Scenes from Don Bolduc’s New Hampshire Misfire

Manchester, N.H. — “It’s going to be close — the hammer is going to drop.”

That’s what GOP New Hampshire Senate hopeful Don Bolduc, a retired Army brigadier general, asserted early during his Election Night watch party last week.

At the time, such a prediction did not seem entirely unfounded. Bolduc, a Donald Trump–endorsed candidate, had seemed like a long shot in the summer and for much of the fall. Last year, he told the New Yorker, “When you try to steal the presidency, a lot of people are going to go, ‘O.K., wait a minute. What the hell’s going on here?’” He continued this mindset through winning his primary, but then went back and forth on his stance over the course of the general-election campaign.

Despite this, things appeared to improve for him in October and into early November. The final pre-election RealClearPolitics polling average gave a mere 1.4 point-edge to Hassan, creating the mirage of a competitive race.

Hopes of an upset helped drive supporters to come out strong to celebrate Bolduc, packing a local bar in Manchester. Eagerly awaiting the first voting returns in anticipation of a nationwide red wave, Republican voters had already begun to celebrate.

Bolduc started by addressing his supporters, ending with an emphatic invocation of the state’s motto: “Live free or die!” A live band then followed Bolduc, spurring a bustling dance floor that featured burly men with oversized cowboy hats grooving alongside elderly grandmothers to covers of Carrie Underwood and Guns N’ Roses. Jolly supporters were drinking and swaying alongside a cardboard cutout of incumbent Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan — Bolduc’s opponent — while a campaign staffer doled out T-shirts to passerby in the spirit more of a playoff game than of a political event.

But one thing ended up missing from this rousing celebration, which was plentiful in eagerness and spirit: Bolduc’s hammer.

The deterioration of the jovial night first became evident as the televised election results captured more and more of the attention away from the live music and the casual chatter. The early returns for Bolduc were alarming, to say the least. But the blowout triumphs of Florida governor Ron DeSantis and neighboring Vermont governor Phil Scott — whose projected victories from Fox News sparked cheers and applause — provided supporters hope that Bolduc would still pull through.

But as the voting tallies continued and Bolduc’s lagging turned into a trouncing, the mood started to sink. The live band took a break and was replaced with recorded music, the dance floor deadened as people stood solemnly in front of television screens. Bathroom lines shortened as disappointed bar patrons started to stream out and head back to their homes, taking their enthusiasm with them. As the shellacking solidified, the crowd’s World Series–game energy was soon replaced with the passionless spirit of a spring training game. Even the cardboard cutout of Maggie Hassan disappeared, called it a night.

Just two hours after Bolduc, speaking from a podium, had addressed a full and lively crowd of supporters to tell them that he was anticipating the race would be decided late into the night, he took to that same podium to officially concede the race. The crowd had vastly diminished in both size and spirit.

Despite Bolduc’s clobbering defeat — by nine points, all told — he ended the night with an optimistic message. Reading aloud Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If,” during his concession speech, Bolduc ended on a positive note. “We didn’t win today, but imagine if we continued to come together, if we join hands, if we decide that they work for us, and we don’t work for them.”

While Bolduc’s speech was applauded by his remaining supporters, one exasperated voter voiced frustration, yelling out “[Hassan’s] done nothing for New Hampshire!” Bolduc replied, “Well, we can only hope right and we gotta have faith.”

In a recent interview with the New Yorker (conducted by the same reporter who spoke to him last year), Bolduc appeared to come to terms with his loss, attributing it to, among other things, a lack of resources and a lack of support from both the institutional Republican Party and some of its rank and file. He stressed, however, that though he was endorsed by Trump, he “didn’t ask for his endorsement during the primary or the general election.” And asked about Trump’s postelection denunciation of him for not being “strong and true” enough about denying the results of the 2020 election, Bolduc balked.

“That’s absolutely wrong,” he said. “I would have lost by even more!” He added that “if you come up to New England to campaign, and you do it on election denial, you won’t get anywhere.”

Perhaps there is a lesson for Republicans in Bolduc’s loss.