Common ground among Republicans, Democrats, and independents at Gilford forum

GILFORD — It was politics, not prayer, that brought people to the pews of the Gilford Community Church Thursday night. The church had loaned its space for a bipartisan candidate forum hosted by the New Hampshire League of Women Voters.

The Gilford event featured candidates for Belknap County District 6. The recently-formed district consists of Gilford, Gilmanton and Laconia Ward 2. The audience was encouraged to write down questions on note cards, which were funneled up to debate moderator Liz Tentarelli and then relayed to the candidates.

Of the eight candidates, four attended: independent Kurt Webber, Democrat Bob McLean and Republicans Dr. David Nagel and Russell Dumais.

Republican incumbent Rep. Harry Bean was not able to attend due to health issues. Lisa DeMartino of Gilford was unable to attend due to a COVID exposure, and Dana Hackett was also out due to a recent knee surgery. Both DeMartino and Hackett sent written statements in lieu of their attendance. No statement was received from Bean or the other absent candidate, Richard Beaudoin.

This was the second event of its kind this cycle in Belknap County. The first was held Oct. 6 at the Belknap Mill in Laconia.

Webber, a West Point graduate and former U.S. Army Special Forces officer, introduced himself as a proud independent with the goal to “restore reasonable, responsible representation to District 6.”

“I'm confident as a modern independent that I can do that. I'll work with members of both parties to better serve all the citizens of District 6,” Webber said in his introduction.

Dumais leaned on his 57-year Gilford residency and extensive experience on local boards and as a three-term selectboard member.

“I'm doing this reluctantly,” Dumais opened. “I'm angry with what's going on in the county delegation. It's taken a twist towards almost anarchy at times. Free Staters and those kind of folks are dominating the conversation a good bit of the time, and I think we lose our perception and legitimacy with folks who have a very strong agenda that is off the mainstream.”

Ire toward the actions of Free Staters, extremists running under the Republican banner, was a common thread throughout the evening.

“The reason I'm running for this is because I've gotten frustrated over the destructive actions which the county delegation has done in regards to Gunstock, our public education, our county nursing home. The county jail is barely operating, and there are a few reasons I am running for other issues to be addressed,” said McLean, the lone Democrat in the forum. He has lived in Gilford for 23 years and worked in hospitality management, construction and ski instruction at Gunstock Mountain Resort.

Nagel focused on his extensive medical experience working with people with disabilities, people with substance use disorder, and people experiencing homeless in his introduction.

“Beginning in 1998 I started advocating for their rights,” Nagel said. “I wrote basically all the state opioid policies. We started working on medical drug-abuse issues and things like that a long time ago to try to create equal access and help people with disabilities and addiction to prevent that.”

The first question for the candidates was if they would support electing Gunstock Area Commissioners or maintaining the current appointment process.

Dumais referred to his tenure as a former Gunstock Commissioner, and said he would not support legislation to make commissioners an elected position.

Nagel cited the Gunstock bylaws, stating it would be a mistake to make the GAC seats elected positions.

“What we can do is vote for delegates that we have faith in to be able to look through a slate of candidates and figure out who is best capable of doing the job,” Nagel said.

McLean reflected this opinion, adding that putting the seats up to an election process would only make the positions and situation more political.

“We saw what happened when it was political this past year,” McLean said. “I think if we could stay away from that it would be in the best interest of it.”

“My understanding is that the GAC was created back in the late '50s to keep politics out of the running of Gunstock,” Webber said. “It's the responsibility of the Belknap County Delegation to select well-qualified people to serve as GAC commissioners who can oversee but not micro-manage the operations of Gunstock. The key thing is to elect reasonable, responsible people to the Belknap County Delegation.”

Questions regarding the county's ability to fund essential services like the jail, sheriff's department and nursing home were commonplace in the audience. County departments haven't been able to compete with the pay rates of private businesses and are now understaffed. There is currently a waiting list of over 100 residents for the county nursing home.

Nagel again referenced his medical experience and working with Catholic Charities, with an emphasis on the importance of being able to pay people competitively to work in county services.

“There is money outside of taxes; grants, things like that, that we need to be aggressive and looking at,” Nagel said. “There is a limited amount of money you're going to get from taxation, but you need to look at alternative sources like that.”

“I do believe we need to fund these programs,” McLean said. “As human beings we have an obligation to take care of our elderly and to take care of vulnerable people in this population.”

Webber emphasized an attitude of cooperation between the delegation and county commissioners to find more funding as apposed to the recent culture of adversarial politics.

“The nursing home is a continual whipping boy in Belknap County,” Dumais said. “We got folks there who aren't very wealthy. One of the roles of a county home is to provide for people who can't themselves. I'm a pretty conservative person, but when you're 80-something-years-old and indigent, we have a responsibility to take care of you. Let's get off the nonsense and do our job.”

Despite their varying parties and backgrounds, most candidates held similar views when it came to questions presented from voters.

Even on abortion, all four agreed that it was a woman's business when it came to the termination of a pregnancy, and that the government should have no involvement in such a decision.

All four candidates also agreed that the state and country should start looking for alternative energy sources, but there were differences when it came down to specifics. Dumais expressed enthusiasm for nuclear power, while Nagel expressed concerns regarding nuclear waste. He also considered thermal and hydro-electric to be much more viable wind than energy.

McLean said the state needed to diversify energy, and criticized Gov. Chris Sununu for making the state “almost solely dependent on natural gas.”

