Karen Liot Hill is looking to keep her job as the only Democrat on New Hampshire’s Executive Council. Her opponent, Republican Tobin Menard, hopes to win the District 2 seat when voters head to the polls Nov. 3.
“I have a desire to serve,” Menard told the Valley News Monday. He said he was asked to run for office by members of the Republican Party local to District 2.
For Menard, the most important plank on his platform is the one that promises a strict review of justices. In his interview with the Valley News, the Newport native stressed his belief that Supreme Court appointments should go to judges who make non-political rulings.
“I want a judge that rules based on the law and the Constitution, not on how they feel about a law or what they think it should be,” he said.
Affordability takes first position on Liot Hill’s agenda. She has prioritized the cost of living in her first two years on the Executive Council and plans to continue to do so if re-elected in November, she said.
“I have worked my entire life, and I am still a member of the working class,” she said. “My job is looking out for taxpayers, looking out for people struggling to make it in a world that is getting increasingly expensive, where people are just getting crushed by the cost of living. I feel it because I also am getting crushed by the cost of living.”
Liot Hill, indeed, works two part-time jobs on top of her full-time gig as an executive councilor: She’s a radio deejay and plays piano — and now organ — at the Community Lutheran Church in Enfield. Before joining the Executive Council, she waited tables and later operated the Lebanon Diner while also working as the longest-serving city councilor in Lebanon’s history. Being a member of the working class keeps the problem of affordability at the front of her mind.
Actually, both candidates running for the seat define themselves with blue-collar values. Menard built industrial printers at the Fujifilm factory in Lebanon and manufactured firearms for Ruger in Newport. If elected, he said he would think about the needs of everyday workers while reviewing contracts and voting on policy decisions.
For now, Menard works on a Get Out the Vote campaign for Turning Point USA.
He and Liot Hill both fall on their respective sides of the party line when it comes to some of the biggest issues facing New Hampshire, like education and healthcare funding. They disagree on the use of federal and state money for women’s healthcare: Menard doesn’t support funding family planning contracts that go to organizations like Planned Parenthood. He called the latter a “political organization” and said that when government funds go to such organizations for healthcare purposes, that money is inevitably used for abortions.
Liot Hill, on the other hand, feels that the governor’s lack of family planning contracts is a serious issue for the 81 towns she represents. She emphasized that organizations like Planned Parenthood and Lovering Health Center provide all sorts of important healthcare services to women, like cancer screenings and Pap smears.
“I hear from my constituents that they’re concerned about Planned Parenthood and health clinics in our state that serve women, especially in rural areas,” she said.
Menard supports Education Freedom Accounts, or EFAs, which Governor Kelly Ayotte made available to all New Hampshire families last summer.
“EFAs allow the parents to determine what is best for the kids, and as the New Hampshire Constitution says, the state has a responsibility to educate the kids,” Menard said. “Therefore, the money the state provides should go with the kids, not to some random administrative person at a public school.”
Opponents of the voucher system have said the program increases town property taxes by placing the burden of public school funding on municipalities rather than the state. Menard dismissed this, saying any increase caused by EFAs would be “very negligible.”
To Liot Hill, though, EFAs are “highly irresponsible.” She said 90% of families who receive education vouchers sent their children to private or religious schools before Education Freedom Accounts became available.
“EFAs started as an income-based program that was supposed to help struggling kids in poor families have greater access to educational opportunities,” she said. “What it has turned into is a giveaway to wealthy families who were already sending their kids to private schools without the vouchers.”
While many of Liot Hill’s values align with her Democratic affiliation, she described her first term on the Executive Council as one mostly defined by bipartisan agreement. Ninety-five percent of the council’s votes in the last two years have been unanimous, she said, giving her “the highest bipartisan record in the state.”
“There are a lot of places where we have a lot of common ground,” Liot Hill said. “I have built good working relationships with all of my colleagues currently on the Executive Council.”
For Liot Hill, this gives all the more weight to those times when she has been the sole dissenter against a four-person majority. She cited her opposition to Bryan Gould’s Supreme Court justice appointment as one of those significant moments: Liot Hill believed the governor appointed him in order to enable the Supreme Court to overturn the Claremont decisions, the basis on which New Hampshire is currently required to fund public schools. She also said she has been pushing the governor, attorney general and judicial conduct committee to release information about what’s happening with the three justices currently on New Hampshire’s Supreme Court who have been implicated in Gordon MacDonald’s misconduct.
Menard stressed justice appointment as something he cares about, too, writing on his campaign website that he “will only vote for judges who apply the constitution and statutes as written and against those who treat the bench as a second legislature.”
He touted his attention to detail among the qualities that make him most fit to work on the Executive Council. A former Air Force mechanic and meteorologist, the Newport native has a history of homing in on specifics, something he believes would help him sift through wordy contracts and investigate justices up for appointment.
“If you overlook something, then you can have major consequences,” Menard said.
Liot Hill feels similarly: “I have a really important job of oversight and accountability, especially as the only Democrat,” she said.