2 weeks Ago
In the State Senate race to succeed Becky Whitley, a former teacher and police officer is facing off against a longtime former state representative and lawyer. Republican Pamela Ean came to New Hampshire nearly 30 years ago, and has served as a teacher in the Merrimack Valley School District. Describing herself as a “libertarian-leaning” Republican, she wants to lower state business taxes and walk back state bail reform.
She pointed to housing affordability as top issue, but is against the state overriding local control. Ean is a supporter of the state educational voucher program — providing public money to families using private or home-based schooling — but she would prefer the program be replaced by a system where those who do not have children in public schools do not have to pay school property taxes. Democrat Tara Reardon, a lifelong Concord resident who served in the house from 1997-2009 in addition to stints on the Concord City Council and School Board, came out the victor of a contentious three-way primary, edging out two current state reps.
A former head of the state Employment Securities Commission and a retired lawyer at the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund — which supports manufactured housing residents looking to own their parks — Reardon cites reproductive healthcare access, housing accessibilty by opening up local zoning rules and making childcare more affordable through subsidies as her top policy proposals. Senate District 15, which encompasses Bow, Concord and Hopkinton, leans heavily blue — Whitley won the seat two years ago by a 30-point spread — and with primary endorsements from Concord’s current mayor and outgoing Congresswoman Annie Kuster, Reardon is a heavy favorite. Ean has run several times for state office before, with three previous bids for house seats and one for state Senate.
“Concord is hard nut to crack for someone with my views,” Ean said. To win this race, she’d have to sway not only independent voters but a significant number of Democrats into her camp. Her message to them was simply: “I believe that liberty is good for everybody.
The more you get to save of your hard earned money, it’s a benefit to everyone.” In her responses to a survey by Citizens Count, Ean underscored her opposition to any additional taxes or tax increases. But some of her positions on other key issues, such as abortion access and marijuana legalization, were marked “undecided.
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Cross|Word Flipart Typeshift SpellTower Really Bad Chess In an interview, Ean said she supports New Hampshire’s current law allowing abortions up to 24 weeks of pregnancy with narrow exceptions in the third trimester. She wouldn’t say whether she’d vote in favor of legislation proposing further restrictions, like a 15-week ban. “I don’t know,” she said.
“I’d have to look at what’s in the bill.” On marijuana legalization, Ean is generally in favor, but would prefer the state emphasize home growing. “I think that if someone wants to grow in their home for their own use, they should be able to do that,” she said.
Current Gov. Chris Sununu has vetoed legalization bills that don’t fit his vision for the system, under a state-run model similar to that of state liquor stores. Ean doesn’t love that model, seeing as verging too closely on a new tax, but said she would “probably” support such legislation if it came to the Senate.
Notably, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kelly Ayotte has said she is against legalization in any circumstance. Ean said she is supportive of Sununu’s decision to use state money to add patrols to New Hampshire’s northern border and to send the National Guard to the Southern Border. But, notably, her libertarian leanings mean she sees border control as a purely state-level decision: she doesn’t think the federal government should be involved at all.
“It’s not in the U.S. Constitution,” she said.
With reproductive healthcare a top issue for Reardon, her responses to the Citizens Count survey confirm she supports adding a guarantee to the right to an abortion before 24 weeks and repealing the 24-week cutoff in current state law. She has previously told the Monitor that she would push for the state to cement rights to contraceptives, medication abortion and IVF in state law. “We need to have reproductive freedom ensconced in the law so anything that happens federally can’t affect the reproductive and privacy rights of all people — not just women, of all people — here in the state of New Hampshire,” Reardon said in an August interview.
She did not respond to a request for an interview for this story. Reardon also emphasized an urgency to ease the state’s housing crisis. “We’ve got to make some efforts to solve a crisis that’s been more than 20 years in the making,” she said.
That means, to start, “doing zoning controls at the state level that have been otherwise left to local towns who have chosen not to be opening open to workforce housing.” Reardon supports recreational marijuana legalization under both private and state-run sales, according to her responses. She also opposes the state education voucher program.
While opposed to a decrease in state business taxes, she would not support instituting sales, income or capital gains taxes. Reardon — who vastly out-fundraised her opponents — came out of the primary with some lingering question marks over her likely service in the Senate. During the primary, an opponent argued that a new state conflict of interest law, HB 1388, would force her to recuse herself from key legislation.
Reardon’s spouse, longtime former Concord Mayor Jim Bouley, is a partner for a lobbying firm in the statehouse. His clients include the solid waste company Casella, health care providers and insurers, Intralot, a company that has worked the state Lottery Commission on lottery and gambling systems, and The Brook, the state’s largest casino. In response to an August request from Rep.
Rebecca McWilliams — who finished a close second in the Democratic primary — the state’s Legislative Ethics Committee recently declined to make a ruling about whether the new law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, would restrict Reardon because she has not been elected..
