Hal Rafter Loses State Rep Seat in Rematch
Northwood and Nottingham voters decided very differently this year in a rematch of last year’s special election between Democrat Hal Rafter and Republican James Guzofski to fill the State Representative seat vacated due to Republican Ben Bartlett’s resignation. The results were also substantially different from the 2022 general election.
Let’s look at the 2022 results first.
Northwood
Nottingham
It was a close election. Rafter received a total of 2,308 votes, being edged out by just 19 votes by Brouillard at 2,327. Bartlett received only 55 more votes than Rafter, at 2,363. Tudor received 106 more votes, at 2,414.
For the special election, the Democrats nominated Hal Rafter, who had been narrowly defeated the year before. The Republicans nominated James Guzofski, who had not previously run for State Representative. The result gave Rafter a compelling 12-point margin of victory.
Rafter: 1,571 55.89%
Guzofski: 1,240 44.11%
The NH Democratic Party gloated that one of their MAGA opponents had been obliterated, and the NH Journal described Guzofski as “a lousy candidate.”
The special election received national attention as an indication of a shift of the electorate towards the Democrats and a harbinger of the 2024 general election. That sure turned out to be wrong.
Surprisingly - given his recent resounding defeat for the same office - the Republicans again nominated Guzofski for the 2024 general election in which all three State Representative seats were up for re-election. Nominated along with Guzofski were incumbent Paul Tudor and newcomer Scott Bryer, who replaced Jake Brouillard on the ticket. Brouillard had chosen not to run for re-election.
The Democrats again nominated Rafter, along with two newcomers: Charlotte Fyfe and Pamela Sanderson.
Northwood
Nottingham
Republicans
Bryer 3,336
Guzofski 3,192
Tudor 3,085
Democrats
Fyfe 2,822
Rafter 2,956
Sanderson 2,801
Despite his 12 point margin of victory over Guzofski just the year before, Rafter this time lost to Guzofski by 236 votes - an 8 point margin. The other Democrats on the ballot fared even worse, allowing the Republicans to sweep all three seats, and by a substantially greater margin than they achieved in 2022.
I will speculate on what this means.
There appears to have been a coat-tail effect from up-ballot races, particularly for President.
Turnout appears to matter a lot. The greater the turnout, the better the Republicans do. When turnout is particularly low, as it was for the 2023 special election, the Democrats seem to have the advantage of having a larger core of highly dedicated voters.
One unique factor of the 2023 special election had been Bartlett’s failure to serve, showing up at the legislature for only a single vote and missing the following 134 votes. Perhaps the voters wished to punish the Republicans for this. A year later this issue has been forgotten.
As for the issues, the Democrats all campaigned heavily on pro-abortion stances. Of the three Republicans, only Guzofski was anti-abortion. It would appear, at least in Nottingham and Northwood, that abortion is currently not the motivating issue that the Democrats thought it was, perhaps because the voters believed that the NH Republican party overall had no interest in changing the state’s current abortion laws.
As for the other issues about state government, Nottingham and Northwood voters clearly voiced that they prefer the positions of the Republicans over those of the Democrats.
