Why is Massachusetts taking hits in the New Hampshire governor’s race?

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As Republican Kelly Ayotte campaigns for governor of New Hampshire, voters in the Granite State are getting an earful about their neighbor to the south.

“We are one election away from becoming Massachusetts,” Ayotte told Fox News last July, after first announcing her return to politics.

Ever since, Ayotte, a former U.S. senator and state attorney general, keeps hammering the Bay State, its governor and her Democratic rivals, who she says “want to make us more like Massachusetts.” She even adopted the slogan “Don’t Mass up New Hampshire.”

Ayotte’s attacks are part of New Hampshire tradition, according to Dante Scala, a professor of politics at UNH, who moved to the state 25 years ago, when it was shifting from red to purple.

“One of the main culprits for this state of affairs among New Hampshire Republicans was Massachusetts,” Scala said, recalling how conservatives decried the influx of new residents from the south, “bringing their liberal politics with them.”

While Ayotte is still fighting a primary battle against former state Senate President Chuck Morse, she’s warring indirectly with Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who endorsed former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig, one of two Democrats in the race. Healey, who grew up in New Hampshire, has deflected questions about the matter, saying she’s “focused on what’s happening here in Massachusetts.”

Ayotte extols “the New Hampshire advantage” of small government and no sales or income taxes. She also adds dark warnings of illegal immigration and drugs coming from Massachusetts. Writing on X, Ayotte said Craig and Cinde Warmington, the other Democratic primary candidate, “would bring Massachusetts’ sanctuary policies and [an] illegal immigrant crisis to New Hampshire.” (Craig says Ayotte is “focusing on divisive language because she can’t stand behind her record” on abortion rights — a potent issue for Democrats.)

In stoking such fears, Scala said Ayotte can remind voters of her law enforcement credentials, while appealing to the state’s most conservative voters, with whom she’s had a complicated relationship since 2016, when she distanced herself from Donald Trump.

According to a recent UMass Lowell poll, almost half of Republican primary voters in New Hampshire (49%) said the state is at risk of becoming too much like Massachusetts, while just 20% said there is no risk.

The question is whether this strategy will be effective if Ayotte advances to the general election, when she’ll need the support of more moderate voters – many of whom are transplants from Massachusetts.