Chris Pappas Holds New Hampshire Senate Seat for Democrats

Democrats can exhale in New Hampshire. Congressman Chris Pappas won the state's US Senate race, holding an open seat that Republicans had circled as a prime pickup opportunity. He beat John Sununu, the former senator trying to claw his way back to Washington.

The contest tightened late, spooking Democrats who watched a moderate congressman get dragged into a neck-and-neck fight. Pappas, 46, is finishing his fourth term in the House, where he has occasionally bucked his own party on big legislation. He now steps into the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen.

Pappas ran as a wall against the Trump administration, which polls poorly in the Granite State. He hammered a string of policies he called unpopular, from the war against Iran to Medicaid cuts tucked into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. He also framed Sununu as a fake moderate who would end up rubber-stamping the president's agenda — a charge that stung, given Sununu once called Donald Trump a 'loser'.

Sununu, who held a New Hampshire Senate seat until losing it in 2008, sold himself as an independent thinker. He knocked the war in Iran, said the administration wasn't doing enough for Ukraine, and even claimed in a recent campaign ad that he had 'never met' the president — despite carrying Trump's endorsement.

The win makes Pappas the first out gay man to serve in the US Senate. For Democrats, it's a defensive hold in a cycle where every open seat matters.