Manchester, New Hampshire (CNN)
They were both raised by New England liberals who make Barack Obama appear conservative. Their friendship blossomed in college, where they both were “older” students. Now the two women thrive in work usually dominated by men: money and cars.
The lives of Susan-Anne Terzakis and Anna Hayes are separated by a few miles on the Granite State’s famed Route 3, but even more so by an ideological divide.
In November, one will vote Republican, the other Democratic.
The two friends are, in many ways, like so many other women in New Hampshire, a proudly purple state that abides by its motto: “Live Free Or Die.”
They are well aware that their state is the first in the nation to elect an all-female congressional delegation. The governor is also a woman, Maggie Hassan.
As Terzakis put it: “We are rockin’ it in this state.”
How women here cast their votes is key in the upcoming midterm elections, especially for Senate candidates Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic incumbent, and her Republican challenger Scott Brown, a former senator from neighboring Massachusetts who lost his seat in 2012 to a woman, Elizabeth Warren.
The New Hampshire Senate race has tightened to the “too-close-to-call” category and could help determine whether Democrats maintain control of the upper chamber on the Hill.
It’s all come down to women in a state where women rule, literally.