As the U.S. Senate race in New Hampshire remains under heavy watch in the final days before the midterms, a third candidate in the race who has received relatively little attention may very well decide the outcome of the high-profile race.
Jeremy Kauffman, CEO of a blockchain-based digital sharing network and a top advocate of New Hampshire’s Free State Project, is running as a Libertarian against Democrat incumbent Maggie Hassan and newcomer Don Bolduc, who has quickly risen to national prominence within the Republican Party.
Depending on which poll you believe, the retired Army Brigadier General is either marginally leading Hassan or closely trailing her.
The biggest margin projected came Thursday when the University of Massachusetts Lowell Center for Public Opinion released results of a random polling of 600 New Hampshire residents showing Bolduc behind Hassan by 10 points.
Just days earlier, St. Anselm College’s latest poll put Bolduc one percentage point ahead of Hassan while a recent Emerson College poll put Hassan 10 points ahead of Bolduc.
The week prior, Bolduc released his own poll conducted by GOP pollster Fabrizio, Less and Associates, which had him two points ahead of Hassan. In an analysis of all polling results, Real Clear Politics concluded Hassan had an overall one percent edge over Bolduc.
Enter Kauffman, who is forecast by some of New Hampshire’s most influential Republicans to garner as much as 6 percent of the electorate vote.
“I suspect Jeremy is going to, by the very least, cross the four percent range,” J.R. Hoell, a founder of New Hampshire’s largest Republican organization told The Epoch Times. “I predict he could get as high as 6 percent.”
Hoell said it’s hard to say which candidate—Bolduc or Hassan—will be the most impacted by votes drawn by Kauffman.
While Hoell, who now serves as secretary-treasurer of his group RebuildNH, is a staunch Republican, he is not fully convinced that Bolduc is the right candidate to represent New Hampshire, citing what he sees as Bolduc’s overplay of his military background and underplay of issues specific to New Hampshire.
Aaron Day, a past chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus who ran as an Independent in the 2016 race for New Hampshire governor, recently wrote on Twitter that he hopes the 17,000 New Hampshire residents who voted for him in 2016 vote for Kauffman instead of Bolduc.
In a state with a little over one million registered voters, those numbers have proven significant. When Hassan ran in 2016, she won by only 1,014 votes, which translates to a winning margin of a little over 0.14 percent. Currently, there are 1,154 registered voters identified as third-party voters. Adding to the significance is the 41 percent of Granite State voters who remain undeclared prior to September’s primaries.
Both Day and Hoell say they are especially concerned that Bolduc’s first response to the Ukraine invasion by Russia was to send U.S. troops into combat there and has also called for arms against China.
“We have been doing military actions without that authorization since World War II. We need someone who is going to be careful about jumping into wars,” said Hoell, who noted he has a son who is a second lieutenant in the Army.
Bolduc’s campaign has repeatedly ignored requests for an interview with The Epoch Times.
Kauffman has drawn some quiet criticism from Republicans for serving as a potential spoiler in the Bolduc race, which recently garnered $1 million worth of TV ad campaign support from the National Republican Senatorial Committee and endorsements from big-name Republicans including former President Donald Trump.
In a Nov. 6 interview with The Epoch Times, Kauffman said he definitely does not see himself as a spoiler in the U.S. Senate race, but more as an option to New Hampshire voters, especially Republicans.
“No one owes their vote to bad Republicans,” said Kauffman who believes Bolduc’s biggest appeal of being anti-establishment has already faded with him flipping on his once staunch position the 2016 presidential election was stolen, partnering with establishment Republicans and their money, and making television appearances that seem limited to Fox News.
The 38-year-old Manchester father of three young boys, with another child on the way, said he also wants to appeal to Democrats who are libertarian-leaning, which is the basis of the Free State Project. Started in 2001, the grassroots movement endeavors to draw at least 20,000 “freedom lovers” to New Hampshire to preserve its “Live Free or Die” motto.
Kauffman said he would never have in fact considered running if either party fielded a libertarian-leaning candidate.
He said he was asked to run when it appeared the U.S. Senate race had been taken over by people outside of New Hampshire—and away from the reality that Granite staters, not national politicians or the media, should be shaping the right candidate.
Kauffman himself sees Bolduc as “overly authoritarian” with his tough stances on immigration, drugs, and foreign conflict. “He has a militaristic solution for everything,” said Kauffman.
With little mention of Hassan in any of the state libertarian campaigning, it appears their main target is potential Bolduc votes in the U.S. Senate race.
On another military-related front, state libertarians have been sharply criticized for partnering with former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who publicly stated support for Russian President Vladmir Putin’s rationale for attacking Ukraine. Immediately following her departure from the Democratic Party, Gabbard announced her support for Bolduc.
Reed Coverdale, host of the podcast “The Naturalist Capitalist Free America,” claimed that Bolduc, who he called a “war pig,” backed out of an early promise to appear on his show, saying his campaign told him Bolduc was “just too busy.”
“I guess I'll have to go to one of these campaign event and ask Tulsi why she’s endorsing a war pig and ask Don why the hell I should vote for someone who wants to put America last,” wrote Coverdale on Facebook.
Democrats also took aim at Bolduc over the partnership.
“By campaigning with a pro-Putin, extreme conspiracy theorist like Gabbard, Don Bolduc is making only more clear how out-of-step he is with New Hampshire,” Ray Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said in a written statement.
Kauffman’s company, LBRY, combines the complexities of such new contemporary monetization like bitcoin and the intricacies of digital technology into a user-friendly platform.
Hoell said one thing he’s sure of is that New Hampshire voters are not voting Democrat.
The father of three, who was in the news earlier this year after state child protection workers tried to take his teenage son months after he gave him Ivermectin, is campaigning for a return to the New Hampshire House where he served for 8-years before taking hiatus.
Reactions from passersby to a recent sign-waving campaign he and other Republican candidates held told him everything he needs to know, he said.
“We had Amazon truck drivers and U.S. Postal workers honking horns and giving us thumbs, he said, ”this is not typical people voting Republican.”
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