Vice President Pence visits New Hampshire to file on Trump’s behalf for primary

Vice President Mike Pence will be in New Hampshire on Thursday to file the Trump-Pence ticket for the first-in-the-nation primary.

The second-in-command to President Trump will visit the State House late Thursday morning to participate in the Granite State rite of passage.

He will then speak at “Politics & Eggs” — another primary season staple, hosted by the New England Council and the New Hampshire Institute of Politics — at 1 p.m. at Saint Anselm College in Manchester.

Pence’s visit comes amid the parade of Democratic presidential hopefuls who have descended on Concord to submit their names for the February 2020 primary ballot. He was preceded by Democratic U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Michael Bennet on Wednesday, and will be followed by former Vice President Joe Biden, entrepreneur Andrew Yang and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker on Friday.

New Hampshire is a key battleground state the GOP believes it can flip in 2020. Trump won the first-in-the-nation primary handily in 2016, but narrowly lost to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the November election, trailing the Democrat by fewer than 3,000 votes.

Pence’s visit will bring the fanfare as Trump’s reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee ramp up their efforts in the Granite State with less than a year to go until the general election. Their efforts so far have included holding volunteer training sessions and staging protests outside the events of the president’s key Democratic rivals.

A senior campaign official said Pence will likely return to New Hampshire often as the campaign goes on. Pence’s last trip to the state, a July appearance at Granite Recovery Centers in Salem, N.H., in his official capacity as vice president and not as a campaign event, was abruptly canceled.

Trump last came to New Hampshire in August, holding a packed and boisterous rally at the Southern New Hampshire University Arena in Manchester.

The president has built his reelection bid on a strong economy, of which his campaign says New Hampshire has benefited — with a low unemployment rate of 2.5% and more than 17,000 new jobs.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2WZXVaF