Ayotte, Hassan Trade Cybersecurity Barbs in New Hampshire Senate Campaign Debate

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Democratic challenger Gov. Maggie Hassan critiqued each other’s record on cybersecurity issues Wednesday during a debate in the campaign for Ayotte’s Senate seat. Ayotte declined to directly answer a question about whether Russia had influenced next week's election via the hacking of national Democratic Party-related servers. The real issue is Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state and the possibility it resulted in the transmission of “classified information,” Ayotte said. If Hassan is “not going to break with Hillary Clinton on this, when is she ever going to break with Hillary Clinton?” Ayotte said. Hassan said Clinton’s use of the private server was wrong, but “it is concerning to me that” Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump “has showered praise on [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and in some ways invited him to” launch an attack on election-related IT systems. “That’s “one of the reasons I’m so concerned that [Ayotte] spent so much time supporting her nominee,” Hassan said.