NORTH CONWAY, N.H. — Senator Kelly Ayotte and Governor Maggie Hassan strove to display their differences Friday morning on everything from national security to health care to favorite hiking venues, as the two candidates battling in the state’s closely fought Senate race faced off for the first time.
The high-profile battle for the US Senate played out in the ballroom of a hotel in the White Mountains.
Ayotte and Hassan’s marquee Senate race — a first featuring two high-profile women in the state — is projected to be the most expensive in local history, with negative television advertisements filling the airwaves in New Hampshire and beyond.
Voters were on the edge of their seats in the North Conway Grand Hotel, as Hassan and Ayotte spoke from opposite sides of a podium, and moderator George Epstein ensured that answers were brief and on-point.
“I’ve been getting phones calls and e-mails, and people stop me in the grocery store, saying ‘You better ask them this and you better make them answer it,’ ” said Epstein, a former trustee of University System of New Hampshire.
Hassan, as she’s done throughout the campaign, tried to depict Ayotte as someone who puts partisan interests ahead of voters. Ayotte touted her bipartisan bona fides, citing her efforts to pass federal legislation to combat the opioid crisis.
The most-repeated phrase heard by the standing-room-only crowd was “the difference between” — or some variation of it —from the beginning to the end.
First question: “What are the differences between you and your party’s presidential nominee?”
“With respect to Mr. Trump, I do have some disagreements with him on issues like NATO on how we would perhaps handle Vladimir Putin and Russian aggression and many other issues,” Ayotte said. “But there are many other issues we have agreement on.”
Trump has become an albatross for many Republicans on the ballot who must balance supporting a nominee who is popular with the party’s base but has alienated women, minorities, and many mainstream conservatives. In the past, Ayotte has said she will vote for Trump but is not endorsing him.
Hassan, meanwhile, has closely aligned herself with the Democratic Party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton. Her campaign is part of a coordinated party operation to get Democrats elected up and down the ticket.
Hassan has been active surrogate for her, stumping across New Hampshire for the former secretary of state by warming up crowds before Clinton takes the stage, as she did Wednesday when Clinton appeared at the University of New Hampshire.
Her response to the question about differences with Clinton:
“[Unlike Clinton] I don’t support the president’s proposal to close Guantanamo Bay because I don’t think it protects our country’s vital interest or makes clear how we would keep terrorists from getting back to the battlefield,” Hassan said. “But I am proud to support Secretary Clinton, who people in both political parties have said is so highly qualified and has the experience to be commander-in-chief.”
Despite the unpopularity of the two major parties’ presidential nominees, both Ayotte and Hassan have maintained high approval ratings in their respective offices.
A Morning Consult poll put Ayotte’s approval rating at 54 percent, in the top half of all senators in the nationwide online survey. And Hassan has maintained an approval rating over 50 percent throughout her time as governor.
And so Friday’s debate was as much about Ayotte telling voters why she should keep her job — as it was about Hassan giving them reasons to fire Ayotte and hire her in a race that thus far has remained a statistical tie.
On the standoff over the US Supreme Court nominee: Ayotte defended her decision to stand with Republican leaders and refuse to hold confirmation hearings on President Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to sit on the highest court.
She said that because the court is now evenly spilt ideologically, and the president and Senate leaders come from different parties, “I felt the better course was really to wait for the people to weigh in in this presidential election in November.”
Hassan said the Constitution states that the president shall nominate Supreme Court justice candidates and Senate has the duty of giving advice and consent. “It doesn’t say except in election years. It doesn’t say except when government is divided. It says that you need to do your job,” she said.
The candidates also clashed on foreign policy, specifically the Iran deal, which prevents the Middle East country from building a nuclear weapon for 15 years by limiting uranium enrichment and allowing for international inspections of suspected processing sites, in exchange for the lifting of harsh economic sanctions.
Hassan repeatedly called it “imperfect,” but said it was a “critical first step” and “the best way” to keep Iran from making nuclear weapons.
Ayotte opposed it, saying it left Iran with the infrastructure to create nuclear bombs. She and 47 Republican senators signed a letter to Iranian leaders that essentially said the president’s successor or Congress could overturn the terms of the deal.
And when the debate was over, Barbara McEvoy, of Freedom, who had sat engrossed during the back-and-forth put on her green jacket and said: “That was intense.”
Akilah Johnson can be reached at akilah-.johnson@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @akjohnson1922.