Stefany Shaheen has clinched the Democratic nomination for New Hampshire's 1st Congressional District, edging out Maura Sullivan in a race that came down to the wire. The Associated Press called the contest at 12:35 a.m. Wednesday, with Shaheen ahead 37.2% to 34.9% once 88% of the votes were counted.
On the Republican side, Anthony DiLorenzo cruised to victory in his primary Tuesday night, backed by President Trump's endorsement and $1.6 million of his own money. Shaheen and DiLorenzo now head to a November 3 general election to fill the seat being vacated by Rep. Chris Pappas, who is running for U.S. Senate instead of seeking re-election. The race is being closely watched as both parties look to the district as a potential factor in the battle for House control.
From Diabetes Advocate to Democratic Nominee: The Stefany Shaheen Story
Stefany Shaheen has spent most of her adult life fighting for something bigger than herself. Long before she ever thought about running for Congress, she was a mom trying to keep her daughter alive.
Shaheen was born on September 1, 1974, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and grew up in a family where public service was practically the family business. Her mother, Jeanne Shaheen, served as New Hampshire's governor and now represents the state in the U.S. Senate. But Stefany didn't build her career riding on that name alone.
When her eldest daughter, Elle, was just eight years old, she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It wasn't a routine scare. Elle nearly lost her life to the disease. For a lot of parents, that kind of moment passes, and life eventually settles back into a rhythm. For Shaheen, it became the starting point of everything that followed. She threw herself into advocacy work, determined to make sure other families wouldn't have to go through what hers did without better tools, better research, and better support.
That drive eventually led her to co-found Good Measures, a company built to help people with chronic health conditions get the clinical guidance and everyday support they need to manage their care. It wasn't a side project. It became her life's work for more than fifteen years, and along the way she took on leadership roles with organizations like the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Joslin Diabetes Center, where she still sits on the board of trustees.
Now, decades after that diagnosis reshaped her family's life, Shaheen has stepped into a much bigger arena. On September 8, 2026, she won the Democratic primary for New Hampshire's 1st Congressional District, narrowly beating out Maura Sullivan in a race that stayed close right up until the Associated Press finally called it after midnight. She'll face Republican Anthony DiLorenzo in November, hoping to hold onto a seat that's been in Democratic hands for the past four terms under outgoing Rep. Chris Pappas.
A Shaheen Family Legacy Continues: Stefany Wins NH's 1st District Primary
There's no getting around it. The Shaheen name carries weight in New Hampshire politics, and Stefany's run for Congress inevitably gets viewed through that lens. Her mother didn't just hold public office once. Jeanne Shaheen served as governor before becoming a U.S. senator, making her one of the most recognizable political figures the state has ever produced. Growing up in that household, Stefany was exposed early to what a life in public service actually looks like, both the rewarding parts and the exhausting ones.
But it would be a mistake to treat her win as simply an extension of her mother's career. Stefany built her own resume long before she put her name on a ballot. She served on the Portsmouth City Council, where she helped address a parking shortage that was hurting local businesses and pushed for thorough testing of the water supply for PFAS, the so-called "forever chemicals" that have become a serious concern in communities across the country. She also chaired the Portsmouth Police Commission, where she pushed for additional resources to support the statewide Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce.
On top of that, she was appointed by former Governor John Lynch to chair the state's Commission on the Status of Women. When that commission lost its state funding, she helped guide its transition so it could keep operating as a nonprofit instead of simply disappearing.
So when people talk about a Shaheen family legacy continuing in New Hampshire politics, it's worth remembering that legacy isn't just a name being passed down. It's a track record Stefany built through years of local, hands-on work, the kind that doesn't always make headlines but shapes a community all the same.
Her primary win wasn't a landslide either, which says something about how competitive the Democratic field really was. She edged out Sullivan, a veteran and former Obama administration official, by a margin of roughly 37 percent to 35 percent once most of the votes were counted. That's about as close as a primary gets, and it reflects a broader trend in the race, where several other candidates dropped out along the way and threw their support behind either Shaheen or the more progressive candidate, Carleigh Beriont.
Portsmouth Councilor, Harvard Grad, Now Congressional Contender: Who Is Stefany Shaheen?
If you strip away the politics for a second, Shaheen's educational and professional background reads like someone who was always going to end up doing complicated, high-stakes work of some kind.
She's a graduate of Fairfield University, where she competed as a Division 1 scholarship athlete. That competitive streak apparently followed her into adulthood. From there, she went on to earn credentials from two of the most respected institutions in the country: MIT's Sloan School of Management and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. That combination, business strategy paired with public policy training, lines up pretty neatly with the career she ended up building.
Before she was ever a candidate for Congress, she was already known around Portsmouth as someone who showed up to city council meetings, asked hard questions, and pushed through unglamorous but necessary fixes for things like water safety and parking. That kind of local groundwork tends to get overlooked in national coverage, but it's often the thing that actually prepares someone for higher office. Congress isn't just about big speeches. A lot of the job comes down to the same skills Shaheen practiced on the Portsmouth City Council: sitting through long meetings, weighing competing interests, and figuring out how to get something done even when people disagree.
Her business background matters here too. Building and running Good Measures for over a decade meant she had to understand budgets, hiring, growth, and all the unglamorous realities that come with keeping a company alive. That's not something every candidate for Congress can claim, and it's likely to come up often as she makes her case to voters over the next couple of months.
Mother, Entrepreneur, Politician: Stefany Shaheen's Path to Congress
At the center of all of this is a mother of four who never planned on becoming a national political figure. Shaheen has been candid about how much her family, and especially her daughter Elle's diabetes diagnosis, shaped the direction of her life. She even wrote a memoir about it, called Elle & Coach, which walks readers through the fear and uncertainty of trying to manage a life-threatening illness in a young child while also raising the rest of her family.
That personal history is showing up directly in her campaign messaging now. She's been vocal about her concerns over cuts to medical research funding and changes to Medicaid, framing her run for Congress as a continuation of the same fight she's been in for years, just on a bigger stage. During the primary, she also broke from her opponent Maura Sullivan on health care policy, backing a Medicare for All approach while Sullivan pushed for a public option instead. It was one of the clearer policy divides in what was otherwise a fairly centrist Democratic field.
Now that she's secured the nomination, she moves on to face Republican Anthony DiLorenzo, a Portsmouth businessman running for public office for the first time. DiLorenzo has leaned heavily into his background as an entrepreneur, and he entered the race with an endorsement from President Trump along with $1.6 million of his own money to fund his campaign. The general election in November is expected to be closely watched nationally, partly because the seat is open for the first time in years and partly because control of the House could come down to races just like this one.
For Shaheen, the campaign ahead means introducing herself to voters beyond Portsmouth and beyond her family name. She'll need to convince a wider swath of New Hampshire that her years of advocacy, business experience, and local government work translate into the kind of representation people want in Washington. Whether that message lands is something voters will decide in November, but her path to this point has been anything but a straight line built solely on family connections. It's been shaped just as much by a hospital room, a city council chamber, and years of work most people never saw.