The 2024 primary season will come to a close this week with several closely watched contests, including a race for a New Hampshire congressional seat and a gubernatorial election in Delaware.
In New Hampshire, candidates are vying to succeed Rep. Annie Kuster (D), who was first elected in 2012 and is retiring.
The 2nd District is closely divided politically, but election forecasters generally give Democrats the advantage in the race. Nonetheless, the National Republican Congressional Committee is eyeing the seat for a potential flip.
The Democratic primary is pitting lawyer and former Justice Department official Maggie Goodlander against former New Hampshire Executive Council member Colin Van Ostern. Kuster has endorsed Van Ostern.
Goodlander was an adviser to Attorney General Merrick Garland from 2021 and later was deputy assistant attorney general in the department’s antitrust division. She helped launch the agency’s environmental justice office.
At a debate this month, Goodlander said she wants to hold corporations accountable for climate change and make a place for New Hampshire in the global climate fight.
“This is a crisis that is not without a culprit. We know where the culprits lie when it comes to the climate crisis. It’s big oil companies that for far too long have been not been held accountable,” she said at the debate hosted by WMUR.
She noted that New Hampshire has some of the nation’s highest energy costs but said clean energy can bring those prices down.
“I want to make the state of New Hampshire the center of the movement of the United States of America towards being the clean energy superpower of the world,” Goodlander said.
Van Ostern said one of his priorities in fighting climate change would be to repeal some of the tax cuts supported by former President Donald Trump that go to the wealthy to ensure the nation can pay for the battle.
“It is in our economic best interest to tackle this, and we can do so by creating a clean energy economy and clean energy jobs here in New Hampshire,” he said.
“We need to build resilient communities, accelerate the transition to the clean energy economy, modernize our grid, and invest in things like smarter energy storage because wind and solar are inherently intermittent,” Van Ostern said.
In a separate WMUR debate featuring the top three Republican candidates, two hopefuls brought up energy as the main way to fight inflation.
“Drill, baby, drill. We need more energy. The more energy we produce, prices will fall,” author Vikram Mansharamani said at the debate.
“Energy prices bleed into everything,” he said. “We know that here in New Hampshire, we have some of the highest energy prices in the nation. We have to get more energy, and that means all of the above.”
Mansharamani criticized “climate alarmism” on social media as a harmful force for young people.
Bill Hamlen, an energy commodities trader, also focused on energy to bring prices down. “Joe Biden declared war on American energy. Energy goes into everything we do — it goes into our cars, into our homes and into our food. The No. 1 thing we can do is free up American energy,” he said.
Hamlen called specifically for new pipeline infrastructure to bring more natural gas into New Hampshire.
Lily Tang Williams, a real estate property manager, is also one of the top candidates running.
Delaware
In Delaware, voters will pick candidates in the race to succeed Gov. John Carney (D), who cannot run again due to term limits.
The field includes Collin O’Mara, who heads the National Wildlife Federation and was formerly Delaware’s secretary of natural resources. The other main Democratic candidates are Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long and New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer.
O’Mara is running as the progressive candidate and has the backing of the Working Families Party, but polling has him far behind the other hopefuls. He told POLITICO’s E&E News last month that climate change is a top priority of his bid, along with education.
“There’s an opportunity right now to remake the state in a way that advances our climate goals and our economic goals simultaneously,” he said.
“At a time when Delaware’s got the 14th highest unemployment in the country, it’s an opportunity to really lift up a lot of folks and advance the passion of my life, which has been climate and environmental justice, and at the same time, do it in a way that creates a ton of well-paying, middle-class union jobs,” O’Mara said.
Hall-Long has Carney’s endorsement, but her campaign has been rocked by allegations of campaign finance improprieties. She’s also been accused of having her professional staff work on campaign matters during business hours.
An August forum ahead of the primary touched briefly on climate change, but the discussion mostly focused on resilience and impacts to the low-lying state and beach towns, including the need to replenish beaches.
O’Mara said Delaware is better prepared for flooding and extreme weather than many other coastal states, but it can do better.
“The challenge we have now … there are some places that we’re not going to be able to save. These are hard conversations,” he said, calling for “managed retreat” in some places where restoration does not make financial sense.
Hall-Long said the state could improve how it funds resilience projects. “We have to do more in leveraging more federal funds and making sure we invest in the things that these communities can do collectively,” she said.
Meyer said local governments need more help from the state to fund resilience measures. “It’s important we partner with our coastal communities to make sure that burden is not unfairly on them, so they don’t need to raise all the taxes,” he said.
The winner of the Democratic primary is nearly guaranteed to win the general election, since the state is so heavily Democratic.
Delaware voters are also picking a successor to Sen. Tom Carper (D), the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, who is retiring.
Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester is the only candidate in the Democratic primary and is expected to easily win the general election in November. She would be the first woman and first Black senator to represent the state.
In the race to fill the at-large House seat Blunt Rochester is leaving, state Sen. Sarah McBride is expected to win easily, after she cleared the Democratic primary field. McBride would be the first openly transgender member of Congress.
