Hours before President Biden returns to New Hampshire for the first time in nearly two years, Steve Shurtleff expresses forgiveness but emphasizes that he won’t forget.
“I forgive, but I haven’t forgotten how New Hampshire was treated,” the longtime Democratic state representative and former state House speaker told US Newzs on Monday.
Shurtleff, a staunch Biden supporter since the president’s initial White House bid in 1988, diverged from him last year due to the Democratic National Committee’s decision, following Biden’s lead, to remove New Hampshire from its traditional role as the first-in-the-nation presidential primary state.
New Hampshire, by a state law requiring its presidential primary to be the first, held its nominating contest on January 23. However, the Democratic primary was unsanctioned.
Biden opted not to include his name on the ballot and avoided campaigning in the state. Nonetheless, due to a write-in effort by New Hampshire’s Democratic establishment leaders, the president comfortably won the primary over his long-shot challengers.
Shurtleff endorsed and campaigned for one of those challengers, Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota.
However, with the New Hampshire primary completed and the general election rematch between Biden and former President Trump underway, Shurtleff seems to be leaning towards supporting Biden once more.
“We need to move forward, especially with the upcoming election, and I’m worried about the prospect of a Trump candidacy. So, I’m likely to vote for Joe Biden,” he informed US Newzs. “When I compare Joe Biden and Donald Trump, it frightens me to contemplate what would occur to our country under another Trump presidency.”
In addition to being the state that has hosted the first presidential primary in a century, New Hampshire has also been one of approximately a dozen battleground states in general elections for a couple of decades.
Additionally, New Hampshire is on the president’s itinerary as he visits several swing states following last week’s State of the Union address.
He is set to emphasize how his administration has been reducing costs for American families amidst the high inflation that has affected the nation during his first two years in office.
During his visit to Goffstown, New Hampshire, he is also anticipated to propose extending Medicare’s $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket drug expenses to individuals with commercial insurance. A White House official mentioned that the president will additionally request lawmakers to extend a $35-per-month cost limit for insulin to the commercial market.
Biden will also urge Congress to authorize Medicare to negotiate prices for a minimum of 50 drugs annually and will encourage federal legislators to make permanent improvements to the Affordable Care Act that are scheduled to expire next year.
The president emphasized these specific actions during his State of the Union address last week.
This trip marks Biden’s return to New Hampshire since his visit to Portsmouth in April 2022.
After his official event, Biden will convene with New Hampshire Democrats during a campaign event in nearby Manchester, the state’s largest city.
It seems to be part of the president’s political effort to mend any lingering tensions from the primary season.
Kathy Sullivan, a former longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party chair and former DNC committee member from the Granite State who led a super PAC supporting the Biden write-in campaign, informed US Newzs that “it was evident from the primary results that the support for President Biden’s policies and achievements, along with the urgency to defeat Donald Trump and his authoritarian tendencies, were sufficient to motivate Democrats to vote for Joe Biden in the primaries.”
Furthermore, Sullivan forecasted that “I believe it will be even stronger in November.”
Trump narrowly lost New Hampshire to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election. However, in the 2020 election, Biden won the state by over seven points.
While Biden did not visit New Hampshire much in the past couple of years, Trump made frequent appearances. This was evident in his 11-point victory in the GOP presidential primary in the state in January.
A progressive activist in New Hampshire, who preferred to remain anonymous to speak more candidly, asserted that Biden “is the weakest candidate” and predicted that Trump would make the state highly competitive in November.
However, Mo Baxley, another progressive activist and former staunch supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ two presidential campaigns in the state, expressed, “I think the base is with [Biden].”
Baxley, a former New Hampshire Democratic Party vice-chair, stressed that “people aren’t going to refrain from voting for the president because of the [primary controversy]. Our base is more astute than that. The stakes are simply too high.”