“That's the reason our bills have doubled,” McLean said. “Meanwhile, our neighboring states of Maine and Vermont, their energy bills have only risen less than half of our originals because they've invested in alternative means of energy.”

Webber stated there had to be increases in prices caused by supply-chain issues and the war in Ukraine, but questioned whether those factors commanded a 100% price increase.

“One of the ways to prevent this from happening in the future is to decrease our reliance on fossil fuels, and increase our reliance on renewable energy,” he said.

Candidates expressed mixed feelings toward the Education Freedom Accounts program, which allows public money to help students access private schools and alternative education. A vast majority of the funding from the program has gone to private and religious schools, and currently the program has no budget cap.

“It's unfortunate that public education tends to look at all kids the same, and we know they're not,” Nagel said. “There's different learning styles, there's kids with developmental disabilities, there are kids that are really smart. I think education systems involved need to account for that with different types of systems, and it's quite clear to me that a lot of public schools don't quite have the ability to do that. There are some kids that could benefit from outside resources.”

Nagel did stress that benefits should be on a sliding scale, and vary from student to student and based on factors like income and disabilities.

“I think you need to [use the money] a lot more selectively than just giving it to anybody,” Nagel said.

“I would get rid of the Freedom of Education Act,” McLean asserted. “Basically all it is doing is giving these discounts to families that already have their kids enrolled in private schools. It's giving money to people that are homeschooling their children and there's no testing or anything to make sure homeschooling is being done. It's just giving money away and no one has to own up to whether any education is happening it all.”

McLean also criticized the act for being $15 million over budget and having no cap.

Webber agreed there was “way too much money” going to these families and expressed support for public education, citing his children's success at Gilford High School.

”My parents made the choice to send me to parochial school in Florida when the public high schools were in bad shape and I benefited from that, but they paid for that out of their pocket,” Webber said. “I think the way that they calculate how much they give the families to choose to send their kids out of schools is overly simplistic and too generous.”

Dumais was a solid no on EFAs.

“That's a way of diluting a classroom,” Dumais said. “If you allow the brightest kids and you take them out of the classroom, having been a teacher, it's important for a good mix of people in that classroom so they learn from each other.”

Candidates also held mostly similar views regarding legalization of recreational marijuana, albeit with some caveats.

“I'm not a cannabis guy,” Dumais laughed. “I don't know what to do about it. I think it depends upon how much a person has in their possession. I think it's a threshold. I think what happens is people begin to use it and then go to something else. I've never been in a place where someone was smoking pot.”

Nagel said he had certified “many people” for medical cannabis, and that he wouldn't personally write a legalization bill, but would be open to supporting one depending on the specifics.

“One of the things that we as legislators have to respect is we are supposed to fulfill the will of the people,” Negel said. “What's fairly clear in this state is a majority of people support a bill for recreational marijuana, which I'm OK with up to a point as long as we recognize four things.”

Negel cited three things, including the negative effects on development on persons 25 or younger, driving risks within 24 hours of consumption, and the potential for pot to act as a gateway drug.

McLean disagreed with the assertion by his Republican fellows that marijuana was a gateway drug.

“It would be a welcome revenue source, that's for sure,” McLean said. “Right now people that are smoking marijuana, they're going to Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, everyone around us already has it. If you have to go to some guy on the corner to get a bag of pot, that could be the same guy that's selling opioid pills, he could be lacing the pot you buy, it would be much safer for everybody if it was sold like in our liquor stores. We already have the infrastructure to sell the product to people and make a lot of money for the state.”

Webber stated his short answer to legalization was yes, with safeguards in place to prevent use by adolescents, and to prevent driving under the influence.

When it came to the complex issues of housing affordability and homelessness in the region, the candidates all agreed something needed to be done, but none could offer a complete solution.

Despite his extensive experience and work with the homeless population, Nagel said he would want to bring more experts in on seeking a solution. Dumais claimed to “not know much about” homelessness.

“I don't see homelessness, we all talk about it but I don't seem to see that as a problem,” he said. “If it is, I'm unaware of how big a problem it is.”

McLean suggested seeking out grant programs to incentivize certain property owners to host halfway houses to help people struggling with addiction get back on their feet.

“Housing is a huge problem in this county, the state and the nation,” Webber acknowledged before referencing the governor's recent bill that allocated $100 million in ARPA funds to help provide affordable housing throughout the state. “Other funds like that need to be used in a responsible manner so affordable housing can be provided in a timely manner with safeguards in place.”

Dumais stated the need to “get the politics out of it, do our job, and fund these programs so these people can prosper,” when asked about solutions to the housing crisis.

Overall, the event was calm, collected and cordial, much like its predecessor. For audience members like Rick Zach, the forum was refreshing.

“Well the wingnuts are gone,” Zach said. “What we're left with are a bunch of professional mid-tier candidates. I don't see any hard Republican or Democratic polarization here. They're very similar in their beliefs. If any of them win it, I'll be happy.”

Attendee Linda Terwilliger said she was excited by the number of people who showed up and called the forum a great event.

“I was surprised at some of the answers I heard because they all seemed to match up a lot between Republicans and Democrats,” Terwilliger said. “Everybody was very courteous and I really love that. It kind of brought back what we're trying to do, which is listen to the candidates, become informed voters and give them the opportunity as well to be in front of the voters.”

“This is how it should be,” Zach said. “I'm a Republican but I can vote for Democrats with a clear conscience. The party label means so little to me right now. I just look at what the candidate stands for.”

The two-hour forum was recorded by Lakes Region Public Access, and is available to watch by visiting vod.lrpa.org. The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 8.