HAVERHILL — Voters in New Hampshire’s Senate District 2 will decide a rematch of the 2018 election next month as Plymouth Democrat Bill Bolton once again takes on state Sen. Bob Giuda, R-Warren, for a seat representing part of the Upper Valley and Lakes Region.
Bolton, who lost to Giuda by about 3 percentage points two years ago, said he opted to run a second time because key issues — such as a lack of broadband service, access to quality health care and problems funding education — are still on the forefront of voters minds.
“Those issues have all been worsened by the pandemic,” said Bolton, a former state registrar and director of the Division of Vital Records Administration.
Meanwhile, Giuda says he’s running for a third term to help oversee the state’s coronavirus recovery efforts and provide constituent services to those in need. He sits on the Governor’s Economic Reopening Task Force as well as the Senate Finance and Ways and Means committees.
“We’ve worked very diligently to take care of people because, at the end of the day, isn’t that what it’s really about?” said Giuda, a retired airline and Marine fighter pilot.
But while both candidates agree that the state’s response to the pandemic and resulting economic problems of the utmost importance going into the next legislative session, they vary in their approaches to solving those issues.
The two also hold ideological stances that set them apart — Bolton has favored banning guns in schools and opposed school choice while Giuda is a Second Amendment advocate who has backed bills that provide taxpayer support to private schools.
Still, their messaging appears tailored to the district’s more rural population, with infrastructure issues front and center.
Many Granite Staters were reminded of their weak internet connections when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March, and they were forced to work from home or set their children up for remote learning, according to Bolton, who chairs the Plymouth Selectboard.
“It puts both schoolchildren and people trying to start or maintain a business at home at a disadvantage,” he said of rural internet service. “They have to go elsewhere, such as in the schoolyard or some public area that has WiFi to do their homework and keep their studies.”
Bolton, 67, said he would sponsor a broadband build-out bill that would help extend coverage to “last mile” communities not being served. He also said he supports the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative’s recent efforts to enter the broadband market.
Giuda, 68, said he’s worked to improve broadband, as well, although progress along that front is “slow-moving.”
He helped the town of Bristol apply for a $132,157 grant that will allow it to install three miles of fiber optic cables. And Giuda supported a bill signed into law this summer that allows municipalities to create multi-town communications districts and bond projects together.
“Now, you can bond, you can raise money, you can change infrastructure,” he said. “It’s a very exciting bill.”
Both candidates also said they would support the creation of a universal paid family leave plan, although the two back different approaches.
Giuda led Republican efforts to craft an “opt-in” paid family leave plan in 2018, working for months with the governor’s office, insurance carriers and state agencies on a plan that would have leveraged about 10,000 public employees to entice private insurers to the New Hampshire market.
However, the resulting plan, which became part of Gov. Chris Sununu’s reelection platform, relied on negotiations with the state employees union, with which Sununu has had a fractured relationship.
Giuda said he would support a voluntary paid family leave bill, but not those put forward by Democrats the last two years.
The Democratic plan offered up to 12 weeks of paid leave for the birth, adoption or fostering of a child, a serious illness not related to employment or the serious illness of a spouse and some relatives.
It would have required businesses to provide insurance or send 0.5% of employees’ weekly wages to the state, a funding measure that Republicans say amounts to an income tax.
“I support family medical leave, voluntary,” Giuda said. “I don’t support an income tax, which will then get hijacked.”
Bolton says he would have voted for the Democrats’ plan, saying it is “satisfactory” and he doesn’t view the payroll deduction as a tax.
The two are also at odds over the future of education and how to pay for public schools.
Bolton describes himself as a “strong advocate for public education” who opposes taxpayer money being used to fund placements private or religious schools.
“The state has an obligation to fund public schools,” Bolton said, adding that he’s also concerned the state may siphon money into charter schools to the detriment of local school systems.
Bolton said he supports Democratic-led efforts to increase state funding for education by about $138 million, under New Hampshire’s 2019 budget compromise.
That money, he said, will help property-poor communities support their schools and could slightly decrease their reliance on property taxes.
Giuda is an advocate of school choice, having supported a controversial 2017 law that allows school districts to send students to private schools if there’s no public option. But Giuda, a Warren School Board member, also acknowledged that New Hampshire’s current education funding model needs improvement.
Fewer students are attending public schools in the state than a decade ago, he said, which drives up costs as staffing and building costs remain roughly the same.
Special education, which can increase school budgets by hundreds of thousands of dollars, should also be studied further, Giuda said.
“It’s the number one killer of local budgets,” he said.
The 26-town Senate district that Giuda and Bolton are running in includes the towns of Haverhill, Piermont, Orford, Orange and Dorchester. Giuda won in 2018, 12,127-11,376, but Democrats are hopeful for a different result in a presidential election year.
It was redrawn in 2012 to favor Republicans, who have held it for the past decade.
In the neighboring Senate District 5, voters will choose between Lebanon Democrat Sue Prentiss and Charlestown Republican Timothy O’Hearne.
Prentiss, a Lebanon City Councilor and former mayor, is widely favored to win the district, a liberal bastion that stretches from Lyme to Charlestown and also includes Lebanon, Hanover, Claremont, Plainfield, Cornish, Enfield and Canaan.
And in Senate District 8, state Sen. Ruth Ward, R-Stoddard, is again facing a challenge from Sutton Democrat Jenn Alford-Teaster.
That district stretches from Grantham to Weare and also includes the towns of Newport, New London, Croydon, Springfield and Unity.
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.
Correction
State Sen. Bob Giuda, R-Warren, and Plymouth Democrat Bill Bolton are in a rematch from their 2018 contest. An earlier headline with this story misstated when they ran against each other before.