Health care tells the story
Health care may show the difference between them most clearly.
Sullivan approaches it as someone who worked inside a massive public health system. She understands staffing, access, administration and the difference between announcing a benefit and making sure someone actually receives it. She supports protecting the Affordable Care Act, strengthening prescription-drug negotiations and offering a Medicare-like public insurance option.⁶
Shaheen approaches the same system from the patient’s side of the counter. She talks about insurers delaying care, corporations buying hospitals and medical practices, and artificial intelligence being used to deny coverage. Her case is blunt: health care won’t become affordable until the companies profiting from high prices and restricted care are confronted.³
Sullivan offers the clearer plan for expanding insurance coverage. Shaheen offers the sharper attack on the companies operating within the present system.
Housing, where everyone gets vague
Both candidates say New Hampshire needs more housing. Both want more construction, help for first-time buyers and limits on large investors buying homes.
The hard part comes at the planning-board meeting, when everyone agrees the state needs housing but half the room objects to apartments, smaller lots or denser neighborhoods on that particular street.
There is also a larger state-policy question neither candidate has addressed. New Hampshire assessment law generally values large rental properties as income-producing investments, not by what their individual apartments might be worth if sold as condominiums. That can leave a complex taxed at a much lower value per unit than nearby owner-occupied housing, even when the development creates substantial demands on roads, schools and municipal services. The answer isn’t simply to tax apartments as imaginary condos, but the state may need a better way to consider both realistic market value and the fiscal impact of large residential developments when deciding how fairly the local tax burden is being distributed.
Would either candidate tie federal housing or infrastructure money to local zoning reform? Would they press communities to allow accessory apartments, multifamily housing or the conversion of empty stores and offices?
Both campaigns offer ideas for building more homes. Neither has fully explained what happens when the local answer is: build them somewhere else.³ ⁶
In New Hampshire, that isn’t a minor detail. It is the housing policy.
Portsmouth, Manchester and the map
It is tempting to reduce the primary to Shaheen’s Portsmouth and Seacoast connections against Sullivan’s growing support in Manchester. The public record gives that theory some support, but not enough to declare the map settled.
Shaheen’s political identity is deeply rooted in Portsmouth. She served in city government, worked on health and environmental issues and has received support from local officials elsewhere on the Seacoast, including Dover Mayor Bob Carrier.⁷
Sullivan also lives in Portsmouth, but she has made a conspicuous effort to build strength in Manchester. Her campaign announced endorsements from 38 city officials, including majorities of the Board of Aldermen and School Committee.⁸
That doesn’t prove Manchester belongs to Sullivan or the Seacoast belongs to Shaheen. Endorsements aren’t votes. What they do show is how the two campaigns are trying to assemble their coalitions.
Shaheen begins with the stronger New Hampshire name and a long Portsmouth history. Sullivan has the money and organization to prevent familiarity from settling the race before voters take a closer look. She has repeatedly led the Democratic field in fundraising.⁹