HANOVER — Voters in Hanover and Lyme will choose between eight candidates vying for four seats in the New Hampshire House during next week’s state primary.
State Rep. Sharon Nordgren, D-Hanover, is running for a 17th term and is joined on this year’s Democratic primary ballot by Orian Welling, Riley Gordon, Mary Hakken-Phillips, Joanna Jaspersohn, Brittney Joyce, Russell Muirhead and Jim Murphy in the two-town Grafton 12 district.
The newcomers are hoping to replace outgoing Reps. Polly Campion and Mary Jane Mulligan, Democrats from Hanover who opted not to run again. State Rep. Garrett Muscatel, D-Hanover, stepped down after graduating in June, in part because he was no longer in the state.
The slate of candidates largely share similar policy positions — increasing the minimum wage, creating an independent redistricting commission and making access to health care more affordable — but say they would bring unique experiences to Concord.
For Nordgren, shortfalls in the state budget are the biggest worry heading into the next legislative session.
Revenue to state coffers dipped $145 million below projections in the last fiscal year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and some estimates predict this year will see an even larger crunch.
Nordgren says “having a steady hand” in Concord will be necessary to manage the fallout. She was first elected to the House in 1998 and chairs a branch of the powerful House Finance Committee that plans New Hampshire’s health care budget. Nordgren, 76, also hopes to be a source of information and a helpful hand for new lawmakers.
“I think I’ll hopefully be helpful to the new recruits we have after the election on Tuesday,” she said in a phone interview.
During the last session, Nordgren cast votes in favor of creating an independent redistricting commission, raising the state’s net metering cap, imposing a waiting period for firearms sales and establishing a paid family leave program — all efforts that were vetoed by Republican Gov. Chris Sununu.
Nordgren expects many of those same issues, as well as increases to the minimum wage and education funding, to again be on the table next year.
“I think the minimum wage is a big issue that we have to deal with, which became even more obvious with the pandemic,” she said, alluding to the $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage that New Hampshire adheres to. Sununu vetoed a bill that would have raised it to $10 next year and $12 by 2023.
Welling, a Hanover resident, says energy and transportation issues would be his main focus in the Legislature.
The 36-year-old is a mechanical engineer by training, having obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Cambridge. He now works at the White River Junction-based firm Resource Systems Group, where he advises state and local governments on transportation.
“In a state like New Hampshire with such a large and largely volunteer legislature, a lot of what I hope to bring is that expertise and an ability to understand the issues,” Welling said.
He supports measures to expand New Hampshire’s net metering cap and hopes to work on legislation that would reduce the barriers to building electric vehicle charging stations.
Welling also promises to work with rule makers and regulators to enact performance-based rate-making, whereby utility revenue is tied to performance rather than investments.
He supports a minimum wage hike as well and would vote with Democratic colleagues to increase education funding. Welling described himself as “open-minded” and said he’s also eager to work across the aisle on key issues.
“It frustrates me how divisive legislation making and government has become these days,” he said.
Gordon, a Dartmouth College student, says his past work with lawmakers and advocacy for student voting rights proves he’s got what it takes to be an effective legislator.
Gordon, 19, is a former president of the Dartmouth College Democrats and aide to Muscatel, the former state representative and fellow Dartmouth student.
“I’ve worked nonstop to boost political engagement among young people,” Gordon wrote in an email. “I’ve organized voter turnout shifts, handed out voter information cards, circulated petitions and knocked on doors for candidates all over the state, while also writing legislation for state representatives on issues I wanted to see addressed.”
in the House, Gordon says he would continue to battle with Republicans over voting laws, including a 2018 measure that amended the state’s definition of domicile so that people who cast ballots in elections also are subject to residency laws.
“These laws have been shameless efforts to strip voting-age citizens of the right to cast a ballot where they live, simply because when college students vote, it hurts Republicans in elections,” he said. “As a state representative, I will put a face to the masses that they are trying to disenfranchise.”
Gordon also hopes to take up climate change measures, such as building codes and solar production; work to make health care more affordable; and promote racial justice in the Statehouse.
Hakken-Phillips, a Hanover resident and real estate attorney, said her experience in the financial sector and commitment to studying the issues, making hard choices and seeking compromise set her apart in the race.
Hakken-Phillips, who works at the Concord firm Tarbell & Brodich, previously worked as an executive assistant in the financial industry during the 2008 recession, an experience she says will help when responding to the current economic downturn.
“As someone who lived the lessons of the last financial crisis from inside a bank boardroom, I know my experiences will guide me when creating and proposing meaningful legislation for our economic recovery,” she wrote in an email. “I believe government regulation, business ethics, and corporate governance can protect our communities from greater pain in the future.”
Hakken-Phillips also touts her efforts to make a difference locally since moving to the Upper Valley in 2016. She serves as a member of the Hanover Finance Committee and is on the board of directors of COVER Home Repair, which offers essential home repairs to low-income Upper Valley residents
If elected, she promises to enact gun control legislation, advocate for LGBT Granite Staters, fight for a public health care option and reform the juvenile justice system so that minors receive better services.
