Bolduc wins hard-fought NH GOP Senate primary, as Morse concedes

New Hampshire Senate President Chuck Morse conceded the New Hampshire GOP primary early Wednesday, saying he couldn’t catch up to retired Army Brigadier Gen. Don Bolduc despite a last-minute influx of cash and advertising by national Republicans who wanted an establishment nominee to take on Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan.

“It’s been a long night & we’ve come up short. I want to thank my supporters for all the blood, sweat & tears they poured into this team effort. I just called and wished all the best to [Gen. Bolduc] The focus this fall needs to be on defeating Maggie Hassan,” Mr. Morse wrote on Twitter.

Gen. Bolduc led Mr. Morse by about 1 percentage point, or just over 1,000 votes, as counting stretched into the evening after Tuesday’s election.

Gen. Bolduc cheered the call in his favor, tweeting he was one step closer to defeating Ms. Hassan, “flipping the Senate and bringing an Outsider to DC to fight for Granite Staters!”

Yet national Republicans are afraid the retired general won’t have the necessary appeal to defeat Ms. Hassan, who they see as vulnerable in the battle for control of the evenly divided Senate.

Gen. Bolduc has echoed former President Donald Trump’s view the 2020 election was stolen and supports repealing the 17th Amendment that allows for the direct election of senators by the public. He once called New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu a “Chinese communist sympathizer.”

Mr. Sununu endorsed Mr. Morse in the final days of the primary race but it wasn’t enough.

Democrats seized on the rift after Gen. Bolduc was declared the winner.

“Republicans tried everything they could to stop Bolduc in this primary because even they know his dangerous conspiracy theories are totally out-of-step with the voters that will decide New Hampshire’s general election,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokeswoman Amanda Sherman-Baity said Wednesday. “We agree with the many, many New Hampshire Republicans who said Bolduc has no place representing their state in the Senate.”