As New Hampshire Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas makes his bid for the Senate, the Republican opposition has picked up a potential line of attack — his vote against the GOP-led budget reconciliation bill.
The measure is quickly becoming a focal point in the nascent campaign for control of Congress next year, with party committees and outside groups announcing ads based on how members voted when the House narrowly passed the bill on May 22. Pappas and other Democrats have focused their messaging around proposed cuts to Medicaid, while Republicans are playing up provisions that would make some expiring tax cuts permanent. Within hours of passage, the Republican National Senatorial Committee blasted Pappas on social media for having “just voted against the largest middle class tax cut in history.”
Getting to Congress: Pappas earned a bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University, crediting his interest in politics to having grown up seeing presidential candidates make campaign stops at his family’s restaurant in Manchester. After graduating in 2002, Pappas won a seat in the New Hampshire legislature, serving two terms in the state House. He was twice elected treasurer of Hillsborough County before getting a seat on the state’s Executive Council, a body within the governor’s office where each member represents one-fifth of New Hampshire’s population. The retirement of Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter prompted a race for her swing-district House seat in the 2018 midterms. Pappas took a clear lead in the primary and went on to defeat Republican Eddie Edwards by 8 percentage points.