Hakken-Phillips also hopes to pitch legislation that would create a state-sponsored retirement savings account and would propose new standards that require the disclosure of police misconduct in a new registry.
Joyce, a Hanover resident and higher education consultant, says her decision to run for the House goes back to the time 16 years ago when she was pregnant with her son Cameron.
“It was a difficult pregnancy, one that caused me to take a medical leave of absence from graduate school,” she wrote in an email. “I didn’t have insurance, and I lost my graduate assistantship which covered my housing and living expenses.”
Her family wasn’t in a position to help, Joyce said, and so she and her husband enrolled in Medicaid and sought food assistance.
“That period taught me a lot about the support and resources needed for young families who don’t have access to savings or wealth, the archaic processes and rules in place to access social programs, the deep chasms of inequity which exist in our country, and the importance of access and equity to higher education for social mobility/recovery,” said Joyce.
The pandemic had exacerbated those inequalities, she said, making the need to better fund higher education more important. She also hopes to sponsor bills requiring public colleges to institute a permanent test-optional or test-blind admission policy and eliminate the need for students to take the ACT or SAT.
Those efforts would help students who physically cannot take tests because of COVID-19 and open more doors to underrepresented populations, Joyce said.
“We need creative, persistent, well-informed, compassionate problem-solvers to address all these issues, and I’ll bring that and more to the House,” she added.
Jaspersohn, a first responder from Lyme, says she hopes to represent working families in the House.
The average age of a representative stood at 61 in 2018, leaving large swaths of the population out of the decision-making process, said the 44-year-old Jaspersohn.
“We’re the ones that are trying to deal with raising our children and balance caring for our elderly parents,” she said in a phone interview.
Jaspersohn said she passed on attending Vermont Law School and returned home to care for her ailing father for years after graduating from college. She’s since raised two children in Lyme.
“We’re unfairly represented by people that are older and people that are wealthy,” she said.
If elected, she hopes to increase funding to social service programs, saying the social safety net in New Hampshire is “truly broken.”
“There are not enough programs, there’s not enough money, there’s just not enough help,” Jaspersohn said. “To me, that’s not the America that people want to believe that they live in.”
She also plans to work on legislation legalizing the sale and use of recreational marijuana and pointed out that surrounding states and Canada have already done so to different degrees.
“We’re willing to put humongous liquor stores on the interstate but we don’t want to jump on the huge moneymaker that marijuana is,” she said. “We’re letting all the states around us get the jump on it.”
Muirhead, the chairman of Dartmouth’s government department, says he entered the race over of growing fears that America’s trust in elections and democratic institutions is rapidly deteriorating.
His most recent book, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, speculates about a president who uses a conspiratorial charge of “rigged” elections to justify staying in power after losing an election.
“The first time I wrote about such a scenario, it was considered outlandish — unthinkable,” Muirhead said via email. “Now, after the president of the United States has considered postponing the election and after his numerous ‘jokes’ about refusing to concede if he loses, this is no longer a matter of far-fetched speculation. It is all too real.”
If elected, Muirhead, 54, says he would advocate for the creation of an independent redistricting committee and a law that would prohibit donors from shielding their identities behind limited liability companies, called the “LLC loophole.” Similar measures were vetoed by Sununu this year.
He also advocates for a minimum wage increase and better funding for education.
“Watching things unfold, I decided it was time to not only write about the problem but to try to do something about securing electoral institutions and protecting the right to vote,” he wrote. “This is not an ordinary political moment: fundamentals are at stake, and it will take dedication, passion, and teamwork to get us through this.”
Murphy, a retired orthopedic surgeon living in Hanover, says his decades of experience in health care will be beneficial as New Hampshire recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.
The Statehouse needs lawmakers who understand medicine, but also have years of experience interacting with people who are now bearing the brunt of the country’s economic problems, he said.
“We had a lot of issues that predate COVID,” said Murphy, who formerly worked at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center before becoming chief medical officer at New London Hospital. “COVID has just exposed them.”
Murphy, 68, says he’ll fight to keep prescription drug costs low and increase reimbursements offered under Medicaid. He also supports moving to a universal health care system, although he acknowledges that fight is likely to be won or lost on a national level.
Murphy also says New Hampshire needs to find ways to better fund education and lambasted the state’s current contribution to towns, which starts with a base payment of $3,708 per student.
The per-pupil cost to educate the average student in New Hampshire stands at $16,346, according to the state Department of Education.
Murphy called for a “fair and progressive tax structure” that better provides for communities, as well as a $15 minimum wage that raises families’ standards of living.
“We’ve got to do stuff that’s lasting in nature and I’m tired of basically kicking it down (the road),” he said. “We have to have a vision for 10, 20, 50 years from now.”
A ninth person, Dartmouth College junior Victoria Xiao, is also on the ballot but ended her campaign last month and said she would decline to serve if elected. No Republicans have filed to run for the seat.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.