Gov. Kelly Ayotte is running for a second term against Cinde Warmington. Here is where they stand on the costs, the jobs, and the federal fights shaping this race.
On Nov. 3, New Hampshire picks a governor. The job touches your daily life more than most people realize. The governor signs or vetoes the state budget, which decides how much of your town’s school bill lands on your property tax bill. The governor sits with the Executive Council to approve state contracts. And the governor decides how hard the state pushes back, or doesn’t, when the federal government wants to do something here.
The candidates
KELLY AYOTTE, Republican, is finishing her first term as governor. She was New Hampshire’s attorney general, then a US senator from 2011 to 2017, and she beat former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig (D) in 2024 to win the corner office. She won her September primary easily against two challengers.
CINDE WARMINGTON, Democrat, is a health care attorney from Concord. She served on the Executive Council from 2021 to 2025, the five-member body that approves state contracts and confirms judges, where she was the lone Democrat. She ran for governor in 2024, narrowly losing the primary to former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig. This year, she was the only Democrat on the primary ballot.
The cost of living
KELLY AYOTTE points to what she has kept off the table. New Hampshire has no sales tax and no income tax, and she has committed to keeping it that way. On electricity, she demanded federal regulators return more than $1.5 billion to New England ratepayers, about $150 million of it to New Hampshire, after a finding that regional utilities had overcharged customers for years.
CINDE WARMINGTON argues costs went up on Ayotte’s watch and that state policy made it worse. She launched her campaign on affordability, stacking housing costs, property taxes and health care together. Her central promise is to repeal the education freedom account program, the state’s voucher-style program, which she says takes tax dollars and gives them “to the richest people in the state” while pushing school costs onto local property taxpayers. She has also promised not to create a sales or income tax.
Trump’s tariffs
Canada is New Hampshire’s largest trading partner. The state sent $1.4 billion in goods across the northern border in 2023, and Canadian retaliation raises prices on what comes back the other way. Trump has enacted a 50% tariff on Canadian steel, aluminum and copper, 25 percent on cars and auto parts, 10 percent on lumber.
KELLY AYOTTE has cautiously raised concerns about tariffs, but has stopped short of denouncing them outright. When tariffs on Canada were first floated, she said she had heard the concerns from New Hampshire businesses while adding that she shared Trump’s focus on stopping fentanyl.
She has at times been blunter. “I disagree with tariffs on Canada because they simply are not good for New Hampshire,” she said after being challenged on the topic by Democrats, adding that she would keep pressing the administration to settle the dispute.
She has not joined the coalition of states suing the administration over the tariffs. In May she said she would keep watching gas prices, but she did not endorse suspending the state gas tax.
CINDE WARMINGTON calls the tariffs “nothing but a sales tax on families and small businesses.” Her criticism of Ayotte is that she stayed out of the lawsuit. Visiting a Hopkinton dairy farm in July, Warmington proposed suspending the state gas tax for immediate relief on fuel costs. Ayotte’s campaign responded that Warmington’s energy policies would “ban our gas-powered equipment and make life more expensive.”
Immigration and ICE
KELLY AYOTTE has been among the strongest supporters of this cooperation in the country. She publicly urged local agencies to sign up: “I support and encourage New Hampshire law enforcement agencies to cooperate with ICE.” She announced the State Police agreement herself. She signed legislation making New Hampshire the first New England state to ban sanctuary policies, and she has warned that “if you disrupt law enforcement activity, you will be prosecuted.”
Under Kelly Ayotte’s watch, New Hampshire is the only state in New England where local police departments have signed task force agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These are called 287(g) agreements, after the section of federal law that allows them, and they let local officers be trained and deputized by ICE to question, detain and arrest people over immigration status.
As many as 28 agencies here have signed on, including the New Hampshire State Police, the sheriffs in Hillsborough, Rockingham and Belknap counties, and 14 town and city police departments. Immigration arrests in the state have about doubled over 15 months compared with the end of the Biden administration, with 429 total arrests and 51 made by local agencies.
Some towns are pushing back. Voters in Gorham, Hampton and Ossipee passed nonbinding warrant articles opposing their police departments’ participation. A vote in Carroll tied. The Grafton County sheriff, who had signed an agreement, appears to have pulled out, saying the program makes participating agencies “complicit in the cruelty” of ICE’s agenda.
CINDE WARMINGTON opposes the 287(g) expansion and has made opposition to ICE part of her core pitch, promising: “I’ll say no to ICE’s warehouse.” Her broader criticism is that Ayotte has not pushed back hard enough on the Trump administration generally.
The Merrimack facility, and what Ayotte knew
The federal government planned to convert a warehouse on Robert Milligan Parkway in Merrimack into a 400-bed detention facility. Documents Ayotte later released showed Homeland Security expected to spend about $156 million on the retrofit and $146 million to operate it for three years, and projected more than 1,200 construction jobs and 265 operating jobs.
Ayotte worked against the project quietly at first, confiding in Republican executive councilors before taking a public position. Her repeated public line was that she had been told nothing, and she criticized Homeland Security for a lack of transparency.
That account came under strain in February. Testifying before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told Sen. Maggie Hassan that department officials had spoken with Ayotte in recent weeks and had shared an economic impact study of the facility with her.
Ayotte’s response was flat: “This is simply not true.” She said the department had provided zero details about its plans. Later that same day, her office announced that ICE had in fact provided more information, and posted it on the state website for the public.
