Annie Kuster, one of New Hampshire’s longest-serving members of U.S. Congress, has upset a challenge by Republican Robert Burns for her seat in the state’s 2nd Congressional district.
The Associated Press called the race with Kuster garnering 56.7 percent of the vote, versus Burns’s 43.3 percent with 60 percent reporting of the votes as of 2:17 a.m. ET on Nov. 9.
The veteran politician has maintained ultra-liberal viewpoints in her representation of the “Live Free or Die” state.
She is one of Congress’ most staunch abortion rights advocate and in a radio interview with New Hampshire NPR during her campaign, tied the threat of the roll back of abortion rights to the current inflation, saying that “government-mandated” pregnancies come at a time “when families can’t afford to have another baby.”
Kuster, founder of the Women’s Fund of New Hampshire and former co-chair of the New Hampshire Women for Obama, has always had an especially large following from women with this election being no different.
She received a 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood, and among the more recent programs she has led include the Families Flourish bill which secured $500,00 in federal funding specially for New Hampshire mothers struggling with substance abuse.
She also helped form a bipartisan task force aimed at more stringent punishment for perpetrators of sexual assaults and human trafficking, a stark contrast to her lobby against a bill in the late 1990s that would have classified date rape drugs as illegal and, therefore, criminal to possess. At the time, Kuster, a licensed attorney was a lobbyist for Hoffman-LaRoche, Inc. which manufactured one of the date rape drugs.
On other fronts, Kuster was also a major supporter of the $2 trillion Build Back Better Act, which promotes more social services and climate change policies by Democrats.
Her strong support for unions won her endorsements from organizations like The Professional Firefighters of New Hampshire.
While she voted in favor of the federal police reform act named after George Floyd, taxpayer dollars she won for law enforcement agencies also made her popular among police unions during her campaign.
Just three weeks before elections, she along with the rest of New Hampshire’s Democratic delegates secured $500,000 in funding for a hiring program for state law enforcement.
Kuster has also maintained popularity among young voters in the state, likely owed in part to federal dollars she helped secure for state colleges over the years.
Prior to her election to federal office, Kuster served for 25 years in state politics, having served both in the New Hampshire House and Senate.
