The Story:
One of the lessons that analysts are drawing from the elections held throughout the United States Tuesday is: endorsement by Donald Trump is not necessarily a winning card for a Republican candidate. Indeed, one could make the case that Trump hurt, rather than helped, his party.
Background:
Some of the Republican candidates who kept the former President at a distance — notably Chris Sununu, the incumbent Governor of New Hampshire who faced re-election this week — did quite well. Sununu won easily. On the other hand, many of the Republican candidates who during the campaign tied themselves most closely to former President Trump — such as Don Bolduc, a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Army who lost his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat from New Hampshire this week, suffered from that tie. Those two instances are especially notable because they arose of out the politics of the same state, making New Hampshire almost a laboratory test for Trump’s influence.
The Thing to Know:
A little more than a week before election day, Donald Trump praised Dan Bolduc as a “strong and proud ‘Election Denier.’” That is: Trump said that Bolduc should be elected because Bolduc believes Trump was cheated of the 2020 election. The voters of New Hampshire (and of many other places) seem to have decided that they have more forward-looking concerns than that, and that they are not invested in a former President’s self regard. It is probably a good sign for the future of the United States that 2022 saw such failures of the Trump card.
