Former Sen. John Sununu won the Republican primary in the New Hampshire Senate race on Tuesday.

Endorsed by President Trump, Sununu will face Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas in November’s general election.

Sununu easily defeated Scott Brown, the former U.S. senator from Massachusetts who was elected in 2010 to fill Ted Kennedy’s seat.

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The candidates will battle for the open Senate seat created when Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, announced her retirement.

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Both Mr. Sununu and Mr. Brown had previously lost Senate races to Ms. Shaheen, who has served three terms. Ms. Shaheen beat Mr. Sununu in 2008. She beat Mr. Brown in 2014, after he moved to New Hampshire from Massachusetts.

Mr. Sununu, who served three terms in the U.S. House and one in the Senate, is the brother of the charismatic former Governor Chris Sununu, who is still widely popular across the state, and the son of former Governor John H. Sununu. Mr. Brown expressed frustration that some voters seemed to confuse John E. Sununu with his brother, whose eight-year term ended last year, or his father.

Mr. Sununu’s victory tees up a general election battle that could help determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. In recent weeks, Democrats in the state have been sounding the alarm that Mr. Sununu could beat Mr. Pappas, the four-term congressman from the state’s swingy First Congressional District.

“As senator, I’ll have just one job: stand up for the people of New Hampshire every single day,” Sununu said in a statement.

“We will keep listening, keep working, and stay laser-focused on the economy, jobs, and making life more affordable,” he added.

Watch comments from Pappas after his victory in the Democratic primary:

Polls show an extremely tight race for the critical Senate seat.

NBC News shared further:

Trump endorsed Sununu in the primary against former Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who also was an ambassador during Trump’s first term. Sununu had 70% support to Brown’s 25% with about a sixth of the vote counted.

First elected to the House in 2018, Pappas has long been viewed as the front-runner in the race to replace retiring Democrat Jeanne Shaheen. And he had already started to focus on the likely general election contest against Sununu, launching an attack against Sununu in mid-August.

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“In Congress, Sununu gave huge tax breaks to pharma companies and sided with the insurance industry, and then he went to work for them and made $35 million,” Pappas said in the ad. “In Washington, I’m taking on this kind of corruption, refusing corporate PAC money and fighting to lower costs.”

Republicans, meanwhile, have already begun to attack Pappas. One Nation, the nonprofit arm of the GOP super PAC Senate Leadership Fund, launched an ad knocking Pappas on taxes. The spot alleges Pappas “gave out tax breaks to New Yorkers for their million-dollar homes” when he supported a sweeping climate and social safety net measure in 2021.

 

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