Parties spar as potential 2024 presidential hopefuls return to NH

Aug. 15—CONCORD — Political party and campaign leaders sparred as potential 2024 presidential candidates make their first New Hampshire primary exploratory visits since the FBI raid on former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.

The first independent poll of New Hampshire Republican primary voters since that Aug. 8 incident found Trump was still popular with 73% favorable, compared to 19% unfavorable, according to the survey.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton returns to the first-in-the-nation primary state Tuesday to play a round of golf in the New Hampshire Republican State Committee's golf tournament at the Wentworth By The Sea Country Club in Rye. He will also be the event's luncheon speaker.

On Wednesday, former Vice President Mike Pence is back with a campaign-style schedule full of events that starts with the Politics and Eggs forum at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Manchester and ends with a speech to the Tri-County GOP at Bretton Woods.

Pence will also make appearances at events for GOP state Senate candidates Carrie Gendreau of Littleton and Timothy Lang of Sanbornton. The pair are running for separate, vacant seats left by Republicans Erin Hennissey, who has become deputy secretary of state, and Bob Giuda of Warren, who is retiring.

Senate Democratic Leader Donna Soucy and Democratic National Committee Deputy Director Roger Lau hosted a conference call with reporters Monday, attacking Pence and Cotton over abortion rights.

New Hampshire Democrats believe the ban on late-term abortions Gov. Chris Sununu signed could help Democrats mitigate GOP gains in the midterms.

Cotton backed overturning Roe v. Wade

Prior to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, Cotton said it should be left to states to decide limits on abortion.

"I think those decisions were wrongly decided, as a constitutional matter. I think these are decisions that the American people ought to make through their elected representatives," Cotton told Meet the Press in 2019.

Soucy said Cotton is out of the mainstream in New Hampshire that she called the "most pro-choice swing state" in the country.

"The NH GOP is endorsing and embracing national Republicans' all-out war on reproductive freedom. Cotton is wildly out of touch with Granite Staters," Soucy said.

Lau said Cotton was "all in on banning abortion" and backed the trigger law to ban abortion in his home state.

"This is a brand of extremism that they have committed themselves to," Lau said of Cotton and Pence.

Caroline Tabler, a special advisor to Cotton's campaign, said Democrats are deliberately misrepresenting Cotton's views.

"New Hampshire Democrats are as confused as Joe Biden — they're lying to distract from the Democrats' 8.5% inflation, record gas prices, and a historic border crisis," Tabler said.

The campaign insists Cotton has never taken a position on the Arizona law and as recently as last May supported rape and incest exceptions to any ban on abortion.

"Those exceptions are a sound decision for people who have very strong but differing opinions on these questions," Cotton said.

"I respect, and I know, many people who don't agree with that, many people who believe that no matter how life is formed it's a precious life. I believe that those are sound, reasonable accommodations for diverse opinions for an issue that sparks a lot of intense feelings."

Lau said Pence sought abortion restrictions every year he served as governor of Indiana and supported efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and for Trump to put anti-abortion judges on the nation's highest court.

"The people of New Hampshire can't afford the Republican extremist agenda," Lau said.

Officials with the Great America Committee, the political PAC Pence formed to support him in 2017, did not respond to a request for comment.

klandrigan@unionleader.com