Annie Kuster wants to lead by example. That's why she's retiring from Congress

WASHINGTON — Rep. Ann McLane Kuster wasn’t going to become one of those lawmakers accused of lingering too long in the halls of Congress.

“I think people get into a comfortable pattern,” Kuster said this month, as she wrapped up 12 years representing New Hampshire’s 2nd District.

She led the New Democrat Coalition, a powerful center-left caucus that managed to grow its ranks this election cycle. And she made many friends, like Democratic Whip Katherine M. Clark of Massachusetts, her longtime roommate while in Washington. But her belief that the party needs new blood, as well as partisan fatigue and memories of Jan. 6, 2021, guided her decision not to run again.

“I had so many different factors going into it, but one of them is I’m trying to set a better example,” Kuster said.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Q: Why did you decide to walk away now?

A: I’ve always said I wasn’t going to stay forever. Congress, by being so focused on seniority, tends to cater to a much older population. I think the Democratic caucus can learn from the experience of the Republican caucus that if you have higher turnover, you bring in more people, you’ll be more effective.

And then there is a part of it related to Donald Trump coming back. I was one of the last members of Congress in the gallery on Jan. 6, and as it turns out, we have the security footage that shows it was only 30 seconds from when I was able to evacuate that the insurrectionists were in that hallway hunting for us with zip ties and bear mace and who knows what else. I just felt like, he tried to kill me once. I’m not available for it again.

I’m not prepared to be the gladiator, if you will, again for him, with his attack on women and undermining the social fabric. I’ve worked very hard on mental health and addiction treatment and on the environment. I’ve done a lot of work on tackling sexual assault and the whole “Me Too” era of protecting women in the military and in the workplace, and it appears his approach is to tear that all down.

Q: What’s next?

A: Elections are about change, and the majority of voters wanted change from the Biden administration. They wanted lower costs. They wanted to tackle immigration and the border and crime and safety. And there’s a lot of reasons that people had for their vote, but I don’t believe the approach of the Trump administration is going to fix those issues for them. I mean, just take tariffs. If he puts those on, the price of food is going to go way up.

I think the consequences of his policies are going to result in a swing back in 2026 and in 2028. So I’m going to stay involved, but not on the ballot. I’m going to stay involved in the work I’ve done this cycle with the New Democrat Coalition Action Fund and raising resources, along with a group we call Elect Democratic Women — that’s a PAC that I was one of the founders of — and win back the majority.

Q: Why do other members stay in Congress as long as they do?

A: It tends to be people who don’t have difficult elections. I had really difficult elections. I’m in a swing district. It’s a red district that I turned purple, but it’s certainly not blue, and it was challenging every single time. And part of it is, I’m just literally exhausted from that, but the people who are in deep-blue districts don’t have to do the fundraising, they don’t have to do the campaigning, and it becomes much more comfortable for them.

Q: What are some highlights of your time here?

A: The biggest thing for me probably has been the increasing number of women in Congress and being involved in creating Elect Democratic Women, and also chairing the New Dem Coalition and helping bring new members to Congress. It’s made a tremendous difference. When I first came, women [made up] about 20 percent of the House. Now our Democratic caucus is probably 45 percent women. It’s amazing.

Q: What are you going to miss?

A: I’ll definitely miss my friends. Katherine Clark, our minority whip, is my roommate and has been for 10 years, and so that’s one of the reasons I want to stay involved, is to have an excuse to come back down and see them. We have this amazing group of friends that we call the “Pink Ladies,” with Lois Frankel, Katherine, Julia Brownley, Grace Meng and myself.

And I’m sure there’s a part of it I will miss on the policy front, but right now that has gotten much more difficult in terms of the hyperpartisanship. These task forces I had, on addiction and mental health, on ending sexual violence, and even the ski and snowboard caucus, they were all bipartisan. Everything I did, I always told my team, don’t bring a bill to me without a Republican co-lead. But it has become so much more difficult to work in that bipartisan way. I’m ready to let somebody else take a shot at it.

Q: From your perspective, what went wrong for Democrats in the 2024 elections?

A: I think our party needs to reflect on how it felt to an entire generation of younger people that for a pretty long time, the face of our party has been octogenarians. I mean, Nancy Pelosi was an extraordinary speaker. I’m not in any way critical of her, but the transition that we made in the House was really important to Hakeem Jeffries and Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar, and I think we need to continue that process, because we somehow have missed the opportunity to connect with a whole generation of young people that we assumed, just by the laws of nature, would be more progressive and more close to our perspective.

Now, what’s interesting, our New Dem candidates were successful, and we have 25 new New Dems coming to Congress, and we flipped several seats. So I think we needed that approach at the national level.

Q: A lot of the postmortems have fixated on the divide between the progressive and more moderate wings of the party.

A: To me, it’s not knee-jerk left or right, progressive or moderate. It’s listening to people and meeting voters where they are. It started with Tom Suozzi in his special election, but we hired Tom Suozzi’s campaign manager, a guy named Jon Gonin, to be the political director for New Dems, and we carried that message through. Our members and candidates that were endorsed by New Dems talked about immigration reform, securing the border, making people feel safer in their community and lowering costs. This is a message that works in my district and in purple districts all across the country, and we won them. We beat Republicans with that message. And I think maybe the [Democratic National Committee] and the party has gotten away from meeting people where they are.

Q: Are you optimistic for the next cycle?

A: I’m an optimist, and I think this was a swing election. I was very involved in Barack Obama’s first election, starting with the New Hampshire primary, and that was a change election — hope and change from George W. Bush. You look at 2016, and Trump was backlash from Obama, and then Biden was change from Trump. I just think these swings, and maybe this is social media, are coming much faster.

People just wanted change, and they vote with their middle finger. This is the only lever they have, and all they can say is, “Hell, no.” It’s very hard to say, “Well, this isn’t perfect, but I think we’re headed in the right direction.”

And people don’t follow it that closely, they just really don’t. And it’s too bad, because for Democrats in particular, we tend to be involved with policies that take a long time, to restore the economy after COVID, or to pass the biggest infrastructure bill. I just saw from DOT and [Transportation Secretary] Pete Buttigieg a map of all these projects all across the country. And it’s like, where was that map during the election? People are going to be driving over brand-new bridges and new highways and cutting 45 minutes off their commute and getting home for dinner on time, and nobody’s going to say, “Oh, thank you, Joe Biden.” They’re probably going to say, “Thank you, Donald Trump,” because they don’t realize that it just takes so long.