ICYMI: Chris Pappas Underscores Granite State Roots, Delivering for New Hampshire in Substack Live with Chris Cillizza
MANCHESTER, N.H. — In case you missed it, Congressman Chris Pappas joined Chris Cillizza for a wide-ranging Substack live interview discussing Pappas’s campaign for U.S. Senate, his focus on making life more affordable for Granite Staters, and Pappas’s bipartisan record of delivering for New Hampshire.
You can read the Substack recap here, watch the full conversation here, and read key excerpts below:
Accountability and Affordability
- PAPPAS: “Donald Trump thinks affordability is a hoax. He thinks inflation is great. He’s neglecting the lived experiences of people, and I think they’re just clamoring to have their voice heard right now. I think there’s a lot out there in the conversation. It’s often hard to distill, but I would say that accountability and affordability are the two main streams.”
Delivering Bipartisan Wins for New Hampshire
- PAPPAS: “I think we owe it to the people we represent to try to move the ball forward, and look, it doesn’t mean you have to back off of your values, what your state believes in, the big items that you’re fighting for. But if you can get something done for veterans and prevent them from being foreclosed on, then you should take the opportunity like I did last year to work on a bill and get it through in a bipartisan fashion.”
- PAPPAS: “We’re doing some things right now that are actually positive, that don’t get a lot of attention. We’ve got a bipartisan transportation bill that’s moving to succeed the infrastructure law. We’ve got a housing bill now. There’s agreement on it, and it certainly is just scratching the surface of what we need to do in terms of national housing policy. But there’s some really good provisions in there that are going to help my state and my communities make some progress. This shouldn’t be about just owning the other side and running out the clock. We’ve got a responsibility to do some things in the here and now, because some of these issues just can’t wait.”
John Sununu is Running to Serve the Trump Agenda
- PAPPAS: “John Sununu decided he wanted a career in politics again, and he decided in order to do that he needed to seek out Trump’s endorsement. And he got that complete and total endorsement. I think voters of New Hampshire are going to want a little bit more independence than that.”
- PAPPAS: “[Sununu] was defeated because he was down the line for a very unpopular Republican president. Supported the war in the Middle East, supported policies to give away huge tax breaks to those at the top while voting against the interests of working class people, and so he’s repeating the same pattern right now.”
The Situation is Washington is “Ridiculous”
- PAPPAS: “The situation in Washington right now is — it’s ridiculous. I mean, it’s so incredibly dysfunctional and chaotic and there are those actors, including the President, that want to make it that way, so people will get disoriented, and they’ll be able to grab onto more power. But people want to see the fight, they want to know that you’re not satisfied with the way that things are, whether that is in our political system in Washington, or whether that’s out on our Main Streets, in terms of our economic way of life.”
- PAPPAS: “We have to focus on economic fairness, on supporting working families, on rebuilding the middle class, that has to be the centerpiece of the Democratic Party. I think in this environment where people are paying far too much for housing and health care, this reckless war that everyone I talk to opposes, and they’re seeing the pinch in terms of high gas prices. We’ve got to respond to that. We’ve got an opportunity now to talk to voters that are well beyond the traditional Democratic coalition, and so this is a moment of remaking the brand of the Democratic Party nationally […] It’s going to come from states like New Hampshire. We get to decide what’s best for our communities and what’s best for the future.”
What it Means to be a “New Hampshire” Democrat
- PAPPAS: “When you’re a Democrat in New Hampshire, you show up, and you’re different than the national party. For me, it’s about bringing my experiences to bear from the small business world, focusing on how we can get stuff done, but not backing down from the big fights of the day. Whether that’s reproductive freedom, economic fairness, making this country more fair and more just.”
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