As New Hampshire Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas makes his bid for the Senate, the Republican opposition has picked up a potential line of attack — his vote against the GOP-led budget reconciliation bill.
The measure is quickly becoming a focal point in the nascent campaign for control of Congress next year, with party committees and outside groups announcing ads based on how members voted when the House narrowly passed the bill on May 22. Pappas and other Democrats have focused their messaging around proposed cuts to Medicaid, while Republicans are playing up provisions that would make some expiring tax cuts permanent. Within hours of passage, the Republican National Senatorial Committee blasted Pappas on social media for having “just voted against the largest middle class tax cut in history.”
Getting to Congress: Pappas earned a bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University, crediting his interest in politics to having grown up seeing presidential candidates make campaign stops at his family’s restaurant in Manchester. After graduating in 2002, Pappas won a seat in the New Hampshire legislature, serving two terms in the state House. He was twice elected treasurer of Hillsborough County before getting a seat on the state’s Executive Council, a body within the governor’s office where each member represents one-fifth of New Hampshire’s population. The retirement of Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter prompted a race for her swing-district House seat in the 2018 midterms. Pappas took a clear lead in the primary and went on to defeat Republican Eddie Edwards by 8 percentage points.
His District: Roughly covering the southeastern corner of New Hampshire, the 1st District runs west from the coast to Manchester and north through the rural countryside bordering Maine. Manchester, the state’s largest city, grew in the 19th century as a major textile manufacturing hub and today draws residents and business for its low taxes and proximity to Boston. Pease Air National Guard Base, home of the 157th Air Refueling Wing, is just north of the historic harbor city of Portsmouth. The main campus of the University of New Hampshire is not far away in Durham. New Hampshire’s libertarian tradition informs the district’s center-leaning voters, who sent the moderate Pappas back to office in 2024 by an 8-point margin.
What’s New: In February, the House passed a measure backed by Pappas that would require the federal government to conduct targeted outreach to small businesses in rural areas that may be in need of aid after a federal disaster declaration. Pappas sponsored a version of the bill in the 118th Congress, where it passed the House by voice vote but did not advance in the Senate.
Point of Interest: Pappas’ father, Charlie Pappas, has staked a claim as the inventor of the chicken tender, telling The New York Times that a battered tenderloin first met hot oil at the family restaurant, the Puritan Backroom, in 1974. In celebration of the elder Pappas’ innovation, the city of Manchester formally declared itself the “chicken tender capital of the world” in a 2023 proclamation.
Mary Ellen McIntire and Daniela Altimari contributed to this report.
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