Chris Pappas wins New Hampshire Senate race, becoming first openly gay man in the Senate
The four-term congressman beat former Senator John Sununu to succeed retiring Democrat Jeanne Shaheen. Sununu conceded early in the night.
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire, Nov. 4 — Democrat Chris Pappas has won New Hampshire’s Senate race, defeating Republican John Sununu. He will become the first openly gay man to serve in the U.S. Senate.
The Associated Press projected Pappas the winner on Tuesday night. Sununu conceded early, with only about a fifth of the vote counted.
At Pappas’ election night party in Manchester, the screens switched to Sununu’s concession speech, and the room broke into screams. The crowd began to chant his name.
Pappas, 46, has served four terms in the House of Representatives. He thanked Sununu for what he called a very gracious phone call to concede.
He will take the seat of Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat who decided not to run again. The win means the seat stays in Democratic hands.
It was not an easy race. For much of the fall, the two men were locked in a close fight, and the race became a late source of worry for Democrats. Some analysts moved it to a toss-up in the final weeks.
Pappas is a centrist in the House. At times, he has broken with his party on major bills. But in this race, he cast himself as a check on the Trump administration, which is unpopular in New Hampshire.
He criticized a long list of the administration’s policies, including the war with Iran and the cuts to Medicaid included in the president’s major tax and spending law, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
In his victory speech, Pappas targeted what he called corporate special interests and billionaires, saying they had rigged the economy in their favor. He also criticized members of Congress for allowing health care cuts, tariffs, and war, and called Trump incompetent.
He said voters in New Hampshire and across the country had had enough and wanted a change in direction.
“This was a hard-fought victory tonight,” Pappas said.
He said it was made harder by the tens of millions of dollars that came into the state from Trump, Elon Musk and corporate interests. He said his campaign faced attack ads and false claims every day for months, but won anyway.
His husband, Vann Bentley, stood beside him on stage. Pappas pledged to fight for abortion rights. He drew even louder cheers when he vowed to fight the building of new data centers and new detention centers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Pappas is a longtime state official and was the choice of the party’s leaders. Still, his speech sounded a lot like the populist message that has worked for other Democrats this year.
Sununu tried a different approach. He served one term in the Senate before losing his seat in 2008, and this time he ran as an independent-minded candidate who thinks for himself.
He tried to keep his distance from Trump, even though the president endorsed him. He criticized the war with Iran and said the administration had not done enough to help Ukraine. In one recent ad, he even said he had never met Trump.
He once called Trump a loser, a remark that Pappas brought up during the campaign. But Pappas argued that Sununu was a fake moderate who would end up going along with whatever the president wanted.
Pappas won the support of several prominent Democrats and defeated his rivals in the Democratic primary in September.
Many voters in New Hampshire were concerned about rising prices this year. Fuel costs increased after the United States and Israel went to war with Iran in February, and heating expenses climbed as temperatures fell.
Pappas will not be the first openly gay member of the Senate. Democrat Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin became the first openly gay senator and the first openly gay woman in the chamber when she took office in 2013.
Pappas will be sworn in to the Senate in January.
