Sunapee
If Democrats have any hope of gaining control of the 24-member Senate, they will almost certainly need John Garvey, of New London, to win on Nov. 8. In the most recent legislative session, the GOP held a 14-10 advantage.
Republicans, meanwhile, are counting on Ruth Ward, of Stoddard, to keep District 8 on its side of the ledger. Republicans have held the seat since 2003.
Garvey, 64, and Ward, 79, are vying to replace Jerry Little, of Weare, who left the Senate before completing his first term this spring to become state banking commissioner. Before him, Bob Odell, a centrist Republican known for working closely with then-Gov. John Lynch, held the seat for more than a decade.
Garvey, a University of New Hampshire law school professor and mediator, recognizes that crossover voters will play a critical role in the outcome. His list of supporters include former GOP lawmakers John Tucker, Ralph Hough and David Kidder.
“I’m a moderate Democrat running against a conservative Republican,” Garvey said. “It’s quite clear that voters are going to have a real choice this year.”
Ward didn’t disagree with Garvey’s labeling. “I’m a fiscal conservative, for sure,” she said.
While other Republicans, including New Hampshire’s U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, have abandoned GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump in recent weeks, Ward continues to stand behind him.
“I will support the party’s choice, but I don’t agree with him on everything,” she said.
Ward is a retired nurse practitioner who has lived in Stoddard, a town northeast of Keene with roughly 1,200 residents, since 1995.
Ward, who serves on Stoddard’s planning board, lost bids for a House seat in the 2012 and 2014 general elections. Last month, she defeated Jim Beard, of Lancaster, by nine votes 2,618-2,609, in the Republican primary.
Garvey is making his first legislative run. At UNH School of Law, Garvey is director of the Daniel Webster Scholar Honors Program, which gives students a working alternative to the bar exam. He’s also worked for nearly 25 years as a mediator.
Garvey is married to Cotton Cleveland, the daughter of the late U.S. Rep. James Cleveland, of New London, a nine-term Republican congressman.
From a geographical standpoint, District 8 is among the largest in the state, covering 24 towns from Grantham to Weare. Seven Upper Valley communities — Newport, New London, Croydon, Sunapee, Springfield, Unity and Grantham — are included in the district.
Some issues in this year’s election:
In April, Gov. Maggie Hassan signed a bill that extends the New Hampshire Health Protection Program, which provides 50,000 low-income adults with insurance, for two more years until Dec. 31, 2018.
Garvey and Ward said they are pleased the law devotes more money to substance abuse treatment.
“There’s no question we have to do something about the drug crisis,” Ward said.
“This is a bipartisan issue,” Garvey said. “I see it as an investment rather than an expense.” Along with providing much-needed money for substance abuse treatment, it’s also insuring people who were “delaying treatment until they become seriously ill, which drives up costs for everyone, ” he said, noting that roughly 2,000 people from District 8 communities have benefited from the expansion.
In June, the Executive Council voted, 3-2, to restore state funding to Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.
“It’s good health policy, not a Democrat-Republican issue,” Garvey said, referring to the decision to award $549,000 to Planned Parenthood, which operates seven health clinics in the state.
Currently, none of the state money is used to pay for abortions. Ward wants it to stay that way.
“The state shouldn’t pay for abortions,” she said. “Women have come a long way. They don’t have to get pregnant if they don’t want to. There are plenty of birth control options that are less expensive and less risky (than abortion).”
While in private practice in the 1990s, Garvey was among the original lawyers in the landmark Claremont school funding case.
More than 20 years later, the Legislature still hasn’t come to grips with the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s ruling recognizing every student’s right to a state-funded, constitutionally adequate education, Garvey said.
“Regardless of ZIP code, a student should be provided an adequate education,” he said. “I think most people in New Hampshire agree that students need an adequate education to become good citizens.”
Ward said she’s content with the state’s current funding plan, and places a higher priority on expanding school choice in the state to give parents more options about where to educate their children.
Earlier this year, Hassan, a Democrat, vetoed a bill that would have eliminated state permits to carry a concealed weapon.
Ward disagreed.
“If I can carry it openly, I should be able to carry it under my coat without a special permit,” she said. “New Hampshire has plenty of gun regulations already. It’s a matter of enforcing them.”
Garvey, who has hunted in the past but wasn’t sure he’d have time to get out for this year’s deer season, said he supports the Second Amendment, but “it’s also important for the sake of community safety that we do things that are not unnecessarily intrusive.
“I have no problem with background checks for people purchasing firearms or seeking a concealed weapon permit.”
In February, the Senate quashed a proposal that would have raised the state’s minimum wage to $12 per hour from $7.25.
Ward is concerned that raising the minimum wage “could do more harm than good to the state’s economy,” she said. “I’d want to check with business owners to see what level (of increase) they could afford.”
Currently, the state sets its minimum wage at the same level as that of the federal government, but $7.25 an hour is “not a living wage,” Garvey said.
He supports raising it to $10 an hour or so, but acknowledges that’s still not a living wage. Going as high as $15 per hour, as progressives have urged, is not something he supports because the “effects on employers isn’t clear,” he said.
Supporters of the measure to increase the minimum wage to $12 an hour argue that 140,000 residents would get a raise as a result. Roughly 80 percent of the raises would go to residents more than 20 years old and 60 percent would be women.
Jim Kenyon can be reached at jkenyon@vnews.com.
