Steve Bottari

Welcome to The Trail: All Things Politics, WMUR's new politics podcast.

I'm WMUR political director, Adam Sexton.

And I'm WMUR anchor, Steve Bottari.

Today on the pod, we're gonna talk about New Hampshire's governor's race.

I'm Adam Sexton.

And I'm Steve Bottari.

This podcast from WMUR getting you up to speed on everything happening here in the Granite State when it comes to politics, and we are approaching that season where it becomes pretty much our entire lives.

Uh, Adam, we gotta talk about the big Senate race happening in the state.

He's been a major cabinet secretary at this point.

Some of those things that weren't there for voters in 2020, uh, will be there this time around.

It's gonna be fascinating to see, if he runs, how that translates, in particular because it's not going to be the same kind of magical first-time campaign where people are showing up and saying, "My goodness, this may- the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, I'm, I really am resonating with wha- what he's saying." Um, one other thing I'll say about that is in these other states, Steve, where you see Democrats doing well, uh, sort of in the places where they hadn't been doing well, I think in particular Rob Sand in Iowa, the campaign that Rob Sand is running, the campaigns that these other Democrats are running in states where they are overperforming or exceeding expectations, are very similar in tone and approach to what Pete Buttigieg did in 2019 and 2020 that really skyrocketed him into the national consciousness.

Well, the Achilles' heel of his campaign back in 2020 was not just that, you know, there was the Iowa debacle where folks maybe remember he technically won, declared victory, and then no one knew the official winner because Iowa had problems with their app that hadn't been rigorously tested.