CONCORD — Eighteen years ago, Jeanne Shaheen ended John Sununu’s Senate career in a race shaped by the national Democratic wave of 2008. On Tuesday night, New Hampshire Republicans gave Sununu another opportunity to reclaim the seat.
Sununu, who served in the Senate from 2003 to 2009 before losing to Shaheen, won the Republican primary for her open seat with roughly 70 percent of the vote. He comfortably defeated Scott Brown, the former Massachusetts senator who had repositioned himself as a loyal supporter of President Donald Trump in an effort to compete in New Hampshire.
Sununu had secured Trump’s endorsement in February, a backing that Brown was unable to overcome despite months of campaigning across the state.
On the Democratic side, Representative Chris Pappas won his primary with approximately 62 percent of the vote, defeating Karishma Manzur, a scientist and member of the Democratic Socialists of America who campaigned on universal healthcare and opposition to military aid to Israel.
Pappas, who has represented New Hampshire’s First Congressional District since 2019, NBC News reported, had received Shaheen’s endorsement as well as backing from Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
The November contest now presents the matchup political strategists in both parties had largely anticipated. Both primaries produced candidates with stronger institutional backing and more conventional campaign profiles, defeating challengers who offered voters a sharper ideological choice.
In that sense, New Hampshire’s primary elections favored political experience and established party infrastructure.
The result also carries a notable historical dimension. Shaheen’s Senate seat has shifted between the two parties in a pattern that has often reflected the broader national political environment of each election cycle. Sununu held the seat for six years during the Republican-friendly political climate of the early 2000s. Shaheen reclaimed it in 2008.
If Republicans manage to win the seat again in November, it would represent an important exception to the broader historical disadvantage typically faced by a president’s party during a midterm election.
The Cook Political Report currently rates the contest as Lean Democrat, reflecting the structural advantages Pappas brings into the general election. Shaheen’s retirement after three terms removes the benefit of an incumbent seeking reelection, but Democrats retain a significant organizing infrastructure and a political base in a state that has frequently reflected national electoral trends.
For Republicans, the stakes extend beyond New Hampshire. The party needs to capture competitive seats such as this one if it hopes to expand its Senate majority, making open-seat contests particularly important to its national strategy.
The $400 million war chest MAGA Inc assembled for the midterms is expected to be directed toward competitive open-seat races across both parties’ electoral maps, adding another layer of national spending and attention to what could become one of the most closely watched Senate contests of the 2026 cycle.
Sununu’s statement after his primary win said he would stay laser-focused on the economy, jobs, and affordability. Whether the fall campaign allows him to stay on that message is uncertain. The Republican convention in Dallas this week was designed to nationalize the midterms on economic grounds, but CBS News noted the Gulf of Oman headlines have made that framing harder to sustain nationwide.
For Pappas, the primary produced a different kind of pressure. Manzur, running as a democratic socialist, closed in on Pappas in late polls and built a campaign around issues that have energized a significant segment of the Democratic base. Her 35 percent showing tells Pappas’s campaign that the left flank will need attention in November, even as the general election pushes him toward the center. Manzur’s voters are not automatically Pappas voters, a problem that primary margins in competitive Senate races regularly surface.
Pappas has positioned himself as a center-left candidate focused on healthcare costs and economic security, a profile that plays well in a state that divided its presidential votes narrowly in 2024 and has competitive constituencies across Manchester and the Seacoast region. His experience in a congressional district that includes Manchester gives him ground-level familiarity with the state’s economic pressures that his campaign views as a distinguishing asset.
The contest in November joins a small set of Senate races where both parties see genuine opportunity: the high-stakes Georgia fight where Jon Ossoff is running on Trump-era corruption, alongside competitive contests in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The balance of the Senate depends on whether Democrats can hold their incumbents and whether Republicans can produce pickups in open seats like New Hampshire.
Eight weeks remain before November 3. What neither campaign has yet defined is the message that takes them through those weeks. Pappas needs to answer the question his primary posed about which direction his party is moving. Sununu needs to show that the family name travels better in 2026 than it did in 2008. Who walks through the door Shaheen has left open will depend on which of them reads New Hampshire correctly.
