Concord
With extra work and the help of outside specialists, Edelblut’s home-schooled son was breezing through the Harry Potter series by age 12. Now, he interns at Google.
“It turns out the kid was just a genius, but he didn’t learn in the traditional system so he needed another way to get there,” Edelblut, a Republican candidate for governor, told three dozen voters at a recent house party in Amherst, N.H.
Edelblut, a first-term state representative from Wilton, N.H., is competing in a four-way Republican primary. He touts creating jobs at a company he founded in the 1990s, and casts himself as a businessman who can boost New Hampshire’s economy.
But his ideas to transform the state’s public education system are what intrigues voters and set him apart from the other candidates.
At the Aug. 1 house party, he was asked repeatedly about his plan for education.
Edelblut and his wife of 30 years, Kathy, home-schooled all of their children — a fact the Republican regularly points out when outlining his proposal to “personalize education.”
He envisions students choosing how they learn material — by being able to go with online or virtual courses for some subjects or traditional lecture-style classes for others. Teachers’ roles would morph from instructor to mentor. Gaining community college credit along the way, students could potentially graduate in two or three years from high school, depending on their pace.
“Other states are going to look to us and say, ‘Huh, here is how education can look in the 21st century,’ ” he said.
Edelblut rails against the Common Core standards, Smarter Balanced testing and the federal government’s guidance for transgender bathroom choice.
“We don’t need that kind of input,” he said. “What we really need to do is begin to push back on the federal government.”
Edelblut declined multiple requests to talk about his experience home schooling and how educating his own children has informed his outlook on the subject.
“He is running for governor, not his kids,” Edelblut’s Washington-based campaign adviser Brent Littlefield wrote in an email.
Both Edelblut and his wife graduated from public schools. All five of their children who have now finished high school have gone on to college, Littlefield said.
Back home in Wilton, Edelblut serves on the water commission, but he has not held a position on the local school board. Harry Dailey, a district school board member who is supporting Edelblut’s campaign, doesn’t recall seeing Edelblut at many meetings.
Members of the Croydon School District said Edelblut helped take up their cause after the state sued them for using public money to pay tuition for some students to attend the local Montessori school. Edelblut co-sponsored several education bills in the House, including one directly related to Croydon that would have let school districts use taxpayer dollars to send their students to private schools in some cases. It was vetoed this year by Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan.
Among the field of Republicans vying to win the Sept. 13 primary, Edelblut is newest to the state political scene. Most of his career has been spent in the private sector.
Edelblut, an accountant, began at PricewaterhouseCoopers before starting his own business — Control Solutions — in Florida in the 1990s. He then moved to Nashua, and grew the audit and risk management business to a global company that eventually employed 800 people, he said.
“At the time, the New Hampshire advantage was strong,” he said. While Edelblut didn’t have specific numbers on hand, he estimated two-thirds of Control Solutions’ jobs were based in North America, with 50 to 60 in New Hampshire.
Edelblut agreed to answer questions about his business experience this week, but his campaign strategist frequently interrupted and interjected throughout the 20-minute interview.
Edelblut eventually sold the business in 2009 for an undisclosed sum.
“How much it sold for is a boatload of money,” he said. “Why did I sell it? Someone offered me a lot of money.”
Edelblut then joined Boston-based Common Angels, a venture capital firm, until 2013.
The Wilton Republican was elected to his first term in the 400-member New Hampshire House in 2014 after advancing through an uncontested primary and winning one of the district’s two seats in the general election with 4,058 votes. He announced in August 2015 — less than a year into his House term — that he was considering a run for governor.
He has become a darling of libertarian groups for his anti-regulation and pro-gun stances.
He is staunchly against abortion and voted against the bill to reauthorize Medicaid expansion, saying it would “lock people into a stasis of poverty.” When it comes to business, Edelblut pledges to cut back on health care and electricity costs.
Not all of Edelblut’s endeavors have panned out. An avid cross-country skier who previously ran the Bill Koch Youth Ski League, Edelblut joined a nonprofit in the late 2000s seeking to turn a New Ipswich Nordic ski area into an Olympic training ground.
The Central New England Nordic Council sought to purchase Windblown Cross Country Ski Area from owner Al Jenks, install snow-making equipment and rework the trails following the 2008 ice storm, Jenks said. Edelblut said the group ultimately couldn’t raise the funds, which Jenks estimated at $3 million.
“It would have been cool,” said Edelblut, who grooms cross country ski trails behind his home. “There was just not enough appetite.”
Jenks called Edelblut “high energy” and “engaging,” characterizing him as a member of the nonprofit who “gets people excited and moving.”
Before embarking on a project, Edelblut regularly gathers input from others, several acquaintances said. On education, Dailey said Edelbut sought him out recently to get some perspective from the local school board.
“He was very receptive and he listened,” Bailey said. “One man can’t make all the difference. I feel like he certainly listened to some of my concerns.”
Edelblut, a graduate of the University of Rhode Island, earned a master’s degree in theological studies last year from Hellenic College Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology.
He said his plan for public education in New Hampshire won’t cost more money but will rely on reallocating existing funding. He said he can’t take full credit for the plan and calls himself the “implementation guy.”
When Edelblut talks about his ideas, he gets excited and speaks quickly — sometimes voters ask him to repeat himself. While Edelblut declined to speak about his own experience specifically, he said home schooling for him is about personalized education.
“I believe each kid is unique and has their own learning style,” he said. “Some kids mature more quickly than other kids. In an age of innovation, where everything is becoming individualized, I am concerned with trend that homogenizes education.”