LEBANON — In June, Al Patterson ended his more than 40 years as a Lebanon resident by selling his Farr Road home for $515,000, tendering his resignation from the Zoning Board and moving out of the city.
The move, Patterson later said, was largely made out of frustration. After the loss of his School Board seat in 2013, a failed run for the New Hampshire House in 2014, and two unsuccessful campaigns for City Council, it was clear to him that the city isn’t going to change.
And by change, Patterson, 56, means cut spending, lower taxes and, he says, revert to the days when Lebanon was made up of working- and middle-class families.
“I’m a Lebanon guy. I lived here all my life, loved the city like nothing else and loved the people,” Patterson said in an interview last week.
But, he added, the city is “poorly run,” with rising tax rates and few amenities to show to them.
Patterson, who was appointed to the Lebanon Zoning Board in 2013, said he and his wife Barbara have moved to a neighboring town but asked that it not be named.
Patterson, who ran for the New Hampshire House as a Republican, said it’s not just rising taxes that aided his decision to move. There’s been a marked shift in Lebanon’s political climate, he contends, driven in part by gentrification.
A fiscal conservative like himself, he inferred, can no longer win a citywide election.
“Lebanon has become extremely liberal,” he said.
It was just a few months ago, in March, that Patterson made Lebanon’s working-class residents an offer: elect him to the City Council and their voices would be heard.
The yearly tax increases, he said, that squeeze Lebanon’s seniors would be curtailed, dreaded water and sewer hikes would be slashed and it all would be done by reexamining the city’s needs, trimming fat and questioning new projects.
“We need to make a budget we can afford and stick to it,” he said in a February email to the Valley News. “Not go into debt like we’re a teenager with a credit card, who thinks we should keep getting an increased spending limit.”
Patterson bet his campaign on the idea that voters, particularly the city’s longtime residents, could no longer afford rising utility and tax bills and were being forced to leave. The city’s working-class would be pushed out, Patterson warned, replaced by graduate students and college employees, medical workers and the “young professionals” to whom the city’s pricey new apartments are marketed.
But when the election results were tabulated, Patterson received 802 votes, coming in second in a three-way race against longtime City Councilor Karen Liot Hill, who won 924 votes, and Community College of Vermont teacher Sylvia Puglisi, who got 303 votes.
Liot Hill, a former Republican, characterizes herself as a left-of-center Democrat. She declined to comment on Patterson. Puglisi was endorsed by the Upper Valley chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA.
Barbara Patterson, who was running for School Board, also lost, finishing fourth in a seven-way race for three seats on the panel.
The results highlight that in the 21st century, Lebanon’s elections show a drift from purple state battleground to a reliable Democratic stronghold.
In 2000, registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats in the city 2,892-2,865, according to data from the City Clerk’s office. But by 2020, that makeup had flipped, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans 5,451-1,964.
The last Republicans elected to represent Lebanon in the New Hampshire House were the late Terri Dudley and then-Mayor Ralph Akins in 2002. Akins lost a re-election bid the next year running as an independent, and now is a Democrat. All four of the city’s representatives in Concord have been Democrats since.
The leftward shift has trickled down into municipal politics as well, with few or no voices on the City Council or School Board openly labeling themselves “conservative.”
But while there are certainly fewer Republicans holding elected office in Lebanon, that doesn’t necessarily change the outcomes of votes, said Karen Cervantes, a longtime Lebanon resident and Republican activist.
Cervantes served on the Lebanon School Board for seven years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During that time, she was part of a voting bloc of three, still a minority, that unsuccessfully attempted to curtail spending.
“This has been going on for years and years,” she said of Democratic control in the city. “Alan moving isn’t going to affect anything more than it has for the last 20 years.”
Cervantes also pointed out that Patterson’s recent campaign wasn’t just about saving taxpayers money. A former Hanover police officer, he ran against cuts to the Lebanon Police Department budget proposed by the Upper Valley DSA and advocated against the group’s efforts to do away with the Lebanon school resource officer position.
While residents voted, 1,011-1,006, to approve a petitioned warrant article asking the Lebanon School District to “discontinue” its school resource post, the board ultimately decided to keep the job in May.
Patterson also came up against Liot Hill, now serving her 17th year, who often advocates for businesses and taxpayers’ interests before the City Council.
State Sen. Sue Prentiss, D-Lebanon, added that citywide elections weren’t previously partisan affairs, with hot button, local issues typically dominating campaigns. But over the last few years, she said, national politics and issues are often playing out at the municipal level.
“It created a much more striking contrast,” Prentiss, a former moderate Republican who served as Lebanon mayor, said of the policing debate. “I think people running for office not only had to stand on their vision for the city and share their background, but also their ideologies and the way they think.”
Like Patterson and his conservative beliefs, Liot Hill also was asked about her Democratic activism during the election, Prentiss said, as was now-City Councilor Devin Wilkie, who was endorsed by the Upper Valley DSA.
“It brought out a contrast for voters,” Prentiss said.
Meanwhile, School Board Chairman Dick Milius, who served for two years with Patterson, said also his absence in Lebanon will “leave a gap.” He recalls Patterson, along with a small voting bloc, often advocating for decreased spending.
“He didn’t win too many of those fights but I think when Al was on the board, you could count on that side being brought up always,” Milius said.
However, the School Board chairman is confident that others will step up to run for office, saying Lebanon is still made up of “a substantial number of people with differing political and social views.”
Lebanon Mayor Tim McNamara, a West Lebanon native, also echoed similar sentiments.
“I think we have a lot of voices remaining in this city across the spectrum,” he said. “People are not going to change their opinions just because one person moved out. People are still going to run, as they should.”
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.
Correction
Lebanon resident Sylvia Puglisi teaches at Community College of Vermont. An earlier version of this story misidentified the college where Puglisi works.