When Gov. Maggie Hassan announced her run for the U.S. Senate on Monday, she framed herself as a fighter against “special interests” in her campaign launch video.
Gov. Hassan’s record, however, tells a different story.
WMUR’s John DiStaso reports today that leading abortion rights group EMILYs List is all-in for Hassan…again:
Gov. Maggie Hassan Thursday will pick up her first national endorsement for her run for the U.S. Senate, WMUR.com has learned, and it’s a familiar one for her.
EMILY’s List, a political action committee promoting pro-choice Democratic women for office, is backing Hassan, as it did for her two races for governor.
In case there was any doubt that EMILYs List holds significant sway over Hassan, she put that to rest at a 2013 event in Washington, D.C., saying she and her fellow Democrats “answer to the name Emily”:
HASSAN: My name is Governor Maggie Hassan. I serve the granite state along with our Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen and our Democratic Congresswomen Carol Shea Porter and Annie Mclane Kuster. It is fair to say that all of us answer to the name ‘Emily.’
EMILY’s List wasn’t the only interest group to prop up Hassan in her 2012 and 2014 campaigns. In 2012, liberal special interests dropped $11 million into the race, millions more than was spent for her opponent. New Hampshire Public Radio reported on the deluge of outside cash:
But Hassan’s road to the corner office was paved predominantly by a handful of political groups that combined to spend more than five times as much as the Democratic candidate’s official campaign.
The so-called independent groups, which are prohibited from coordinating their activities with candidates, pumped more than $11 million into the gubernatorial race on Hassan’s behalf…
It appears Hassan’s interactions with liberal special interests haven’t been confined to her campaigns; they seemingly followed her into the governor’s office. Newly released documents indicate that Hassan’s office was receiving talking points and polling information from the Climate Action Campaign, a liberal environmental group promoting new EPA regulations. Email records show Hassan’s chief of staff, Pamela Walsh, was sent the pro-EPA material from a policy aide to Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee. Hassan later issued a statement supporting the EPA regulations.