Cinde Warmington’s path to New Hampshire’s governor’s race just got clearer, but the fight around her record is only getting louder. The Democratic nominee is now locked in for a second straight run, and Republicans are wasting no time making her past work for Purdue Pharma a central issue in the contest.
Warmington won the Democratic nomination on Tuesday without opposition, setting up a November matchup with Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte. That alone puts her back in the spotlight, but the bigger flashpoint is her former legal work for the company behind OxyContin, a drug that became a symbol of the opioid disaster across the country.
The Republican Governors Association blasted that part of her background as disqualifying, arguing that anyone tied to Purdue’s years of damage should not be trusted with the state’s top job. Their message is blunt and designed to sting, especially in a state that has lived through the opioid crisis in painfully close view.
Purdue’s story is one of public outrage, lawsuits, and investigations that dragged on for years. The company was accused of pushing OxyContin as less dangerous than it really was while hiding the drug’s abuse risk, and that fight eventually ended with a massive settlement totaling $7.4 billion in May.
Warmington has pushed back hard, saying the criticism twists her role into something it was not. In a video titled “setting the record straight,” she said her father struggled with addiction and made clear that the opioid epidemic hit her family too.
“My dad, who I loved very, very much, struggled with addiction,” she said. “We did not escape the opioid crisis.”
She also said that when she was assigned to a Purdue case in 2001, she was simply doing legal work for patients and the doctors who believed they needed access to treatment. “In 2001, when, as an attorney, I was assigned a case by a partner to represent Purdue Pharma … I was fighting for patients to get access to the healthcare that their doctors thought that they needed. What I did not know at the time was that Purdue Pharma was engaged in this massive criminal fraud — something that would only be exposed over years of litigation.”
Warmington is no stranger to New Hampshire politics. She previously served on the state Executive Council, representing the 2nd district from 2021 to 2025, and she also ran for governor in 2024 before falling short in the Democratic primary.
This time, her pitch is focused heavily on affordability and the squeeze many families feel every month. She has pointed to the cost of housing, groceries, electricity, and property taxes as proof that the state needs a different direction, and she has cast Ayotte as part of the problem.
“The prices of houses, groceries, electricity and property taxes are crushing working families. And Kelly Ayotte is making your life more expensive. I know we can do better,” Warmington said in a campaign video.
She has also tried to broaden her appeal with some familiar Democratic talking points. That includes resistance to Trump’s immigration enforcement through ICE, support for tighter rules around data center construction, and opposition to investor groups buying up housing, all while promising not to impose a sales or income tax.
“I’ll make sure we don’t have a sales or income tax,” Warmington said.
Ayotte, meanwhile, enters the fall as an incumbent with the advantage of a recent statewide win. She defeated Joyce Craig in 2024, and that race gave Republicans another reason to believe New Hampshire remains very much in play.
Warmington’s campaign will now try to turn the conversation back toward household budgets and kitchen-table issues, while Republicans will keep pressing the opioid angle as hard as they can. In a state where voters know the toll of addiction and also feel the pressure of rising costs, the clash is already sharp, personal, and heading straight for center stage.
