Nashua, n.h.
“We need to support our president so that we can continue those great policies that he’s put in place that are benefiting the Granite State,” former state Rep. Lynne Blankenbeker, R-Concord, said at a recent debate organized by the Nashua Republican City Committee.
“The president is doing some great things,” said state Rep. Steve Negron, R-Nashua. “I believe the president is doing those things that are important to us. He’s looking at the trade deals and I think those are the things that are going to bring the economy back and make us strong.”
Bedford businessman and former Hillsborough County treasurer Robert Burns touted that “one of the important factors I bring to the table is being an early Trump supporter and knowing Donald Trump and his family.”
Burns, who served as chairman of the Trump campaign’s youth coalition and as a delegate to the 2016 GOP presidential nominating convention, said that the president has been very successful and Trump’s supporters “want somebody that they can believe in who’s going to go down there and help the president drain the swamp.”
Dr. Stewart Levenson, of Hopkinton, a former U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs regional director, said that Trump’s been “spot on.”
And he argued that “some Democrats are scheming to impeach our president. Why, because he isn’t a career politician? He is looking out for us and not them. Together we’re going to deny the Democrats this plot.”
Blankenbeker, Negron, Levenson and Burns, as well as New Boston’s Brian Belanger, Colebrook’s Gerard Beloin, and Nashua’s Jay Mercer, are all on the Sept. 11 Republican primary ballot in the Second District, which includes the Upper Valley and the North Country but also includes such cities as Nashua, Concord and Keene. The winner will face off against Kuster, a three-term incumbent, in November’s general election.
Here’s a closer look at the five Republican candidates who took part in two recent GOP organized debates.
Lynne Blankenbeker
Blankenbeker was an active duty Air Force nurse from 1986-91. She was deployed to Oman and Kuwait during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. After switching branches to the Navy, she treated those wounded in the Iraq War while stationed at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in Maryland. Later, she served as a combat nurse stationed in Afghanistan.
She’s currently a Navy reservist, drilling one weekend a month as a commanding officer of a 600-member medical unit in San Diego.
In between active duty tours, Blakenbeker won a 2009 special election to the New Hampshire House as a conservative in Concord, which is considered liberal territory. She won re-election to a full term in 2010.
The candidate has listed the partisan gridlock in Washington as a major reason she’s running for Congress. Spotlighting her tours of duty in Washington, she said, “I had a front seat to the congressional dysfunction that was going on.”
Blankenbeker also highlights her three-plus decades of health care experience, explaining that “I’ve done health care policy. I’ve done health care law. I’ve done health care delivery. I’ve done health care regulation. I know a lot about health care.”
She’s no fan of the national health care law commonly known as Obamacare, and she said if elected to Congress, she’d push for people to “buy their buy insurance across state lines so we can lower the cost of insurance.”
Blankenbeker joined her primary rivals at the most recent debate in calling for stricter policies and tougher enforcement to crack down on illegal immigration. And following Trump’s lead, she joined them in spotlighting the slaying of 20-year old college student Mollie Tibbetts. Authorities in Iowa recently charged a man they say is an undocumented immigrant with the murder of Tibbetts.
Blankenbeker also argued that “we’ve got to support our president and build a wall. We need a physical wall, an electronic wall, boots on the ground. ”
On the issue of climate change, Blankenbeker said, “I don’t believe the climate change sky is falling in.”
“I don’t see the climate change tragedy that the Democrats talk about,” she added.
While she joined her rivals at an August debate in Concord in criticizing the federal investigation into Russian tampering with the 2016 presidential election and any alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow, she stood apart with a softer stance.
“I think we need to let investigations do what the investigations need to do. We just need to let that happen on its own,” she said.
Steve Negron
Negron is an Air Force veteran, serving as an intercontinental ballistic missile combat crew member in Missouri and at Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colo., before retiring as a major in 1998.
Negron’s lived in Nashua for nearly three decades, working in the defense industry for such contractors as Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. He currently is president and CEO of Integron LLC, an engineering firm.
He first ran for public office in 2016, winning a House seat in Nashua’s Ward 5.
Unlike his rivals, Negron’s language on the hot topic of illegal immigration is not as muscular. He’s highlighted that “as the grandson of a Mexican immigrant, it’s very close to my heart where these immigration policies are. My grandfather came over here the right way. We had laws. We need to make sure we enforce those laws and get back to doing that.”
