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Former Trump press staffer Karoline Leavitt has won the Republican primary in New Hampshire’s first congressional district, according to a race call by The Associated Press.
Leavitt, 25, is only the second member of Generation Z to win a House primary and the first Republican. The 2022 midterm season is the first time the eldest Gen Zers are eligible to run for the U.S. House of Representatives, where 25 is the minimum age to serve.
Leavitt will now face off against incumbent Democrat Chris Pappas, 42, to represent the district – a toss-up seat Republicans hope to flip as part of their goal of winning back the majority of seats in the House.
« They said I was too young, we could never raise the money to compete, and that we could never beat a former Republican nominee, » Leavitt said in her victory speech Tuesday night.
« Over the last year we were outspent but we were not outworked, » she exclaimed. « No way! »
Leavitt defeated former Trump state department official Matt Mowers, 33, who ran for the seat in 2020 and lost to Pappas by five percentage points.
Mowers released a statement in which he pledged to « never stop fighting » for middle class families.
Though Mowers narrowly led in polls against Leavitt ahead of the primary, the most recent University of New Hampshire survey added uncertainty, finding that nearly a fourth of respondents were still undecided just two weeks from the election.