West Lebanon
State Rep. Frank Edelblut, a financial services executive from Wilton, N.H., seeks to parlay his business experience into a more commerce-friendly environment for the state.
The governor doesn’t make jobs appear alone, he said in an interview last week, “but they do create an environment in which businesses and individuals are willing to take a risk to create jobs.”
State Sen. Jeanie Forrester, a Meredith resident who once served as a town administrator in Tuftonboro, N.H., and New Durham, N.H., says she will bring state government’s focus back to local communities.
“We need to get back to a time when the governor is serving individuals, not the other way around,” she said in an interview last week.
Ted Gatsas, Manchester’s current mayor and the former president of the New Hampshire Senate, says he will bring to the state’s highest office his executive experience and the programs he has field-tested in New Hampshire’s largest city.
“I’m the only candidate in this race that has business, legislative and executive experience,” he said, “and is ready to get to work on day one.”
And Executive Councilor Chris Sununu, son of a governor, brother of a senator, and CEO of the Waterville Valley Resort, aims to create “dependable, high-paying jobs,” according to his website, and “stop the loss of our skilled workers and young people to other states.”
The quartet of GOP hopefuls looks to replace outgoing Gov. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat who is leaving office to challenge sitting U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican.
The Valley News spoke to three of the candidates by phone last week; Sununu was not available because of his busy schedule, according to his campaign staff.
Perhaps the most distinguishing issue in this field is women’s reproductive rights.
Unlike Forrester, who makes exceptions for rape, incest, or danger to a mother’s life, Edelblut opposes abortion in all cases.
“I’m pro-life, from the beginning until the end of life,” he said.
And Gatsas and Sununu, on the other side of the spectrum, say they support abortion rights.
On Planned Parenthood, the health services organization that temporarily lost funding in New Hampshire after the publication of a now debunked sting video in Texas, three of the candidates are against sending tax dollars its way; Sununu in June reversed his earlier Executive Council vote, opting instead to restore funding to the program.
“While it could be politically expedient to do the opposite,” he said at the time, “at the end of the day we have to make sure that we are providing the best services for the women, especially low-income women, of the state.”
Putting aside reproduction, there appears to be an issue on which all four candidates can agree: school choice.
Each of the Republicans running for governor has voiced support for an education funding bill inspired in part by the Croydon School Board’s ongoing legal battle with state officials over the local board’s practice of sending children to private school using tax dollars.
Croydon’s own schools end after grade four, at which point children are sent to schools in other towns. The state argues that the local school board’s actions are unconstitutional, and the matter now is pending before the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
In June, Hassan vetoed a piece of legislation that would have allowed the practice. All four Republicans have said they would sign it.
Edelblut, in particular, is one of the original co-sponsors of the bill; last month, Sununu visited a Croydon School Board meeting to lend encouragement.
“I want you to know you do have friends in Concord, so keep fighting,” Sununu told the board members. “We are watching you and hope you stick it out. Keep fighting as hard as you can.”
In last week’s phone interview, Forrester touted her experience as co-founder of a charter school in Franklin, N.H. Gatsas said he had “fought hard” against the Common Core curriculum in Manchester, and would extend that struggle to the rest of the state.
On guns, the story is much the same. None of the four proposes any new controls on firearms, and each said he or she would sign a constitutional carry bill, should it cross the governor’s desk.
Constitutional carry, in most definitions, refers to the right to carry a handgun, openly or concealed, without a permit.
And all but one candidate in the Republican field opposes expanded Medicaid in its current form in New Hampshire.
This is Gatsas, who argues that the nearly 50,000 people now benefiting from the program should not lose access to services.
“Unless you have a plan that offers them health care in another form, you can’t just tell those 46,000 people, ‘You no longer have health care,’ ” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “Let’s talk about what programs we can put in place that can make sense.”
And indeed, he and the other candidates have a raft of policy ideas to serve in Medicaid’s stead.
Sununu’s economic platform, for instance, proposes combining health savings accounts, or HSAs, with high-deductible plans to replace the federal program.
Forrester, who also recommended HSAs, voted to expand Medicaid in 2014 but reversed her vote this spring, saying the renewed proposal withheld too much federal funding.
“The bottom line for me is we need to make sure the cost isn’t being passed on to the taxpayer,” she said last week.
Edelblut objected to the very concept of expanded Medicaid.
“We are basically encouraging welfare for able-bodied individuals who are able to work,” he said, adding that he believes Medicaid locks people into “a stasis of poverty,” in that people could lose benefits if they started to earn more money, but still not enough to live on.
Voting in the state party primaries takes place on Sept. 13. On the Democratic side, former Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand; Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern; and Mark Connolly, the former director of the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation, are seeking their party’s nomination.
Read the Monday Valley News to see where the Democratic candidates stand on the issues.
Rob Wolfe can be reached at rwolfe@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.