On health care, he’s said that “the first thing we have to do is get the government out of the health care business” as he pushed for health savings accounts for small businesses.
On climate change, Negron said, “I don’t believe necessarily that there is climate change that everybody is running around being scared (of).”
Like his rivals, he took aim at the Democratic incumbent, saying, “I miss Ann Kuster and I want her home.”
And Negron, the only Second District GOP candidate to date to go up on the airwaves with TV ads, predicted that if he wins the primary, Kuster “has no idea what’s about to hit her.”
Stewart Levenson
Levenson, the Hopkinton physician, is a former New England regional director at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
He grabbed attention as one of several doctors who blew the whistle on substandard care at a Manchester VA facility in a 2017 Boston Globe expose. The report lead to the ouster of several high-ranking officials and multiple federal investigations.
Levenson, who’s making his first run for political office, was highly critical of Kuster’s response to the problems at the VA and accused her of being dishonest about her role.
While all of the Republican candidates criticize the Democratic incumbent, Levenson seems to do it with the most frequency.
“Kuster voted against tax cuts that put money in the pockets of 80 percent of the citizens of New Hampshire,” he said at the Nashua debate.
And Levenson claimed that “it’s almost like she doesn’t want the New Hampshire economy to succeed.”
On immigration, he urged that “we have to build the wall. We will never correct this national fiasco of immigration policy while our borders remain porous. It’s actually more than a fiasco, it’s a tragedy. Look at the story of Mollie Tibbetts. She died because we allow violent criminals into our country.”
Levenson has spotlighted his “over 30 years’ experience in health care” when discussing the issue. He’s argued that “the main thing is we have to stop paying for health care on a cost-plus basis. Every extra test that’s ordered, every extra consultation that’s obtained, it delays the delivery of health care, but moreover, it adds cost.”
When it comes to the environment, Levenson criticized Democrats, charging that “climate change is being used as an excuse for the redistribution of wealth.”
Robert Burns
Burns jumped into the race at the beginning of June, long after the other major candidates in the race had launched their campaigns.
Burns was born in Nashua, grew up in Bedford and graduated from Keene State College.
Burns doesn’t live in the district. He’s a resident of Bedford, which is just over the border in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District. It’s legal but rare for congressional candidates not to the live in the district for which they are running.
A longtime GOP activist, Burns defeated Democrat Chris Pappas for Hillsborough County treasurer in the 2010 election. But Pappas won the rematch in 2012, when the two ran for the Executive Council seat in District 4. Burns was narrowly defeated by Pappas in 2014.
Like his rivals, Burns is a strong defender of the Second Amendment and wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He’s advocated for opening “up the markets so people can get catastrophic health insurance from other states.”
On immigration, he’s called for deporting “illegal aliens, especially those who have been committing crimes that are already on our radar so we can avoid terrible tragedies like Mollie Tibbetts.”
And Burns added that “one thing that’s not being talked about a lot is the amount of people who are coming here on vacation to have what are called ‘anchor babies’ and that’s something that we do need to crack down (on).”
Anchor baby is a term — considered by many to be derogatory — used to refer to children born in the United States to noncitizen parents, who automatically become American citizens by virtue of where they were born.
On climate change, Burns has argued that “the scientific data has never been there to prove” global warming and said, “Now we talk a lot about climate change because the global warming didn’t quite work out.”
Brian Belanger
Belanger, a New Boston businessman, has a degree in commercial diving technologies and is making his first run for elective office.
Belanger, who took part in the GOP-organized debates in Concord and Nashua, repeatedly has said his campaign’s top issue is representing and fighting for the people of the Second District.
Belanger said that Granite Staters “are looking for someone different. They don’t want the political machine.”
He explained that “I don’t have an expensive house, an expensive car; I go and live day by day just like everybody else in the Granite State.”
On health care, Belanger’s lamented the cost of pharmaceuticals. He’s argued that “the No. 1 thing we need to do is get the lobbyists out of Washington.”
“Until we get rid of them, we are going to keep spinning our wheels,” he added.
On energy, Belanger promotes hydroelectric power, saying it “would be a big thing for New Hampshire.”
And on climate change, he joined his rivals’ skepticism, saying, “I don’t believe that the global warming thing is as big as they make it.”
Paul Steinhauser can be reached at psteinhauser@nh1.com.