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CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — One of the nation's most competitive gubernatorial races has also become intensely personal.
None of the nation’s 12 female governors are up for reelection, but five women are running as major party gubernatorial nominees in four states. Two of them are in New Hampshire, where Republican Kelly Ayotte and Democrat Joyce Craig are competing 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 a nonissue in a state with a history of electing women to top offices, it has influenced their approaches to the topic of abortion and reproductive health care. Both candidates have produced television ads in which they describe having miscarriages after medical appointments during which no fetal heartbeats were detected.
“I know what that feeling is like when you have your dream shattered, and you think, ‘Wow, what if I can’t have a baby?’” says Ayotte, a former U.S. senator and state attorney general.
But while Ayotte's ad focuses on affirming support for in vitro fertilization, Craig's promises broader protections of reproductive rights.
“I was able to end my pregnancy without interference,” 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 highlighted her gender as she criticizes her Republican gubernatorial 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’s been pregnant, I am the only person on this stage who’s given birth, and I am the only person on this stage who is a mom,” she said in a recent debate. “I understand firsthand the complexities associated with pregnancy. I trust women, and I trust health care providers.”
But the “trust women” slogan comes with an asterisk in New Hampshire, where Craig often highlights Ayotte’s support for a federal abortion ban after 20 weeks of pregnancy and her role shepherding Justice Neil Gorsuch through his confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he joined in overturning Roe v. Wade.
“We can’t trust what she’s saying right now because she has shown where she is on the topic of reproductive freedom,” Craig said in an interview last week.
Ayotte insists she will veto any bill further restricting abortion in New Hampshire, where Republican majorities 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 on what my position is.”
As for her trustworthiness, Ayotte emphasizes that New Hampshire voters sent her to the Senate and governors of both parties appointed her to be state attorney general before that.
“I’ve served this state,” she said. “I’ve 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 also was the first state to have a female governor, state Senate president and House speaker at the same time, and the first to have a female majority in its Senate. In 2008, Jeanne Shaheen became the first woman in the country to have served both as governor and U.S. senator. Sen. 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 suggests voters have been more comfortable electing women as representatives because they view them as caring and good listeners, but they see governors as CEOs and believe the job demands a more masculine approach.
With no man in this race, Fowler says it will largely come down to turnout. Ayotte has skillfully tied Craig to crime, homelessness and other “big city” ills in Manchester, she said, but the abortion issue has Democrats energized up and down the ticket.
"This race is really going to be about mobilization, and whether abortion is going to outweigh people’s mistrust of our only big city,” Fowler said.
According to the Rutgers Center for American Women in Politics, 30 Democratic women and 19 Republican women have served as governor in 32 states, but never before have so many 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 means a new record will be set of 13 women serving simultaneously as governor. And the number could grow with Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan poised to take the state’s top office if Gov. Tim Walz is elected vice president.
Despite the imminent record break, both Ayotte and Craig said their gender hasn’t come up on the campaign trail, and in a dozen or so interviews, voters told The Associated Press they've barely noticed that the race features two women.
Rachel Johnson, a Republican who ran into Ayotte at a highway rest area, said she doesn’t know much about the candidate but plans to vote for her.
“Whoever is best for the job,” she said. “Gender has nothing to do with it.”
Victoria Hill, an independent voter from Gorham, echoed that sentiment, though she is voting for Craig. After meeting the candidate in a guitar shop in Littleton, Hill praised Craig’s commitment to public education while criticizing Ayotte’s support for former President Donald Trump. Ayotte rescinded her support for Trump in 2016 over his lewd comments about women but says she now backs him again because his record in office was better than the Biden administration's.
“That’s the problem I have — her just wavering with whichever way the wind is blowing,” Hill said.
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Associated Press Writer Isabella Volmert contributed to this report.