New Hampshire Senate showdown: Bolduc remains GOP front-runner in new poll with two weeks until primary

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DURHAM, N.H. – With two weeks to go until primary day in New Hampshire, a new public opinion survey indicates that retired Army Gen. Don Bolduc remains the front-runner in the Republican Senate nomination race in the key general election battleground state.

The winner of the Sept. 13 contest, which is the last of the competitive and high-profile Republican Senate primaries this election cycle, will face off in November’s midterms with former governor and first-term Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan – and the GOP views her as vulnerable. The contest is one of handful across the nation that could determine if Republicans win back the Senate majority.

Bolduc stands at 43% support among likely Republican primary voters questioned in a Granite State Poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center that was released on Tuesday, with small business owner and New Hampshire state Senate President Chuck Morse at 22%.

According to the survey, which was conducted Aug. 25-29, cryptocurrency entrepreneur Bruce Fenton and businessman, economist and author Vikram Mansharamani are at 5% support, with former Londonderry, New Hampshire, town manager Kevin Smith at 3%. One in five surveyed remained unsure or undecided in the Senate primary showdown.

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Retired Army Gen. Don Bolduc, who's making a second straight run for the GOP Senate nomination, speaks with voters at a campaign event in Epping, New Hampshire, on July 16, 2022. (Don Bolduc Senate campaign)

The new poll is the second – following a recent one from the St. Anselm College Survey Center – to indicate Bolduc, who’s making a second straight bid for the Senate, with a double-digit lead over Morse, with everyone else in single digits.

Bolduc, who launched his current campaign just days after the 2020 election and has been running for the Senate most of the past three years, appears to be boosted by name identification in a primary battle where none of the other major candidates are well known outside the narrow New Hampshire political activist class.

"Name recognition builds on itself. There becomes a sense of inevitability if your name is the one that most people recognize, and they equate you with the nomination," UNH Survey Center director Andrew Smith told Fox News. 

"It’s up to the other candidates to show and tell who they are in order to combat what Bolduc has been able to do over the past three years and so far none of the other candidates have been able to break through," Smith noted.

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After keeping his distance and failing to land then-President Donald Trump’s endorsement in the 2020 cycle during his unsuccessful bid for the nomination, Bolduc has become a strong supporter of Trump’s unproven claims that the 2020 presidential election was "rigged" and "stolen." Bolduc, who served 10 tours of duty in the war in Afghanistan, was part of a group of retired generals who signed a letter questioning the legitimacy of the election due to what they charged was "a tremendous amount of fraud."

State Senate President Chuck Morse marches in this year's July Fourth parade in Amherst, New Hampshire. (Fox News )

While Trump has remained neutral in the primary battle, Bolduc on Monday landed the backing of nationally syndicated conservative talk radio host John Fredericks, who chaired Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns in Virginia. And former Trump White House chief strategist and former media executive Steve Bannon has heavily promoted Bolduc on his program. But longtime New Hampshire resident and veteran Trump political adviser Corey Lewandowski, who managed Trump’s 2016 presidential primary campaign, has heavily criticized Bolduc.

The poll indicates that among those who remain undecided, 41% said a Trump endorsement would make them more likely to back that candidate. But 36% said they’d be less likely to support a candidate endorsed by Trump.

While Bolduc has given New Hampshire conservatives plenty of red meat, there are concerns from some GOP political operatives that a primary victory by the retired general will allow Hassan to win re-election.

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One of those critics is Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who has also not endorsed anyone in his party’s Senate primary

"He’s not a serious candidate, he’s really not, and if he were the GOP nominee, I have no doubt we would have a much harder time," Sununu said of Bolduc during a recent interview on a statewide morning radio talk program. "He’s kind of a conspiracy theorist-type candidate."

Bolduc claimed last year that Sununu was a "communist Chinese sympathizer" and that the Sununu family’s business "supports terrorism." While Bolduc has walked back those attacks on the popular governor, he continues to criticize Sununu’s policies during the coronavirus pandemic as "executive overreach." 

Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan at the annual Independence Day parade in Amherst, New Hampshire. (Fox News)

The poll indicates that only 21% said a Sununu endorsement would make them more likely to support that candidate, with slightly over half questioned saying it wouldn’t have an impact on their vote in the primary.

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The GOP Senate primary was basically frozen for a year, as Sununu was heavily recruited by national Republicans hoping to land an A-lister to take on Hassan. 

But the governor rocked the political world last November by announcing that he would run for re-election rather than launch a Senate campaign.