MANCHESTER, N.H., Sept. 12 — Rep. Chris Pappas, a moderate Democrat with deep Granite State roots, has clinched his party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate, setting up a November showdown that could decide control of the upper chamber. Pappas, 46, took roughly 63 percent of the vote in Tuesday’s primary, according to results reported by his campaign and state party officials. He defeated Dr. Karishma Manzur, a medical scientist and local Democratic Socialists of America member whose campaign centered on the war in Gaza.
The primary laid bare a widening fault line inside the Democratic Party over Israel. Manzur repeatedly accused Israel of genocide and claimed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu controls nearly 90 percent of Congress and the White House.
She branded Pappas “AIPAC’s emissary,” and billboards attacking his ties to the pro-Israel lobby went up in his hometown. Pappas has not budged from his pro-Israel record — he voted to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib over her use of the phrase “from the river to the sea” — but he has shifted his tone toward Jerusalem’s right-wing government. He has said Netanyahu “has to go” and is not a reliable U.S. partner.
In the House, he voted “present” on a proposal to strip $3.3 billion in aid to Israel, and he has pledged to back restrictions on heavy bombs and certain military equipment if elected to the Senate. Strategically, the general election is one of the most consequential on the 2026 map.
Democrats must hold the seat Shaheen is vacating, and Pappas will face Republican John Sununu, a former senator and the son and brother of two former governors. The race pits two of the state’s best-known political names against each other. Pappas’s political biography is woven into New Hampshire’s Democratic establishment.
He volunteered on Jeanne Shaheen’s first gubernatorial campaign in 1996 at age 16, later served in the state Legislature and on the executive council, and was elected to Congress in 2018. If he wins in November, he would be the first openly gay man to serve in the U.S. Senate.
His family’s Manchester restaurant, the Puritan Backroom, claims to have invented the chicken tender in 1974 — his grandfather Charlie Pappas is credited with the creation, and the city has declared itself the “Chicken Tender Capital of the World.” What this signals for the broader stakes is clear enough: the primary was a test of how far the party’s Israel debate has moved, and Pappas represents the more Israel-friendly wing holding the line.
The question now is whether that positioning — and his distance from Netanyahu — can hold in a general election where the Senate majority hangs in the balance.
