New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte said Wednesday she will support Donald Trump, the brash New York billionaire who solidified his position as the near-certain Republican presidential nominee on Tuesday night.
“As she’s said from the beginning, Kelly plans to support the nominee,” Ayotte’s spokeswoman Liz Johnson told WMUR.
Ayotte vowed to support the eventual GOP nominee back in December, but the incumbent Republican senator has distanced herself from Trump since the beginning of the year when her re-election contest against New Hampshire’s Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan began to heat up.
Just last week, the hawkish Republican senator said she didn’t listen to Trump’s foreign policy speech in Washington, during which he promised to get the U.S. “out of the nation building business” and outlined a less interventionist approach to foreign affairs.
Johnson declined to say whether Ayotte would campaign alongside Trump in her home state if he offered.
The Ayotte campaign’s confirmed support for the Republican nominee comes hours after Hassan’s campaign sought to link the GOP senator to Trump in a negative fashion.
“Ayotte and Trump are clearly in agreement when it comes to critical issues such as their desire to defund Planned Parenthood, undermine Roe v. Wade, and obstruct the Supreme Court confirmation process,” Hassan spokesman Aaron Jacobs said in a statement Tuesday night.
“All Granite Staters should be concerned that Ayotte has pledged to support Trump as the nominee, even though national security experts and members of both parties have condemned his foreign policy positions as dangerous to our country’s vital interests,” Jacobs added.
Ayotte leads Hassan 45 to 41 percent in the latest RealClearPolitics polling average of New Hampshire voters.