Around the same period, Ayotte forced out a state official who had been communicating with the Trump administration without telling her.
On February 24, Ayotte announced Homeland Security would not move forward in Merrimack. Republican legislative leaders immediately credited close cooperation with Washington for the outcome. House Majority Leader Jason Osborne said it was “what happens when you cooperate with federal partners” instead of posturing, and pointed to the state’s 287(g) agreements as the reason New Hampshire had credibility at the table.
That is the tension for voters to weigh. Ayotte’s own account was that the federal government kept her in the dark. Her party’s account was that the win came from being a close partner to that same government.
Data centers
Data centers are the warehouse-sized buildings that house the computers running artificial intelligence and cloud services. They draw enormous amounts of electricity and water, and the question every New Hampshire town has been asking is who pays for the extra power. In some other states, existing customers have absorbed some of the cost through higher bills.
Both candidates now say they want a moratorium, meaning a temporary ban on new construction. They got there at different times and by different routes, and that is the contrast.
KELLY AYOTTE signed the law that opened the door, then reversed.
In 2025 she signed House Bill 672, which created a category of “off-grid electricity providers” allowed to generate and sell power in New Hampshire without connecting to the regulated grid.
That billmade New Hampshire the first state in the country to authorize off-grid energy production by law and industry observers described it as making the state more attractive to data centers, because a developer could bring its own power supply and skip both the permitting delays and the state’s high electricity prices.
Ayotte changed position in August. Asked about data centers at the Rotary Club of Portsmouth on August 20, she said: “It does not make sense at all to site a data center in New Hampshire.” Her reason was that the state does not have the energy for it.
On September 2, after news broke about Bow, she told reporters she would ask the Legislature for a multiyear moratorium, and that if she wins a second term her next proposed state budget will include one.
CINDE WARMINGTON called for a moratorium first, and would not wait for the Legislature.
She was the first candidate in the race to commit to one, writing in an op-ed over the summer that on day one she would issue an executive order pausing large-scale data center construction while the state evaluates whether and where they belong. A governor can issue an executive order alone; a budget moratorium requires the Legislature to agree.
During the pause, she has said she would build a regulatory framework around a “Community Bill of Rights” requiring data centers to pay their fair share for the power and public resources they use, and protecting drinking water.
Her criticism of Ayotte is that the 2025 law was the whole problem. Ayotte, she has said, signed the bill “rolling out the red carpet for data centers” and then let the bills that would have protected local control die. She has also pointed out that Ayotte accepted nearly $138,000 in campaign contributions from the data center industry while running for governor.
Where this is actually happening
Nottingham. A data center proposal drew thousands of petition signatures and packed a Planning Board meeting. The proposal was withdrawn before the meeting was even held. Warmington attended and called for a statewide pause. Nottingham voters took up a local moratorium on primary day.
Bow. In early September, Eversource and Granite Shore Power confirmed an application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a viability study on an interconnection of up to 350 megawatts at Merrimack Station, the coal-fired plant that stopped operating in September 2025 and was scheduled for retirement in 2028. A town official confirmed high-level discussions with a company. That is what prompted both candidates’ most recent statements.
What they’re criticized for
KELLY AYOTTE has drawn criticism on several fronts.
School vouchers. Her budget opened the education freedom account program to any public school student, removing the income limit that had capped eligibility at roughly $109,000 for a family of four. Critics say it pulls money from public schools and shifts the difference onto local property taxpayers. Ayotte says it gives parents a choice.
The university system. She signed a budget cutting state aid to the University System of New Hampshire by more than 15%.
The transportation plan. She vetoed the state’s Ten-Year Transportation Plan, drawing criticism from Democrats and from some Republicans. The plan is required by law, lists road and bridge projects, and positions the state to compete for federal transportation money. The Legislature later overrode her veto.
Friction with her own party. Some Republican lawmakers have said publicly that the governor does not talk to them at times. Rep. Kristin Noble told the Concord Monitor that Ayotte’s office refused to communicate with her before the governor killed a school open-enrollment bill Noble sponsored.
The youth detention center. She has faced sustained questions about conditions at the Sununu Youth Services Center and the state’s handling of abuse claims there, spanning her time as attorney general and her time as governor.
CINDE WARMINGTON has drawn criticism on one front, repeatedly.
Opioid work. She did legal and lobbying work for opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma, roughly 24 years ago, and told state lawmakers at the time that OxyContin was a “miracle drug.” Ayotte’s campaign has said the record disqualifies Warmington from the office, and the New Hampshire Republican State Committee has run billboards on it. Warmington’s campaign responded that Ayotte, as attorney general, did not join the 26 states that sued Purdue Pharma, and that Ayotte later took campaign money from members of the Sackler family, who own Purdue.
Both candidates dispute the framing of the attacks against them. You can weigh the underlying facts yourself.
What the forecasters say
Independent handicappers rate this race as leaning Republican. Cook Political Report, Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Fox News ,and Silver Bulletin list it as “Likely Republican.” Inside Elections calls it “Solid Republican.” RealClearPolitics says “Lean Republican.”
That is not a prediction. But it does mean this contest is currently seen as less competitive than New Hampshire’s US Senate race.
How to vote
The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. You can check your registration and find your polling place through the Secretary of State’s office at app.sos.nh.gov.
