Campaign

Gail Huff Brown, wife of Scott Brown, jumps into congressional race in New Hampshire

by Max Greenwood - 10/05/21 2:15 PM ET

Gail Huff Brown, the wife of former ambassador and Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), is officially kicking off her bid for Congress in New Hampshire.

Huff Brown, a former news anchor, had been expected for weeks to formally announce a bid for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District. She filed paperwork last month with the Federal Election Commission to challenge Rep. Chris Pappas (D) next year.

She made it official on Tuesday, announcing in a video that she was stepping into the race.

“I worry about the direction we’re headed,” Huff Brown said. “I worry about skyrocketing debt, public welfare programs that discourage hard work, and I worry about failed immigration policies based on partisan politics rather than compassion and safety and prosperity of Americans.”

“Congress is broken,” she added. “Chris Pappas doesn’t represent our Granite State values. We need a serious candidate with real life experience running for the right reasons — to get America back on track. And today, I’m excited to share with you that I am launching a campaign for Congress here in New Hampshire.”

Huff Brown also mentioned her husband’s ties to former President Trump, noting that he served as the U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. Scott Brown served as a senator from Massachusetts for just shy of three years. He was ousted by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in 2012.

Huff Brown joins an increasingly crowded field of Republicans vying to take on Pappas next year. Matt Mowers, a former White House aide in the Trump administration who lost to Pappas in 2020, is running again. Karoline Leavitt, another former White House adviser during the Trump administration, has also thrown her hat into the ring.

State Rep. Tim Baxter (R) is seeking the GOP nomination as well.

New Hampshire’s 1st District is a perennial battleground, though President Biden carried it by a relatively comfortable 6-point margin in 2020. By comparison, the district voted for former President Obama by a 1-point margin in 2012 before Trump carried it by a single point in 2016.

Still, the district could change quite a bit between now and the 2022 midterm elections: The Republican-controlled legislature is responsible for redrawing the state’s congressional lines.