The identity crisis gripping the Republican Party nationwide is especially evident across New England.

Consider:  for now, the six-state region is home to three of the nation’s most popular governors:  Phil Scott of Vermont, Charles Baker of Massachusetts and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.  All three are Republicans, and their success proves that Republicans can win – even in this very Democratic corner of the nation.

But all three are centrists, and as such none are particularly popular among the region’s most devoted Republicans.  In Vermont, where the GOP is weak, the party seems to grudgingly accept that Scott’s ability to work across the aisle is a major asset.  In Massachusetts, too, Republicans hold little power, but the state party largely turned against Gov. Baker, who then decided not to seek re-election.

Only in New Hampshire, where the two major parties are more evenly matched, is the state GOP staying more or less in step with its Republican governor.  Even here, though, the party’s voters rejected Gov. Sununu’s counsel and nominated hardline candidates for Congress, who are closer to former president Donald Trump and who tend to shun Sununu’s more moderate positions and policies.

Roots of the Republican Schism

The sharp divide between moderate and conservative Republicans in New England threatens to further weaken the party, even in races that were shaping up to be competitive.

This schism did not start with Trump’s presidency, or with his false claim to have won re-election in 2020.  The national GOP’s drift away from its “Yankee Republican” roots started decades before “Trumpism” redefined what it means to be a conservative Republican.

But Scott, Baker and Sununu are relics from an age when Republicans hewed to the political center, mixing fiscal conservatism with more middle-of-the-road stances on social issues and foreign policy.  In an era where even local races get overwhelmed and redefined by national political issues, fewer centrist Republicans are able to build coalitions large enough to compete across entire states or congressional districts.

Baker Bows Out

Massachusetts provides a shining example.  In this year’s Morning Consult ranking of U.S. governors by popularity, Gov. Baker tops the list with a 74% approval rating.  But Baker declined to seek re-election this year.  Campaigning for a third term, he said, would distract from the more important task of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was unclear, however, whether even a Republican moderate as popular as Baker could win nomination in 2022, after that party veered right under President Trump.  Baker refused to vote for Trump, both in 2016 and 2020, and during that period his allies lost control of the party apparatus to a faction more loyal to the former president.

That question won’t be answered this year.  Once Baker withdrew from the governor’s race, it shifted instantly from “safe Republican” into the Democratic column.  The GOP proceeded to nominate former state representative Geoff Diehl, a leader of a party faction sharply critical of Baker.  Diehl, however, remains a decided underdog to the state’s Democratic attorney general, Maura Healey, who on the campaign trail speaks far more kindly of the Republican governor than her opponent does.

Just weeks before Election Day, polls still show Healey with a comfortable 23-point lead, with only 11% undecided.  Meanwhile, Democrats already account for the entire Massachusetts congressional delegation and hold smothering majorities of 127-31-1 and 36-3 in the state House and Senate.  That dominance will almost certainly continue into 2023, when – barring a miracle in November – Democrats are projected to hold every statewide office as well.

Scott and Sununu Cling to Office

To the north, Republican governors Scott of Vermont and Sununu of New Hampshire appear poised to win re-election handily, but perhaps with fewer allies in their own party.

Scott built his political career as a politician known for working across the aisle – which turned out to be an important skill in Vermont.  As in Massachusetts, the congressional delegation here is 100% Democratic, led by popular senators Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy.  Leahy is stepping down this year, but another Democrat, Rep. Peter Welch, is poised to take his place after serving 14 years in the House.  Becca Bailint, the Democratic state Senate president pro tempore, scored a commanding victory in the primary against Lt. Gov. Molly Gray and is now strongly favored in a three-way race for Welch’s House seat.

Unlike in Vermont, where Republicans amount to less than 1/3 of the state House and 1/4 of the Senate, New Hampshire’s more competitive Republican Party currently controls the state legislature.  In a state known for broad swings from one election to the next, the GOP today holds 13 seats in the 24-member Senate and 178 in the huge 400-member House, putting Gov. Sununu at the head of a state Republican trifecta, even while all its representatives in Congress are Democrats.

One might think this would position Sununu’s party for a November sweep, especially given President Joe Biden’s current low approval ratings.  But Republicans went “full MAGA” in the party’s primary, and in each congressional race it nominated candidates who most fully embraced Trump and “Trumpism,” including the former president’s debunked claim that he “won” the 2020 election.

