Kelly Ayotte

Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte and her challenger, Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan, are set to face off in the first of their six debates in the hotly contested race.

The debate Friday morning will take place at the North Conway Grand Hotel in Conway.

Spending by outside political groups in New Hampshire's U.S. Senate race reached $50 million this week, fueled by a recent barrage of negative ads sponsored by a super PAC supporting Republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte.

Granite State Solutions has booked an estimated $11 million in TV ads on Boston stations through mid-October. All 2,800 of the 30-second spots, which are scheduled to run through mid-October, attack Ayotte's challenger, Gov. Maggie Hassan. 

U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte says it's too early to say whether bombing suspect Ahmed Rahami, an American citizen, should be tried as an enemy combatant, as Donald Trump suggested Monday.

"As an American citizen, you can be treated as an enemy combatant, depending on the situation. But I think it would be premature to say something like that here not knowing all the facts," Ayotte told NHPR's Morning Edition Tuesday.

U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte and her challenger, Gov. Maggie Hassan, will be discussing how to strengthen and preserve Social Security at a forum in Manchester.

Ayotte, a Republican, and Hassan, a Democrat, are attending a forum organized by AARP on Monday.

The event is being held at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.

Republican U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte and challenger Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan have agreed to six debates in the race for U.S. Senate.

But the two candidates are already tussling over whether to add one more to the list.

You might already be overwhelmed by the number of TV ads about this year's U.S. Senate race between Kelly Ayotte and Maggie Hassan.  And if you're like a lot of people, you're confused about who's paying for all these 30-second commercials, and why.

Before you tune it out completely, here's a video guide to navigating the political advertising - and money - behind this important race.

At their first debate Thursday, incumbent Republican U.S Senator Kelly Ayotte and her challenger, former state Senator Jim Rubens, clashed on the topic of immigration.

Rubens spent much of the debate on NH1 News going after Ayotte’s record on nearly every issue, including her support for the so-called Gang of Eight immigration reform bill in 2013.

The bill included a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the United States. It passed the U.S. Senate, but ultimately failed in the House.

For more than a year, Melissa Crews has been the public face of HOPE for New Hampshire Recovery, a non-profit that supports people struggling with drug addiction.

She’s authored op-eds, sat for newspaper and television interviews and appeared side-by-side with elected officials to lobby for more money for substance-abuse treatment.

Last week, she took on another role: mouthpiece for a Republican political group that blames Gov. Maggie Hassan for hundreds of drug-related overdose deaths.

Republicans running for U.S. Senate and New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District took part in a candidate forum in Derry Monday night.

Notably absent, however, was the state’s most prominent Republican – U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte, who is up for re-election this fall and is facing a primary challenger.

That meant of the four men taking questions from the audience at the Halligan Tavern in downtown Derry, only three were actually running for office.

As expected, the U.S. Senate race between Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Gov. Maggie Hassan is on pace to become the most expensive political campaign in New Hampshire history. With more than three months to go before Election Day, the contest is already awash in cash: Total spending stands at $34 million.

The Republican National Convention may be dominating the headlines. But following Senator Kelly Ayotte Wednesday morning, you wouldn’t know it.

Instead of spending the week in Cleveland, Ayotte was here in Portsmouth, touring a company that makes devices to treat cancer tumors with electrical fields.

U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte may be skipping the GOP convention this week, but there there is still plenty of politicking being done on her behalf. When Iowa Senator Joni Ernst addressed a breakfast hosted by the NH GOP, she spent roughly half her speech discussing Kelly Ayotte.

  US Senator Kelly Ayotte says a bill in Congress to address opioid abuse could provide a big boost to treatment and prevention efforts in New Hampshire. 

A for-profit college that has been a significant donor to Sen. Kelly Ayotte is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Bridgepoint Education, the parent company of Ashford University, an online university based in California, is the subject of investigations by several federal and state agencies. The company has been accused of improper use of federal student aid and duplicitous marketing practices – in particular, luring veterans to enroll in order to gain access to federal student aid through the GI Bill.

Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire is criticizing the president for not acting quickly or strongly enough to defeat the Islamic State.

National security is a key focus for Ayotte in her re-election race against Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan. She is calling for more military special operations raids against the Islamic State, a more forceful response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's influence in the region and a clearer strategy for dealing with captured terrorists.

Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte will deliver a speech on confronting the Islamic State and terrorism.

Ayotte is delivering her remarks Monday morning at St. Anselm College as part of the "Politics & Eggs" political lecture series. Ayotte is seeking re-election against Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan in one of the country's most closely watched U.S. Senate battles.

National security is a key focus for Ayotte in her first term in the Senate. Her campaign has attempted to paint Hassan as weak on national security and counterterrorism.

Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan had a stronger fundraising quarter than her U.S. Senate rival, incumbent Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte.

New Hampshire Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte says the FBI's recommendation that Hillary Clinton not be prosecuted for her use of a private email server "suggests that she gets to play by a different set of rules than everyone else."

Ayotte commented Tuesday after agency Director James Comey said announced the decision, but called Clinton's actions as former secretary of state "extremely careless" and faulted her agency for a lackadaisical approach to handling classified material.

As the U.S. Senate debates measures to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists, New Hampshire's Senator Kelly Ayotte is throwing her support to a proposal drafted by Maine Senator Susan Collins.

The plan would bar people on the TSA's no-fly and selected lists from buying guns. It also creates an appeals process where people wrongly blocked from buying gun could recover legal fees from the federal government.

If one needed proof the opioid crisis is seen as a powerful election issue, confirmation came last week, in the form a $4.6 million dollar ad buy from the GOP group, One Nation.