Rich Ashooh keeps Donald Trump at arm’s length: ‘I’m not voting for Hillary Clinton’
The surest indicator of Donald Trump’s dismal prospects for winning the New Hampshire general election is the length at which down-ballot Republicans will go to avoid being associated with him – despite pleas from state party officials for party unity.
1st District congressional candidate Rich Ashooh is just the latest Granite State Republican to avoid Trump like the plague. In a NH1 NewsMakers interview, NH1 political director Paul Steinhauser asked Ashooh if he supports, and will endorse, Donald Trump. (The two-part construction is now required, given U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte’s comical insistence that “support” and “endorse” signify varying levels of approval.)
Ashooh was ready for the question with an answer distancing himself from the presumptive nominee without criticizing him. “Elections are about choice, right? So in a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, there should be no mystery. I’m not voting for Hillary Clinton,” he answered.
Steinhauser then asked Ashooh if he will be “comfortable” standing next to Trump at a campaign rally. Again, he avoided a direct answer. “I’m going to be doing what’s best for my campaign and for the voters who are putting their trust in me to represent them,” he told Steinhauser. “Whatever happens on the campaign trail will be built around that.”
More questions for Ashooh
Steinhauser didn’t follow up by asking if he supports and endorses Trump’s controversial pronouncements and policy proposals. Ashooh’s likely Democratic opponent, former Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter, did.
“Does Rich Ashooh support and endorse Donald Trump’s statements that Senator John McCain is not a war hero because he got captured and tortured?” she asked in a statement.
“Does he think Trump insulted the military and veterans when he claimed, after enjoying military deferments, that avoiding venereal disease was ‘my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.’ Or does he have the courage to join real Republican leaders and denounce Donald Trump’s ignorant and hateful comments?”
Guinta embraces the presumptive nominee
As Ashooh prepares for a general election campaign by keeping Trump at arm’s length, Congressman Frank Guinta, who is in an uphill battle to hold on to his seat while being mired in scandal and losing the support of party leadership, has embraced him.
The former Manchester mayor who rode the tea party wave to Congress in 2010 before losing the seat two years later, praised Trump for his “realistic understanding of New Hampshire’s drug crisis, correctly identifying Mexican cartels’ role in thousands of deaths across the state from rampant heroin and fentanyl abuse.“
“And where some may disagree with him,” Guinta said in a statement, “I believe that supporting Donald Trump now gives us the best opportunity to assist in shaping the agenda of the next President of the United States.”