WHAT REPUBLICAN GOVERNANCE LOOKS LIKE:

New Hampshire is conducting a groundbreaking experiment in offering free at-home rapid Covid tests to all residents, and one outcome is already clear: Demand is sky-high.

Within a day of the Nov. 29 blanket offer to send eight tests via Amazon.com Inc. trucks to the door of any resident, all 800,000 had been snapped up. As the state leads the nation in per-capita cases and hospitals overflow, officials are promising another round. 

Widespread rapid testing, common in some other countries, is seen by experts as crucial to contain the pandemic bedeviling the U.S. and the Biden administration. The president's spokeswoman said this week that while the administration backs free testing for anyone who wants it and 50 million free tests are going out to community sites, sending tests to all homes might be wasteful.

Governor Chris Sununu has faced bitter opposition to vaccination campaigns and mask mandates in New Hampshire, a state of 1.4 million with a flinty libertarian streak. But the tests-for-all-takers program is a winner, he said.

"It was so successful, we're going to do it again," Sununu, a Republican, said in an interview. A federal program supplied the 800,000 tests from Quidel Corp., but, "if we have to pay for it ourselves, we have funds, and we'll do it," he said. 

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