It didn’t have to be this way.  Most pundits expected that Sununu would run for Senate in 2022 and coast to victory over incumbent Democratic senator (and former governor) Maggie Hassan.  Instead, Sununu’s decision to remain as governor may in the end rob the GOP of its chance to seize control of the U.S. Senate.  In Sununu’s absence, his party nominated former Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who Sununu himself had denounced before the primary as “a conspiracy theorist candidate” whom “nobody takes seriously.”  (Sununu once had also joked that former president Trump was “crazy,” which probably did not help when he unsuccessfully lobbied Trump to endorse Bolduc’s principal Republican opponent.)

Since the primary, many prominent Republicans have decided Bolduc’s race is a lost cause.  The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and the Senate Leadership Fund, controlled by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have now both pulled their ads and redirected funds to other Senate races that are presumedly more competitive.

In the state’s congressional districts, too, Republicans probably sabotaged efforts to win back two House seats by nominating extreme-right candidates.  Karoline Leavitt and Bob Burns both won nomination to Congress by running to the right of candidates more palatable to independents and mainstream Republicans.  Both of these congressional races could have been toss-ups in November, but as in the Senate contest the nomination of hardliners made the re-election of incumbent Democratic Reps. Chris Pappas and Annie Kuster far more likely.

An Anomaly in Rhode Island

The one major New England race in which Republicans have a good shot of winning is in Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District, now served by retiring 11-term congressman Jim Langevin.  Here Allan Fung, a popular former mayor who twice ran for governor as a centrist, was unopposed in the Republican primary in a district that is more conservative than Langevin’s long tenure would suggest.  Both Fung and his Democratic opponent, General Treasurer Seth Magaziner, are well-known to voters, but Magaziner has one big disadvantage:  he moved into Langevin’s district only after the congressman announced plans to retire.  To put it differently, Magaziner may live in Cranston now, but his opponent has been filling potholes there for years.

This race is tight – the most recent polls show Fung with a 6- to 8-point lead – but forecasters now consider it the GOP’s best hope to flip a New England congressional district on Nov. 8.

Other Major Races

The other three gubernatorial contests in New England have little in common.

Maine’s also features a “MAGA” Republican, but in this case it’s a particularly well-known one.  Former governor Paul LePage, who claimed to be “Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular,” petulantly departed for Florida after serving two terms as governor of Maine.  His Democratic successor, former attorney general Janet Mills, so angered LePage by undoing his policies that LePage returned in 2022 to try to win back his old job.  Although a sharp ideological divide remains between these two longtime adversaries, the outcome of this race may hinge as much on personalities as on party politics.  Both LePage and Mills set successive records for the most votes received in Maine gubernatorial contests, indicating that both are, or at least were, popular with voters.

Connecticut, too, has a gubernatorial rematch this year.  Incumbent Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont is again being challenged by Republican businessman Bob Stefanowski, as well as by three third-party candidates.  Lamont is strongly favored to win.

In Rhode Island, Democrat Dan McKee served quietly for six years as lieutenant governor under Gina Raimondo before ascending to the governor’s office once Raimondo was selected as President Biden’s Secretary of Commerce.  In his short stint as governor, he has struggled to define himself as a deserving steward of his new office, yet he is favored to defeat his Republican rival, health care executive Ashley Kalus, whom he has mocked as an outsider, if not a carpetbagger.  For the past decade Kalus mostly resided in Illinois, yet she was registered to vote in Florida when she began her gubernatorial campaign in Rhode Island.

Most of the other congressional races in the region are unlikely to produce surprises.  Of these, the tightest is apt to be in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, where incumbent Democratic Rep. Jared Golden is engaged in a rematch with former Republican congressman Bruce Poliquin, whom Golden narrowly unseated in 2018 thanks to Maine’s unusual ranked-choice voting process.  Golden won re-election in 2020, despite the fact that then-President Trump outpolled Joe Biden in the same district that year.

Down-ballot Effects

Like much of the rest of the nation, New England is awash in political advertising this year, most of it funded by outside super PACs trumpeting national rather than local issues.

This is likely to have the effect of “nationalizing” even local races, and in a few cases it could determine party control of state legislatures.  Maine Democrats have controlled the state House for 14 years and the Senate for 4, but forecasters such as Sabato’s Crystal Ball now rate both chambers as toss-ups in 2022, suggesting that Republicans could flip either or both.

For a clearer example of a down-ballot effect of the Republican schism in particular, consider the volatile New Hampshire General Court, where Democrats flipped both chambers in 2018 before Republicans flipped them back in 2020.  Although the GOP’s 13-10 margin in the Senate seems comfortable enough, forecasters now rate control of the House as a toss-up, in light of the “candidate quality” issues in the state’s higher-profile U.S. House and Senate contests.

In the other four New England states, continued Democratic control of both chambers remains secure.