Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign, hasn’t endorsed anyone in Tuesday’s Democratic Senate primary. In an exclusive interview the day before the vote, he vouched for Rep. Chris Pappas’ record on housing, wages and equal rights, and said the loser needs to get behind the winner.
California Rep. Ro Khanna, one of the most visible leaders of the progressive movement in the United States, a potential 2028 presidential contender, and former co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, weighed in on the bitterly divided New Hampshire Senate primary taking place Tuesday.
Khanna has not endorsed either Rep. Chris Pappas (D-Manchester) or Karishma Manzur, the medical scientist from Exeter who is challenging him from the left.
But in an exclusive interview with The Granite Post the day before the primary, he pushed back on the case Manzur has built her campaign around: that Pappas is a corporate-backed Democrat who only started sounding like a populist once she began climbing in the polls.
“I don’t think you can just put people in a box,” Khanna said. “And we really need to be unified.” He described Pappas as “very progressive” on housing, wages and equal rights, and said that whoever loses Tuesday’s Democratic primary for US Senate needs to get behind the winner.
Pappas and Manzur are competing for the seat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is giving up. The winner will likely face former Sen. John E. Sununu, who is favored by public polling to win the nomination over former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown in the Republican primary. The University of New Hampshire Survey Center’s August poll had Pappas ahead of Manzur 47% to 34%, down from a 43-point lead in April.
Khanna, who spent Labor Day weekend campaigning for Democrats in New Hampshire, said his own views line up with much of Manzur’s platform. He said he supports Medicare for All, a living wage and an end to foreign wars, and that the US should stop funding the Israeli government. Then he turned to Pappas.
“One, we gotta come together after tomorrow night and make sure we beat Sununu. That’s critical,” Khanna said. “But I’ve worked with Chris Pappas. I’ve worked with him on releasing the Epstein files. I’ve worked with him on a lot of the things we did under the Biden administration. And I know Karishma for her advocacy on some of the human rights issues in Gaza. And my hope is that we will come together around a bold agenda after the election.”
Coming together is not a given.
At Friday’s WMUR debate both candidates were asked whether they would back the winner.
Pappas said he would support Manzur.
Manzur, as she has said before, did not commit to endorsing or supporting Pappas if he wins. Asked by MS NOW on Monday whether she would endorse him, she said the only people who ask that question are reporters and Pappas supporters, and that she would never tell anyone how to vote.
“People have to earn my vote,” she said.
“Has she said that?” Khanna asked, not having known Mazur’s reluctance to endorse Pappas.
If Pappas wins, Khanna said, “I’m happy to reach out to Karishma and say, look, we gotta get the progressive movement behind Chris. And if Karishma wins, I’m sure Chris will get behind Karishma. ’Cause this is so much bigger than any of us. This is about rebuilding the Democratic Party, winning back the House, the Senate, and the White House.”
“There are a lot of issues that Chris is very progressive on, on issues of stopping Wall Street from buying up single family homes, on issues of increasing the minimum wage, on issues of making sure that we have equality for every community, including the LGBTQ community,” Khanna said.
The primary has turned bitter in its final weeks.
Manzur has said Pappas is copying her talking points, that he cannot run on his record, and that he is beholden to special interest groups. Pappas has answered by running on what he has gotten done in Congress, including his fight to restore a Medicare drug subsidy the Trump administration killed.
Asked what he would say to Manzur’s supporters, Khanna pointed to his own decade of working with Pappas.
“Well, look, I’ve worked with Chris for almost a decade, and I found him to be someone you can work with. You can have common ground, you can get things done,” Khanna said. “I’ve seen him work across the aisle. So I have a lot of respect for him.”
On the issues, the two agree more than the tone of the race suggests. Both backed the Road to Housing Act, both want big money out of politics, and both want federal help with child care costs. The sharpest break is over Israel.
Manzur wants to end all US military aid to Israel. She has made Pappas’ past support for Israel’s military action against Palestinians following the October 7th attack by Hamas and political donations Pappas has taken from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and affiliated partners a centerpiece of her campaign.
‘The response to those attacks by the Israeli military has since spun out into a genocide of Palestinian civilians.
Given that divide, Khanna said he understands why Manzur’s supporters are passionate.
“I mean, I share the view, not funding Israel. I’ve said it’s a genocide, what took place,” he said. “I understand the passion of not having foreign wars, on Medicare for All. The way to bring change in the Democratic Party is to run. And if you lose, then to get behind the nominee.”
Khanna said the same rule would apply to him.
“Look, there’s all the speculation whether I or other progressives are gonna run in ’28. I don’t know. I haven’t made a decision, but I’ll tell you this. If I ran, I’d put out my vision, and if I didn’t make it, I’d day one get behind the nominee, because we’ve gotta win the White House and we’ve gotta win the Senate and the House,” he said.
“So all of us are actors in a much bigger cause, and that cause is the country. And whoever wins, if I’m asked, I will do my part to try to bring the sides together.”
Khanna wrote the Epstein Files Transparency Act with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, and the two used a discharge petition to force a House vote over the objections of House leadership.
A discharge petition lets a majority of House members bring a bill to the floor when the speaker refuses to schedule it. The bill passed the House 427-1 in November 2025 and President Donald Trump signed it.
Pappas signed the discharge petition and voted for the bill.
Manzur’s campaign has tried to attach itself to Khanna before.
In July, Khanna’s team asked the Manzur campaign to take down a graphic that implied she would headline an event with the congressman, saying the post misrepresented the event.
Manzur has picked up endorsements from former New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman,former Ohio State Sen. and progressive influencer Nina Turner, and Roblox content creator Bloxcast.
Pappas has the backing of former Vice President Kamala Harris, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whom he campaigned with in Dover on Saturday, as well as Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, another potential 2028 candidate.
