Democrats’ Left Flank Looks for One Last Upset Win in New Hampshire

New Hampshire voters will go to the polls on Tuesday in one of the last primaries of the midterm cycle to choose their candidates for a contested Senate seat, a competitive House district, and a number of other offices. On the Democratic side in this year’s Senate race, the left wing of the party is hoping to pull off an upset and defeat Democratic leadership’s chosen candidate for the seat.Congressman Chris Pappas has represented eastern New Hampshire in the House since 2018, and has since then remained a loyal, inoffensive member of the party. When Senator Jeanne Shaheen announced that she would not seek a fourth term in the Senate, it appeared that Mr. Pappas was made for the moment as someone who had won competitive House races in New Hampshire’s light-blue district. Enter Karishma Manzur, a scientist and member of the state party’s rules committee who chose to challenge Mr. Pappas from the left. According to current polls, she trails the congressman by a double-digit margin, though some on the left hope that the race will be closer than expected, as was the case in several Democratic primaries across the country this year. At a recent debate, Ms. Manzur declined to explicitly safe if she would support Mr. Pappas if he wins the primary on Tuesday, saying that she would only support a progressive candidate who refuses to take money from national party committees, supports Medicare for All, and supports an end to American support for Israel. “The problem is [that] the corporate Democrats and the corporate Republicans are playing games with us. They’re answering to the same donors,” she said. “Just because somebody has a ‘D’ after their name or an ‘R’ after their name does not mean that they are responding to the needs of the people of the United States.”Ms. Manzur has pointed to the many outside groups which have been supporting Mr. Pappas, including AIPAC and another pro-Israel group, Democratic Majority for Israel. During the course of his career in elected office, Mr. Pappas has received more than $600,000 from AIPAC. Earlier this year, he said at the group’s annual meeting with members of Congress that he will continue to be “a strong supporter of the bipartisan U.S.-Israel relationship, which is a cornerstone of our national security policy.”While Mr. Pappas has boasted that he does not take money from political action committees backed by corporations, Ms. Manzur has gone after him from accepting money from congressional leadership PACs like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which does receive corporate money. According to polling, Mr. Pappas does have a double-digit lead over Ms. Manzur, though the race is closer than some leading Democrats want. The most recent poll from the University of New Hampshire shows Mr. Pappas leading with 47 percent of the vote to Ms. Manzur’s 34 percent. In January, Mr. Pappas was winning 65 percent of the vote while Ms. Manzur was sitting at only 11 percent.

Democrats’ Left Flank Looks for One Last Upset Win in New Hampshire

Democrats’ Left Flank Looks for One Last Upset Win in New Hampshire

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