“Too Much History”: New CNN Report Shows Voters Still Don’t Trust Kelly Ayotte

“Too Much History”: New CNN Report Shows Voters Still Don’t Trust Kelly Ayotte

A new report from CNN highlights how New Hampshire voters still don’t trust Kelly Ayotte after she went back on her word to back Trump, and has spent her campaign for governor lying about her record of attacking abortion rights.

As the report notes, despite the millions Ayotte has spent on TV ads trying to mislead voters about her votes for a national abortion ban, to make IVF and birth control less accessible, and to defund Planned Parenthood, voters still say they “don’t trust her, ” and that Joyce Craig is the only candidate in the race “advocating for women.”

When asked about voters’ concerns, “Ayotte’s campaign did not return CNN’s requests for comment.”

Read more from CNN on how New Hampshire voters know they can’t trust Kelly Ayotte:

• The last time Kelly Ayotte was on the ballot with Donald Trump, she lost.
• In her bid for reelection in 2016, Ayotte withdrew her backing for Trump after the emergence of the “Access Hollywood” tape a month before the election. The decision was widely thought to have contributed to her narrow loss to Democrat Maggie Hassan because it depressed support for her among Trump’s base.
• This year, she’s backing the former president.
• Ayotte’s evolution on Trump has been a source of Democratic attacks – part of a broader narrative they’re trying to paint about her credibility.
• “Now that Kelly Ayotte’s running for a third time, she’ll say anything to win,” the narrator in a New Hampshire Democratic Party ad says over footage of her 2016 comments about the former president.
• Democrats are making the same argument about Ayotte’s stance on abortion, pointing to certain votes in the Senate, including several to defund Planned Parenthood, and her service as a guide or “sherpa” through the Senate confirmation process for Neil Gorsuch, one of the Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
• “Too much history with Kelly Ayotte,” 40-year-old Arthur Lahey of Manchester said while walking down Elm Street.
• “We all know what they’re doing,” [Ayotte] says in another spotresponding to her Democratic opponents’ attacks. “Politicizing abortion to win votes. It’s wrong, and it’s not New Hampshire.”
• Those assertions don’t ring true to Bill Lonergan, 62, who was out in Manchester on a recent Friday during a pause in the rain. “I’m a little nervous about Ayotte on abortion,” he said, holding his young granddaughter. “I don’t trust her,” he added, arguing that her position on not signing abortion restrictions sounded too carefully worded to be genuine.
• Ayotte’s campaign did not return CNN’s requests for comment.

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