Both worked for Donald Trump and have focused their congressional campaigns on the former President’s policies.
But in Tuesday’s race to be the Republican nominee in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, Republicans Matt Mowers and Caroline Levitt are locked in a tight battle that’s more about style than substance, one that has broken out the Republican faith and highlights how Trump’s policies are being implemented in a Republican primaries are often not as strong as Trump himself.
Mowers and Leavitt are considered the top two candidates in a huge field of Republicans seeking to take on Rep. Chris Pappas, one of the most vulnerable House Democrats in the country. With election prognosticators tempering their months-long predictions of an overwhelming red wave of elections for Republicans this November, right-wing operatives see targets like Pappas as necessary victories if the GOP is to win control of the chamber.
“Watching these two try to one-up Trump, with Matt trying to walk a fine line between speaking well of the Trump administration while maintaining his electability in a general election … allowed an opening for Leavitt, who is a pure Trump candidate, an election-denying candidate,” said Fergus Cullen, former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party who is voting for Russell Prescott, a former member of the New Hampshire Executive Board.
Cullen said he won’t vote for Leavitt if she wins the nomination — “New Hampshire doesn’t need a Marjorie Taylor Greene or a Lauren Boebert representing us,” he said — a sentiment that underscores fears of a Leavitt victory.
Recent polls show the race is deadlocked. A Granite State poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire and released in late August found Mowers at 26 percent and Leavitt at 24 percent, within the survey’s margin of error. A significant 26% of likely Republican voters were undecided.
Mowers’ ties to New Hampshire date back to the 2014 election cycle, when he served as executive director of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee. In the 2016 cycle, Mowers initially worked for Chris Christie as the New Jersey governor sought the GOP presidential nomination. But when Christie’s campaign failed, Mowers went to work for Trump’s campaign and, after the Republican’s victory, the State Department. Mowers, backed by Trump, unsuccessfully challenged Pappas in 2020.
By comparison, Leavitt is more of a political newcomer. After graduating from Saint Anselm College in 2019, the Republican went to work in the Trump White House. He eventually became assistant press secretary under White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. After Trump’s defeat, she went to work for Rep. Elise Stefanik, now the House’s third-ranking Republican.
Although Mowers pursues politics supported by Trump — his website shouts “Drain the Swamp” and has an entire page on “Election Integrity” — his style is more measured than the kind of politics that defined Trump’s trajectory of political associates, an attention that opened the door to the more aggressive Leavitt.
Recent elementary school discussions have highlighted these stylistic differences.
Earlier this month, when Mowers was asked if he had confidence in the election, the candidate said, “I have confidence in the election in New Hampshire,” but added that there was room to “get better.”
That wasn’t good enough for Leavitt, who criticized Mowers and repeated Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
“I continue to be the only candidate in this race who has said that I think the 2020 election was undoubtedly stolen by President Trump,” Leavitt said, turning her attack on Mowers by noting that she voted twice in the 2016 primary and saying Mowers agrees. with Joe Biden saying the President “legitimately won more votes than Donald Trump.”
“I reject it,” he says.
Those differences continued when asked whether Biden should be impeached.
Leavitt was adamant. “Yes,” she said, citing border security.
Mowers was more circumspect, asking for “a hearing to consider these things.”
After the debate, which was hosted by WMUR, Leavitt made a finer point in her strategy: “Voters are finally waking up to who Matt Mowers is. He is a good politician who cannot answer a straight question,” he told the report.
The race has also divided the leadership of the Parliament.
Representatives Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise, the top two Republicans in the House, have both endorsed Mowers. Leavitt, in addition to Stefanik’s support, also received endorsements from some of her party’s more far-right leaders, including Reps. Jim Jordan and Boebert.
Money has flooded the race, with millions being spent to try to protect the Mowers from a Leavitt implosion.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, the dominant super PAC of House Republicans, has spent nearly $2 million defending Mowers. Defending Main Street, a centrist Republican super PAC, has spent $1.2 million with ads saying Leavitt is “pretending to be conservative” and calling her “woke,” “immature” and “irresponsible.”
Leavitt responded to the outside spending with $285,000 of her own spending, including an ad attacking Mowers for voting in both New Hampshire and New Jersey during the 2016 primaries, accusing him of trying to “sabotage the President Trump” and characterizes him as “another swamp doormat”.
She also tried to turn the flood of money against her into an attack on Mowers, declaring on Twitter that she was “officially the top target of the DC money machine” because “the Foundation knows I’m the biggest threat to their puppet Matt Mowers. .”
Democrats watched the primaries with a mixture of trepidation, joy and concern.
Colin Gately, a spokesman for Pappas, said the Republican primary was dominated by “extremism and ugliness” and that neither candidate “has a clue about how to help New Hampshire families, and voters will reject the extreme agenda their”.
But even the most optimistic members of the party acknowledge that Pappas is vulnerable. But many believe the contentious GOP primary — along with the fact that the race ends in September, less than two months before the general election — could help New Hampshire Democrats win.
Pappas has already begun to distance himself from Biden. The same University of New Hampshire poll found that 54% of New Hampshire adults disapproved of Biden’s performance, while 43% approved.
In response to the President’s plan to cancel some debate on student loans, Pappas said they “should be more targeted and paid off so it doesn’t add to the deficit.”
And he called out Biden’s description of Trump supporters as “semi-fascist” days before the primary, telling reporters that Biden “has to be careful not to paint with too broad a brush.”
Mowers is married to a senior video producer at CNN.
