Inflation, energy, immigration key issues for GOP Congressional candidates

GILFORD — Republican candidates for the First Congressional District met at Rep. Harry Bean’s home to rally supporters in the wake of President Joe Biden’s announcement he would not seek re-election to the nation’s highest office.

The First Congressional District, currently occupied by Democratic Congressman Chris Pappas, features a litany of New Hampshire Republicans hoping to challenge the second-term representative and former executive councilor. 

Bean, who is active within the Belknap County Republican party, hosts an annual summer barbecue. At this year's gathering July 20, candidates for federal, state and local office traversed the spectrum of conservative thought, but pressure points including New Hampshire’s housing shortage and monetary inflation were through lines of their platforms. 

The state Primary Election is Sept. 10. The General Election is Nov. 5.

Former New Hampshire Executive Councilor and state Sen. Russell Prescott said inflation, energy production and federal border policies are key aspects to his agenda.

“Everyone has troubles with inflation, everybody is having troubles with the effects of the open border and we are having troubles with not being energy dependent,” Prescott said. “Those are the reasons why I’m running for office.”

Cutting costs at the federal level and creating a balanced budget will help reduce the financial stressors of inflation of everyday Granite Staters, he said. 

“In my history of becoming a state senator, we had an $800 million deficit when I first got there in 2011. It was a budget deficit that was 1% of our GDP here in New Hampshire,” Prescott said. “We were able to balance the needs of our state with the wants, we took care of the needs so we could balance our budget. That’s one of the constitutional duties we have, and we did that in one term.”

Through the same fiscally-conservative approach he brought to politics at the state level, Prescott said he’d be able to make an impact in Congress.

“We’re going to be able to just take care of the needs and not the wants and keep taxes low. That spurs your economy,” he said. “If we do the same thing in Washington, D.C., our growing economy can get us out of debt as well as just being a good fiscal conservative, keep taxes low.”

Hollie Noveletsky, owner of Novel Ironworks and a veteran, who also worked in the health care field, said the diversity of her experience will help her succeed for New Hampshire in Congress.

“Because I have a wide variety of background and experience. Between the health care background, the business background and the military. Because I’m not a politician, I’m really here for the people and for the workers,” Noveletsky said.

“I have workers who are struggling, I see them every day, and as I go around the district I see people struggling with economics.”

While questions regarding inflation and the economy are paramount, Noveletsky said district constituents most commonly describe their fears relative to immigration policy at the federal level.

“The No. 1 issue I hear from them all is the border,” she said. “Closing the border, both north and south. I’ve been up to the border twice. The other issue is, [Chris] Pappas doesn’t listen to us. If you look at his voting record, he’s not addressing the issues. He hasn’t addressed immigration.”

In order to curb inflation, Noveletsky said energy independence will be key.

“We have to cut spending. If we cut spending then we can bring down inflation, we can bring down interest rates,” Noveletsky said. “We also need to be energy independent. Energy drives our economy. If we are energy independent, we can bring down the cost of building materials.

“We need action and I’m an action person,” she said. “I want to get stuff done and then come home.”

Business leader and U.S. Army veteran Chris Bright attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and was a team leader in the U.S. Army Special Forces, commonly referred to as Green Berets. He said his experience in business and the military have given him insight into successful leadership.  

“I’ve built a business from scratch, I’ve grinded. I never had that handed to me,” Bright said. “You’ve got to figure out how to take limited resources and grow that. I’ve seen the downrange effects of bad policy.”

Recounting his time serving with the U.S. Army in Sarajevo, Bosnia, at the turn of the millennium, Bright noted that less than 20 years earlier that city had hosted the Winter Olympic Games, but had quickly devolved into chaos. 

“You think about how quickly a country can collapse in on itself and I saw that firsthand,” Bright said. “I saw what bad policy at the federal level looks like.”

Bright said private equity firms purchasing vast swathes of the domestic housing market are a principal cause of the housing crisis and should be regulated.

“It’s a supply and demand problem, first of all,” Bright said. “We’ve got to figure out how to create more inventory in housing. Right now, over the last four years, private equity companies and investment firms have taken 37% of the housing inventory off the market, and they’re turning around and renting it back.”

Housing generally affords middle-income earners an opportunity to build generational wealth, Bright said, and regulating equity firms in their real estate ventures could help restore that practice.

“They’re taking inventory off that people can normally build wealth from and you overlay on top of that, they’re getting tax breaks from that,” Bright said. “To me that’s something that needs to be dialed in — I’m a free markets guy, I don’t believe in regulation, but in certain instances where people with a lot of money are playing outside of the boundaries, that to me is something you can dial in. I think that you can fix that over a four- or five-year period because it starts to disincentivize that behavior.”

And Joseph Kelly Levasseur, alderman-at-large in the City of Manchester, ran for executive council against Chris Pappas in 2016 and lost, but said he ran a tight race and is well-known throughout the Manchester region, which could benefit his campaign this year.

“I’ve been in the trenches for 25 years in politics,” he said.

“I think name recognition in this particular race will be important and a lot of the votes will be in the Manchester corridor.”

Price inflation hits middle-class families the hardest, he said, and noted his career included decades of restaurant ownership and he understands the supply side of the problem better than most. 

“I’ve been a restaurant owner for 35 years, I started my first restaurant when I was 25, I finished when I was 59.5, so I know how the prices of food have really affected people,” he said.

“When I left the restaurant business I could get imported ham for $1.99 per pound; it’s $6.99 in the store. When I go to the store now, as a former restaurant owner, it’s sticker shock for me. I understand prices and I understand how my money, my bank and my savings is now being whittled away by all of these ridiculous expenses we have to deal with.”

Achieving energy independence will go a long way in reducing the effects of inflation, Levasseur said. 

“It all started with the fact that Biden killed the Keystone Pipeline and we need to go back in that direction,” he said. “Oil drives everything, energy prices drive the prices of everything.”

Pointing to the increased price of diesel and the effects of those increases on shipping and transportation companies, Levasseur said increased energy production on the domestic front will make a difference.

“That is one way we can bring down inflation right away,” he said. “If we can 'Drill baby drill,' I think that will definitely help.”

And while Levasseur said creating more affordable housing will greatly improve the housing crisis here, he stopped shy of advocating for zoning reform at the federal level.

“I think more low-income affordable housing will help because that will pull people out that are in their 60s and 65 and above out of the apartments they’re paying too much money for now,” he said. “As far as the federal government having anything to do with zoning or anything to do with rules or regulations for cities or towns, I’m against that.”