimize the political payoff for Hassan and potential fallout for Ayotte, the state’s legislative leaders are maneuvering to take ownership of the Medicaid issue, which Democrats here view as meddling in Hassan’s work as governor. In interviews, GOP leaders said they don’t need Ayotte’s help on the matter and that Hassan is playing a minimal role in negotiations that could become a defining element of the race.

“I don’t believe the governor’s involved,” said Republican state Senate President Chuck Morse.

Hassan's choice 

So why is Hassan doing this? In many states, being governor is seen as a step up from senator, running the show as a chief executive as opposed to being one in an (albeit exclusive) body of 100. GOP Sen. David Vitter just lost a run for Louisiana's governorship; he'd rather retire at the end of the year than seek another term as senator.

But New Hampshire's governorship is notoriously weak, limited to two-year terms with many of its decisions subject to veto by a five-member— in Hassan's case, Republican-controlled — executive council. Hassan also has to wrestle with a majority-GOP legislature.

A powerful title, in other words, without much actual power. A Senate seat, with its six-year term, would give Hassan some breathing room and take her out of a relentless cycle of campaigning in this perennial battleground — though here, too, she sticks closely to the script about her motivations.

“I'm running for Senate because right now Washington caters to special corporate interests who are really rigging the system, really rigging the system," Hassan said.

At the same time, the Republican checks on Hassan's power guarantee that just about everything she does has to be bipartisan to have any chance of succeeding. That bolsters her argument that she's shown she can work with the other party.

“She works in a bipartisan way, but listen, as governor of New Hampshire you have to do that,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), a former governor herself. With a Hassan win, New Hampshire would be the first state with a Senate delegation made up of two female former governors.

Hassan’s game plan for knocking off Ayotte came into focus as she refused to touch any question that veered toward even remotely treacherous territory, such as Obama’s executive actions or Bernie Sanders’ rise in New Hampshire despite Hassan’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Hassan merely wants to be the head-down governor that New Hampshire voters have gotten to know, direct the focus to the incumbent’s most controversial votes, and hope that voters reward her with a Senate seat.

Asked three different ways about her controversial veto last year of the state budget over business taxes, a move that had critics calling her "Governor Gridlock," Hassan stuck painstakingly to her script.

“What’s really important to me is that we have fiscally responsible balanced budgets,” she said.

As if on cue, she repeated nearly the exact same answer to two follow-up questions.