Retiring House Democrat tells Fox News she’s pushing generational change: ‘Lead by example’

As Rep. Annie Kuster of New Hampshire finishes up her tenure in the House of Representatives this week. After a dozen years of representing New Hampshire in Congress, she has a message for some of her older colleagues.

“Some of my colleagues in the House of Representatives who have been in Congress for decades, and they get very comfortable in districts that are deep, deep blue. They haven’t had a challenging election in a long time,” Kuster told Fox News Digital.

The 68-year-old Kuster, who won election and re-election six times in swing state New Hampshire’s competitive Second Congressional District, decided against running again for another term in 2024, partly because she felt it was time for a new generation of House Democrat leaders to take over and that she wanted to set an example.

“I did want to lead by example. I felt that 12 years was a good length of time to put my shoulder to the wheel and work hard for working families and veterans and farmers and save the planet and protect women’s rights. These were all important to me. But I think the generational change that is going on in the House Democratic Caucus is really important,” she emphasized.

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Kuster pointed to the generational shift among House Democrats with the overthrow of senior committee leaders in the weeks since November’s election, when the party lost control of the White House and Senate majority and narrowly failed to regain control of the House.

Pointing to some of her House Democrat colleagues in their 70s or 80s, Kuster said “they served their country well, but I don’t think there’s any shame in stepping down and saying there are other people that can do this job.”

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But Kuster highlighted that she was not referring to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who takes over in January as the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The former governor, who turns 78 next month, is considering running for re-election for a fourth six-year term in the Senate when she’s up in 2026.

“Let me just clarify. I’m not talking about Sen. Shaheen. I hope she will run for another term,” Kuster said. “I think she’s at the top of her game and doing an extraordinary job.”

Kuster says another reason she decided against seeking re-election was due to her time-consuming efforts as chair of the New Democrat Coalition.

“It’s sort of the center left, pragmatic, get the job done, work across the aisle; I call it the can-do caucus,” she said.

Kuster noted that the New Democrat Coalition has “both a policy arm and a political arm, and so one of the reasons that I was stepping down is that I was doing a great deal of travel all across the country recruiting candidates to run for the House, and then raising resources and supporting their campaigns with strategy and consultants and communications, and just spending a lot of time on it, myself, welcoming them and helping them.”

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Kuster highlighted that while her party suffered major setbacks in the 2024 elections, “[A]mong the New Democrat candidates, we protected 20 out of 22 current members who were challenged in tough races. We call them the front line, and we will be welcoming 25 new members of the New Democrat coalition. It’s going to be up to 110 members.”

“We flipped nine seats from what we call red to blue, and most of those were won by [President-elect Donald] Trump, but our candidates outperformed the top of the ticket,” she said.

Kuster said “the message that we had was successful” and that the message focused on “lowering costs, about bringing people together to get the job done. We focused in on safety and security, not just immigration and the border, but crime in the community and non-violence in the schools.”

“We also talked about democracy, and we also talked about women’s reproductive health, but we really leaned in on costs and the economy and where the voters have the greatest concern. And so, it’s a message that I think will resonate,” she added.

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Kuster said she’s going to spend the next two years helping fellow Democrats as they reach for the House majority in 2026.

“My north star is for the Democrats to win back the House,” she said.

Kuster added that she wants to help “create the next generation of Democratic leaders” who advocate for a “center-left, pragmatic approach, working across the aisle getting the job done. I know from this cycle that that was very, very successful, and that’s where we won the seats.”