NH ELECTION 2026
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The NH 2026 primary is scheduled for 8 September 2026.
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from the Peterborough Dems Executive Committee Regarding the NH Primary
The Democratic Party is, and always has been, a big tent. Unlike the MAGA Republican Party, where dissent is punished, loyalty tests are the price of admission, and disagreement with the leader ends careers, our party has room for progressives, moderates, organizers, and skeptics alike. We debate. We argue. We hold primaries that mean something. That is not a weakness of our party; it is the very essence of democracy, and we are proud of it.
This September, New Hampshire Democrats will choose their nominees for the United States Senate and the Second Congressional District. Karishma Manzur and Paige Beauchemin have every right, indeed, a responsibility, to press their disagreements with Chris Pappas and Maggie Goodlander. The Laken Riley Act, campaign finance and AIPAC contributions, the war in Gaza, health care, and the direction of our party are serious questions that deserve vigorous public debate. Voters are well served when candidates make those cases forcefully and honestly.
But there is a line between debating a record and defaming a person, and in recent weeks that line has been crossed. Calling fellow Democrats "corrupt politicians," declaring them "bought and paid for," branding a colleague a "warmonger" or "complicit" in atrocities, telling supporters to phone a sitting congresswoman and "tell her to pound sand." These are not policy arguments, they are character attacks. They assert, without evidence, that our representatives act from hidden and dishonorable motives. And notably, the verifiable facts beneath these attacks such as votes cast, pledges signed, and contributions received could stand on their own in honest debate. The insults add nothing but venom, and some of the numbers attached to them have been inflated well beyond what the public record supports.
This style of politics is unhelpful, uncalled for, and divisive. It is also self-defeating. Every Democrat in this race says they are running to defend democratic norms against a president and a movement that
degrade them daily. But democratic norms are not defended by importing MAGA's tactics into our own primary:
the politics of the epithet, the conspir-
acy theory of the purchased politician, the insistence that anyone who
disagrees is not merely wrong but corrupt. These tactics erode the very norms these candidates claim to be running to restore. When we teach
Democratic voters to see their own party's public servants as villains, we do Republicans' work for them and we will need every one of those voters, on every side of these primaries, standing together in November.
Most troubling of all, this contempt has now hardened into something no Democrat should countenance: at a candidate meeting to which she was invited, sponsored by the Peterborough Democrats in June, Karishma Manzur was asked directly whether she would support Chris Pappas should he win the Senate primary and she flatly said no. Paige Beauchemin, asked the same question publicly, refused to say yes in supporting Maggie Goodlander. Think about what that means. Candidates asking Democrats for their votes will not promise to respect those same voters' verdict if it goes against them. The primary is the voters' decision, not the candidate's. Every Democrat on the September ballot should be able to make a simple pledge: I will support the winner of this primary, whoever it is, because the alternative, handing this Senate seat or this House seat to a party that answers to Donald Trump, is unthinkable. We call on all four candidates to make that pledge now.
So we ask all the candidates, challengers and incumbents alike, to keep making their arguments, and to make them about the record. Debate
the votes. Debate the money. Debate the policy. Leave the character assassination to the other party; it is
their brand, not ours.
The Peterborough Democrats will proudly support the winners of these primaries. Until then, we ask every candidate to conduct this contest in a way that leaves us stronger for having had it.