Democrats Get the Attention, but Trump Aims to Put New Hampshire in Play

But securing victory in a state that has been won by a Democrat in every presidential election since 2000 will be a test of both the president’s durability and his political operation.

Trump’s allies say the issues are with him. The unemployment rate in the state was 2.6% in October 2019, lower than the national figure. Trump has highlighted his administration’s efforts to stem the opioid crisis in a state that continues to rank among the top five in opioid-related deaths.

The president’s new North American trade deal, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, affects New Hampshire businesses importing timber, syrup and dairy from Canada, campaign officials said. Officials also pointed to efforts by the Interior Department to eliminate the Seamounts Marine National Monument, located off the Atlantic Coast, as a move that appeals to New Hampshire voters because it could open up previously protected areas to commercial uses like fishing.

Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s first 2016 campaign manager and a New Hampshire resident who considered running for the Senate seat held by the Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, said that those factors, “coupled with the fact that the president should have won last time,” work in his favor — an apparent reference to the relatively little party support Trump had in his losing battle with Hillary Clinton.

Yet if the New Hampshire Republican Party now belongs to the president, it has also seen a significant decline in enrollment.

“New Hampshire is going to be a challenge for him to win in November,” said Jennifer Horn, the former New Hampshire Republican chairman and a staunch critic of Trump. “A week ago, we had more than 20,000 fewer registered Republicans than there were Election Day in 2016.”

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Horn noted that Republican candidates lost large, consistently red areas in the 2018 midterm elections, and that the same thing could happen here to Trump. While other state Republicans played down concerns about the drop in party members on the voter rolls as the natural ebb and flow that happens in a state with same-day voter registration, Horn said 20,000 was “way outside the norm.”

And the state’s demographics reflect the type of place where Trump will face challenges: concentrations of working-class whites, but multitudes of college-educated voters, who polls show have been abandoning the Republican Party.

“We’ve had great success in the municipal elections, and of course we had the historic wins in 2018,” said Ray Buckley, the state Democratic chairman. “There’s a lot of energy on the ground here. We’ve built a year-round organization.”

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Aware of some of the challenges ahead, the Trump campaign appears eager to get a head start.

While Pete Buttigieg was trying to emerge from the Democratic field and Joe Biden was trying to stay in it, Trump turned up in Manchester for a rally Monday night and Trump surrogates fanned out Tuesday to diners and polling sites throughout the state, even though he faces only token opposition in the Republican primary.

Their mission: talk up Trump’s policies, distract attention from Democrats and set the stage for the general election.

“We’re trying to fly the Trump flag when all the action is on the other side,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who strolled into Bedford High School, just outside Manchester, to greet voters Tuesday morning. “If the economy stays good, I think he’s very much in play here.”

Sen. Rick Scott of Florida was on hand outside Manchester on Tuesday morning to paint Democrats with the brush of “socialism.” Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, spent the day at diners and high schools campaigning for his father. Reps. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Greg Pence of Indiana, among others, stayed behind after Trump’s rally Monday night and made diner visits and talked with local news media.

Two supporters who were scheduled to campaign on the ground for him — Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida — hitched a ride home Monday night on Air Force One instead, to deal with legislative matters in Washington. Taking their place were prominent New Hampshire Republicans, a change from four years ago.

Gov. Chris Sununu bound into a local high school, where he purchased a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts from a student bake sale and stayed on message.

“The Trump tax cuts here worked,” he said. “The USMCA, very powerful, for a lot of our businesses that trade with our friends to the north. The regulatory reform streamlined the process.” He also credited the administration with investing $50 million in the state to battle the opioid crisis.

The last time Trump was running, John H. Sununu, the current governor’s father and a former governor himself, questioned Trump’s history of business losses and said his course language was “demeaning of the office he’s seeking.”

Trump campaign officials said they blamed the president’s 2016 loss in large part on his feud with Kelly Ayotte, a senator at the time who was locked in a close reelection race and tried to thread the needle by saying she would vote for Trump but not endorse him. Ayotte lost her seat, and Trump lost the state, an outcome one campaign official described as a political murder-suicide.

Monday found Ayotte campaigning for the president at a “Cops for Trump” event with Ivanka Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Reached on the phone on Tuesday, Ayotte hung up on a reporter. “I’m busy. I have to go,” she said when asked to comment on the state of the race in New Hampshire.

But the show of Republican force appeared to be having its desired effect of sparking fears among Democratic voters about the strength of their own candidates.

Mark Goodridge, 75, of Bedford, said he was voting for Biden. But he said he was anxious that he might lose to Trump.

“You see the Trump signs out there? Did you see how many are out there?” he asked, pointing to the pop-up stand of Trump campaign T-shirts and gear set up outside the school’s entrance.

His wife, Margaret, 76, chimed in. “I think it depends on who the Democrats pick,” she said. “If we get the right candidate … ” Her voice trailed off, before she added, “Which is kind of a worry.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .