Former Sen. Kelly Ayotte won the New Hampshire governor’s race, NBC News projects, defeating Democrat Joyce Craig to keep the seat in Republican hands.
Ayotte will replace Republican Gov. Chris Sunu, who declined to seek a fifth two-year term.
She was New Hampshire’s first female attorney general before serving a term in the Senate. Ayotte lost his re-election bid in 2016 to current Sen. Democrat Maggie Hassan by only about a thousand votes.
“New Hampshire is one election away from becoming Massachusetts,” Ayotte said, warning that the battleground state would shift too far to the left during the campaign.
Despite withdrawing her endorsement of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race following the release of the Access Hollywood tape, Ayotte supported his bid for the White House this year, though she also tried to keep him under wraps. Sununu, the GOP governor, is a staunch anti-Trump critic.
In 2017, it was Craig the first woman Elected mayor of Manchester, held this position for six years. He entered politics by serving on the School Committee Board in Manchester before serving six years as head of residence.
Craig tried to frame Ayotte as “extreme,” and in the Granite State, Roe v. campaigned to codify Wade’s defense.
Ayotte said she supports New Hampshire’s abortion law, which allows women to have abortions in the last trimester “for any reason up to six months into pregnancy” and for medical emergencies or fatal fetal abnormalities.
Craig and Ayotte won their respective parties’ primaries in September, giving them just eight weeks to campaign in the general election period.
Independents make up a large portion of New Hampshire’s electorate by approx 37% of voters it was registered as “undeclared” earlier this year.