Why Does NH GOP Keep Hitting Warmington On Opioid Issue? Because It's Working

By Michael Graham, NH Journal

Visitors to the State House on Thursday were reminded of an anniversary Democrat Cinde Warmington would rather they forget: the day in 2002 she testified before the legislature on behalf of the “miracle drug” OxyContin.

Nearly a quarter century later, Republicans believe Warmington’s work on behalf of Purdue Pharma isn’t ancient history — it’s a political vulnerability that still hits home with voters who lived through New Hampshire’s opioid crisis.

That’s why they sent rolling billboards down the streets of Concord with images of Warmington, along with her most notorious quotes praising OxyContin as a “miracle drug” with “very few side effects.”

“Opioid lobbyist Cinde Warmington pushed the lies of Purdue Pharma, and New Hampshire suffered the consequences,” Ayotte campaign spokesman John Corbett said. “Warmington built her career serving special interests, not the people of New Hampshire, and that record is completely disqualifying for anyone who wants to be governor.”

A billboard truck with an anti-Warmington message drives past the N.H. State House on April 9, 2026.

Warmington declined to respond to a request for comment. But she can hardly be surprised that her record as a pharma lobbyist is under fire.

Not only have Republicans been hitting her on it, but Democrat Joyce Craig used it against her in the 2024 Democratic gubernatorial primary. Craig ran TV ads accusing Warmington of “profiting off the opioid crisis as a lobbyist for Purdue Pharma” for “20 years.”

The opioid issue has been powerful in New Hampshire politics for years due to the devastating impact drug abuse has had on the state.

Between 2014 and 2018, New Hampshire’s drug-related mortality rate was consistently among the highest in the nation. In 2015, it had the second-highest rate of overdose deaths in the country, trailing only West Virginia. The result: an estimated 7,000 drug-related deaths since OxyContin became widely available.

Still, is Warmington’s 2002 testimony before the House Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee still relevant, or, more importantly, politically potent?

Republicans think so.

“I think the Ayotte campaign is smart to ride that bronc until you can’t ride it no more!” says GOP consultant Michael Dennehy. “It is and always will be Warmington’s Achilles heel.”

Warmington has tried to punch back by linking Ayotte to pharma money. In an interview on WMUR, she accused Ayotte of “collecting contributions from Big Pharma, the opioid industry, hundreds of thousands of dollars. She even took money from the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma, as late as 2016, when everybody knew what Purdue Pharma was up to.

“I think that Kelly Ayotte attacking me is just because she doesn’t want to be held accountable for her own record.”

Thus far, Warmington’s record as a lobbyist for OxyContin is the biggest story, and given her low name ID — 53 percent of voters have no opinion of her, including 45 percent of Democrats — it’s likely the one issue she’s most identified with.

“The facts are the facts, and this is a bad fact for Cinde Warmington,” says Craig Stevens, a Bedford Republican who worked on the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney.

“The scourge of opioid addiction is all too real for too many New Hampshire families. And that’s likely the reason that the Ayotte campaign continues to remind voters that Cinde Warmington is right in the middle of the explosive overprescribing of opioids.”

Warmington has largely remained under wraps since announcing her candidacy in February — an announcement that followed months of speculation about whether she would even enter the race. She has made few public appearances and has yet to hold an open press event or announce a major policy initiative.

That leaves the messaging field to Ayotte and the Republicans, who are happy to fill it with their “opioid lobbyist” messaging. And the target audience isn’t just voters, says veteran GOP strategist Jim Merrill. Republicans want to make sure national organizations like the Democratic Governors Association know that flipping New Hampshire will be an uphill fight.

“Team Ayotte tuning up Warmington early on such a tough issue is sending a powerful message to the DGA and Dem donors, ‘We’re gonna make this hurt. Don’t bother spending money on this race.’”

The Cook Political Report currently lists the New Hampshire governor’s race as “Likely Republican.”

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.