CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — One of the nation’s most competitive gubernatorial races has also become intensely personal.
None of the country’s 12 female governors are up for re-election, but five women are running for major party gubernatorial elections in four states. Two of them are in New Hampshire, where Republican Kelly Ayotte and Democrat Joyce Craig are vying to succeed Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican who is not seeking a fifth two-year term.
While voters and the candidates themselves say their gender is not an issue in a state with a history of electing women to top positions, it has influenced their approach to the topic of abortion and reproductive health care. Both candidates have done television ads describing having had miscarriages after medical appointments during which no fetal heartbeat was detected.
“I know what that feeling is like when your dream falls apart and you think, ‘Wow, what if I can’t have a baby?’” said Ayotte, a former U.S. senator and attorney general.
But while Ayotte’s ad focuses on affirming support for in vitro fertilization, Craig’s promises broader protection of reproductive rights.
“I was able to end my pregnancy without intervention,” says Craig, the former mayor of Manchester. “I’m running for governor because these decisions belong to women, not politicians.”
In Indiana, where Democrat Jennifer McCormick is the only woman in the race, she has emphasized her gender while criticizing her Republican opponent, U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, for supporting their state’s near-total ban on abortion.
“I am the only person on this stage who has been pregnant, I am the only person on this stage who has given birth, and I am the only person on this stage who is a mother,” she said in a recent debate. “I understand firsthand the complexities that come with pregnancy. I trust women, and I trust healthcare providers.”
But the “trust women” slogan is marked with an asterisk in New Hampshire, where Craig often emphasizes Ayotte’s support for a federal abortion ban after 20 weeks of pregnancy and her role as a guardian to Judge Neil Gorsuch during his confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he joined in overturning Roe v. Wade.
“We can’t rely on what she’s saying now because she’s shown where she stands on reproductive freedom,” Craig said in an interview last week.
Ayotte insists she will veto any bill that further restricts abortion in New Hampshire, where the Republican majority in 2021 made abortion illegal after 24 weeks of pregnancy.
“I’m not going to change our law,” Ayotte said. “She can say all kinds of things about it, but I think I’ve been pretty clear about my position.”
As for her trustworthiness, Ayotte emphasizes that New Hampshire voters sent her to the Senate and governors of both parties appointed her attorney general to do so.
“I served this state,” she said. “I served the people of New Hampshire.”
As a senator, Ayotte was part of the nation’s first all-female congressional delegation, just one of New Hampshire’s notable achievements in electing women. It was also the first state to have a female governor, president of the Senate, and speaker of the House of Representatives at the same time, and the first with a female majority in the Senate. In 2008, Jeanne Shaheen became the first woman in the country to serve as both governor and U.S. senator. Senator Maggie Hassan became the second after defeating Ayotte in 2016.
That track record makes New Hampshire an outlier, said Linda Fowler, a professor emerita of government at Dartmouth College who has studied women in politics. She said research shows voters are more comfortable electing women as representatives because they see them as caring and good listeners, but they see governors as CEOs and believe the job requires a more masculine approach.
With no man in this race, Fowler says it will largely come down to turnout. Ayotte has skillfully linked Craig to crime, homelessness and other “big city” ills in Manchester, she said, but the abortion issue has galvanized Democrats up and down the aisle.
“This race is really about mobilization and whether abortion will overcome people’s distrust of our only great city,” Fowler said.
According to the Rutgers Center for American Women in Politics, 30 Democratic women and 19 Republican women have served as governors in 32 states, but never before have so many women served at the same time. Even if the three other women — McCormick in Indiana, Crystal Quade in Missouri and Esther Charlestin in Vermont — fail, the New Hampshire race marks a new record of 13 women serving as governor at the same time. And that number could grow as Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is set to assume the state’s highest office if Gov. Tim Walz is elected vice president.
Despite the looming record-break, both Ayotte and Craig said their gender has not come up in the campaign, and in a dozen interviews, voters told The Associated Press they had barely noticed that there were two women in the race.
Rachel Johnson, a Republican who encountered Ayotte in a highway parking lot, said she doesn’t know much about the candidate but plans to vote for her.
“Whoever is best suited for the job,” she said. “Gender has nothing to do with it.”
Victoria Hill, an independent voter from Gorham, echoed that sentiment, although she is voting for Craig. After meeting the candidate at a guitar shop in Littleton, Hill praised Craig’s commitment to public education while criticizing Ayotte’s support for former President Donald Trump. Ayotte withdrew her support for Trump in 2016 because of his lewd comments about women, but says she is backing him now because his record was better than that of the Biden administration.
“That’s the problem I have: She just hesitates no matter which way the wind blows,” Hill said.
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Associated Press writer Isabella Volmert contributed to this report.
