Former Sen. Kelly Ayotte has won the New Hampshire governor’s race, NBC News Projects, defeating Democrat Joyce Craig to keep the seat in Republican hands.
Ayotte will succeed Republican Governor Chris Sununu, who declined to run for a fifth two-year term.
She was New Hampshire’s first female attorney general before serving a one-term term in the Senate. Ayotte lost her re-election battle in 2016 to the current senator. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat, with only about a thousand votes.
Ayotte warned against the battleground state drifting too far to the left during her campaign, saying that “New Hampshire is one election away from turning into Massachusetts.”
Despite withdrawing her support for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race following the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, Ayotte supported his bid for the White House this year, although she also tried to keep him at arm’s length. Sununu, the outgoing Republican Party governor, is an outspoken anti-Trump critic.
In 2017, Craig became the first female mayor of Manchester, a position she held for six years. She got her start in politics by serving on the Board of School Committee in Manchester, before serving as a councilor for six years.
Craig sought to portray Ayotte as “extreme” and campaigned for codifying Roe v. Wade’s protections in the Granite State.
Ayotte has said she supports New Hampshire’s abortion law, which would allow women to have abortions “for any reason up to six months of pregnancy,” with exceptions during the last trimester for medical emergencies or fatal fetal abnormalities.
Craig and Ayotte won their parties’ primaries in September, leaving them with only about eight weeks to campaign in the general election period.
Independents make up a large portion of the New Hampshire electorate, with about 37% of voters registered as “black” earlier this year.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
