Sullivan running for Senate to restore election integrity

New Hampshire Rep. Jared Sullivan (D-Bethlehem) said he’s running for Senate to restore accountability and respect to government, and faith in the system to weary voters.

Sullivan is challenging a pool of candidates — Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) among them — for the seat in the U.S. Senate which will soon be vacated by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH).

In an interview Tuesday afternoon, Sullivan emphasized the importance of achieving comprehensive immigration and campaign finance reform. An economist by training, he said his experiences in the Statehouse and in his career allow him to meet what he sees as a defining moment for the country. 

When rioters entered the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, Sullivan was at his computer. He said he was shocked by the events of the day, and realized Americans had a distinct lack of faith in the political systems and the legitimacy of its elections. 

“We’ve gotten to a place where people have lost faith in our democracy, in our government, that they’re willing to overturn an election, violently, if they can,” Sullivan said, putting it next to the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City as two defining moments in his life that influenced his perspective.  

“Where do we go from here?” he wondered. 

Following redistricting in 2022, Sullivan entered the race for the Statehouse and won. He won again in 2024, and said his distaste for political attacks between opponents is something he carries with him today.  

“Our incentive structure is set up that way, and so I started thinking a lot about how to improve that and I’ve done a lot of research on that,” he said. “We need to have independent redistricting instead of gerrymandered districts, we need to have money out of politics, because then you’re not responsive to the people, you’re responsive to the biggest donors, and you need to have things like ranked-choice voting and open primaries. Those would all be good reforms that I think would take the incentive structure away from being nasty, and into being a little more honest and acting in better faith.” 

When Sullivan came to the Statehouse, Democrats were not comfortable with ranked-choice voting, he said. In 2024, he ran for the state party’s rules committee and successfully worked to implement ranked-choice. When the party elects their chair in 2027, they’ll use the new method.

It was in April, when Sullivan was watching as ICE deportations were top-of-mind, and he decided to run for Senate. He said he will support comprehensive reform of the immigration system if elected. 

“Our federal delegation, including Chris Pappas, was largely silent,” Sullivan said. “At that point he announced he was going to run, and I was looking at what he was saying in that moment, and it was nothing, literally he was saying nothing, and to me that was unacceptable. I felt like that was a choice to be silent in that moment, because when we are deporting people without due process, that means we stripped away those constitutional rights that are for all human beings, not just American citizens.

“I think your job, if you’re somebody who swore an oath to the Constitution, is to speak up for it when it's being violated, and it's so clearly being violated,” he said.

Sullivan said he’ll only take individual donations, not money from political action committees, unless he wins the election, in which case he’d work with the Senate Democratic political action committee. He advocated for campaign finance reform, and said he does not support Citizens United, a Supreme Court ruling that corporate funding of political broadcasts cannot be limited as it constitutes protected free speech. 

“If I could wave my magic wand, I would do away with Citizens United, and I would put in real campaign finance reform where you have individual donations, hard-stop, that’s it,” he said.  

“The Senate makes sense for me in this moment, because campaign finance reform is really important.”

The current system, characterized by a race to the top in terms of spending, corrupts politics, he said, and shifts incentives for politicians away from working for their constituents and toward raising endless funds in order to win their elections.  

Sullivan sits on the commerce committee in the House, which regulates insurance. During his reelection campaign, he received an unsolicited $250 check from insurance giant Cigna, and said rent-seeking behavior is prevalent in American politics.  

“I didn’t cash it,” he said. “Everybody else on the committee who got it cashed it. I didn’t. I just think that’s wrong. We’re talking about New Hampshire, a small state with not a huge insurance market, and there’s 400 state representatives. How much are they sending to governors? How much are they sending to more important insurance markets like New York, or California, with millions of people?”

On addressing the housing shortage, Sullivan said local municipalities need to work with state and federal partners.

“The federal government also needs to invest in helping to reduce the cost of construction,” Sullivan said. “Right now, in New Hampshire, we’re talking about between $350,000 to $400,000 to build a starter home, because it's about $350 to $450 per square foot to build a house right now. That’s not a starter home.”

“If we want to change that, we need to find a way to reduce the cost of construction,” he said, advocating for investment in the trades and for “taking a page out of the COVID vaccine playbook” for infusing money into engineering companies or universities, to spur innovation.

Sullivan said voters should consider supporting him as an alternative to the status quo in American politics.

“I’m somebody who has proven to be respectful, thoughtful and able to work with people who have different opinions, but I’m also somebody who will stand up to the injustice of this moment. I think the people who are frustrated with this moment feel the Democrats have been far too complicit and pushovers in this moment,” he said. 

“We’re dealing with a president who is a liar, who regularly lies multiple times in a couple-minute speech. Those are not people that you can act with in good faith. And I think, when you’re dealing with that, it’s not the politics of a different generation — it's the unfortunate politics that we’re in,” he said.

“We need to triage this moment, and then try to get us out of this moment, so that our country and our democracy survives.”