To the Editor:

Senator Kelly Ayotte makes national security a priority. She has served on the Senate Armed Services Committee, laid out a clear and comprehensive plan to defeat ISIS, and worked across the aisle to keep guns away from terrorists. She also opposed the Iran deal from the very beginning, because she knows that a nuclear Iran is a huge national security threat.

On that last point, we have only just begun to see how right Kelly Ayotte was. Last week, we found out that the Obama administration secretly flew $400 million in cash to Iran as ransom for U.S. prisoners. By giving in and sending Iran this money, the administration misled us, essentially encouraged Iran to continue taking U.S. prisoners and helped bankroll Iran’s terrorist agenda. This is completely unacceptable.

We cannot play politics with our national security, and we can’t support leaders who make such terrible and dangerous decisions. Gov. Maggie Hassan has already proved that she would support bad decisions like this when she endorsed Hillary Clinton and threw her support behind the Iran nuclear agreement. Compared to Kelly Ayotte, she is woefully unprepared to make decisions about national security. As a veteran, I believe that if we want to keep our country safe, we cannot send Maggie Hassan to Washington.

Doug McGowan
Merrimack