Kelly Ayotte Lies Taxes New Hampshire

Kelly Ayotte Told New Hampshire Her Opponent 'Will Not Commit' to Blocking an Income Tax. Warmington Has Promised to Veto One Again and Again.

In the last debate before Election Day, Governor Kelly Ayotte said Cinde Warmington 'will not commit to banning an income or sales tax.' PolitiFact found that conflicts with Warmington's repeated statements — including one she made in that same debate. Ayotte also inflated two years of Purdue Pharma work into a 'career.'

MAGA Report Cards · Nov 01, 2026

Kelly Ayotte Told New Hampshire Her Opponent 'Will Not Commit' to Blocking an Income Tax. Warmington Has Promised to Veto One Again and Again. — Photo: WMUR

New Hampshire has no sales tax and no individual income tax.

Kelly Ayotte reached for it on October 29, in a WMUR debate days before Election Day. "It's really important for the people of New Hampshire to know," the Republican governor said, "that she will not commit to banning an income or sales tax."

Her opponent, Democrat Cinde Warmington, had committed. Repeatedly. Including on that same stage, that same night.

What PolitiFact found

WMUR's fact-checking partner, PolitiFact, reviewed the debate and said Ayotte's tax claim "conflicts with Warmington's repeated statements."

Here is what Warmington has actually said:

April 15, Tax Day. In a campaign statement, she said: "As your Governor, I will veto any income tax or sales tax that comes to my desk."
To WMUR, according to PolitiFact: "I do not believe a broad-based sales or income tax is the right way to go in our state."
October 27, at an earlier debate: she said she would veto a sales or income tax.
October 29, the same debate where Ayotte said she wouldn't commit: "I will oppose an income tax. I oppose a sales tax, and if it were to come to my desk, I would veto it."

A governor can't ban a tax by herself. What a governor can do is veto one. Warmington has said, on the record and more than once, that she would. Ayotte told viewers the opposite.

A two-year job became a "career"

Ayotte used the debate to hit Warmington four times over her old work for Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. "She has spent her career as an opioid lobbyist," Ayotte said.

PolitiFact said Ayotte "overstated" it. Warmington worked as a lawyer and lobbyist for Purdue in 2001 and 2002, as a junior lawyer assigned to the company. That was a two-year stretch more than 20 years ago. "It was not her whole career," PolitiFact wrote.

There is a real point inside Ayotte's attack — PolitiFact also found that by the time Warmington testified for Purdue in 2002, journalists and federal officials had been warning about OxyContin abuse for at least two years. But Ayotte didn't stop at the real point. She stretched it.

And Ayotte is a strange messenger on Purdue. As New Hampshire's attorney general in 2007, she kept the state out of the case that 26 states brought against Purdue. Warmington has pointed out, as PolitiFact noted, that a political committee Ayotte led took donations from members of the Sackler family, who owned Purdue, as late as 2016. And in 2021 she personally vouched for the "character" of Purdue's former lawyer when he was up to be the state's chief justice. He resigned this September after admitting he broke the judicial ethics rules.

Left unsaid: her own data center turn

The debate also turned to data centers. Warmington said Ayotte had a chance to back a pause on new ones and didn't. PolitiFact said it was hard to pin the failed bills on Ayotte — but noted that Ayotte has recently pushed for a data center pause, "backtracking on her previous stance." In 2025 she signed a law loosening the rules for "off-grid" power companies that critics and supporters alike said would draw data centers to the state.

We've written about that law and Ayotte's past seat on the board of one of those power companies.

Why it matters

Debates are where undecided voters see both candidates side by side, and this one came five days before the election. Ayotte used her time to tell those voters something about her opponent that her opponent said on that same stage wasn't true — and that PolitiFact found her opponent had been saying for months.

What the fact-check shows

In a WMUR debate five days before the election, Kelly Ayotte said Cinde Warmington "will not commit to banning an income or sales tax." PolitiFact found that conflicts with Warmington's repeated statements; Warmington pledged on April 15 to veto any income or sales tax, said so again on October 27, and said it again in the same October 29 debate. PolitiFact also found Ayotte overstated Warmington's work for Purdue Pharma, which lasted two years, as a "career."