Valley News – GOP contenders discuss the issues in race for open Congressional seat

WEST LEBANON — In the race to represent New Hampshire’s second district in Washington, 13 Republican candidates filed for the chance to flip Democrat Annie Kuster’s congressional seat.

The three GOP front-runners, Bill Hamlen, Vikram Mansharamani, and Lily Tang Williams, sat down with the Valley News’ editorial board to discuss their policies, what they think sets them apart in a crowded field, and how the presidential race will shape the chances of flipping a district that has been reliably Democratic for multiple cycles after having a reputation as a swing district in the Obama era.

Polling in July showed former President Trump and President Biden locked in a tight race in the Granite State when Biden announced his withdrawal from the race. August polling has shown Vice President Kamala Harris leading Trump by between five and seven percentage points.

The Republican hopefuls downplayed the significance of that shift for their campaigns.

“I’m worried about my race, not his race,” Hamlen said of Trump’s candidacy.

Mansharamani suggested that because the Harris-Walz campaign’s economic policies are “bluntly socialist,” they will have little impact on his support.

“At the end of the day, I’m not thinking about that,” Mansharamani said of the presidential polling numbers. “I’m running my own race.”

“Workers and working-class people,” Williams said, do not feel represented in Washington D.C. Trump is “leading a peoples’ movement,” and she wants to see Republicans united behind him.

Both Williams and Mansharamani said they’d initially supported Nikki Haley for the Republican nomination, endorsing Trump when she dropped out of the race.

Hamlen, though, supported Trump from the beginning and went so far as to switch parties temporarily so that he could vote against Biden in the Democratic primary.

The candidates shared the belief that the American economy was stronger under Trump and that Americans were better off four years ago. They had in common a concern with excessive government spending, the growing federal deficit, and the impact of inflation on consumers.

At the same time, all three candidates were careful to distance themselves from certain aspects of Trump’s public statements.

His communication style is “different,” Williams, said. She praised Trump for strong leadership, but said “you don’t have to agree with him on every policy, how he tweets, how he talks.”

“I like to tell people, let’s focus on his rational policies.”

Asked about Trump’s calls for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, Mansharamani pushed back, saying: “let’s be careful. Not Republicans: Trump.”

On Trump’s statements about Harris’ racial background and deportation, Hamlen said: “when I hear that type of talk, I find it disappointing. That’s not who I am. That doesn’t represent how I think. It doesn’t represent my moral values.”

Immigrationand border control

President Trump has made border security a central focus of his campaign even as Republican lawmakers in May voted down a bipartisan immigration bill in May.

The three candidates agreed on the need for stronger border security combined with a streamlining of the legal immigration process, or what Mansharamani referred to as a “tall wall and a wide gate.”

While rejecting the notion of mass deportations, each favored a more aggressive federal approach to extraditing undocumented immigrants.

“If you’ve come into this country illegally, I think you need to be sent out of this country quickly,” Mansharamani said. He said that he favors starting with the most recent arrivals and those who have broken laws and “going from there.”

Hamlen, too, favored immigration reform, linking border security to controlling opioid overdoses and deaths. Fentanyl, in particular, “is here in New Hampshire and it’s killing people,” he said. “I am for the strongest possible border,” even if it means declaring war on drug cartels.

“I hope he immediately deports all the criminals,” Williams said, referring to Trump.

Williams was distinct in focusing on increasing funding and attention to the northern border. She advocated for the use of satellites and other technology to deter illegal crossings while streamlining the legal immigration process to make it less burdensome. “I’m sympathetic to people wanting to get out of poverty,” she said, drawing on her own immigration experience, but emphasizing that she came to the U.S. through a legal process.

Foreign policy

In outlining their foreign policy goals, the candidates voiced unqualified support for Israel and a concern for projecting an image of American strength on the world stage. But the discussion also provided some glimpses into where they diverged from their party’s leader, particularly regarding Ukraine.

Trump’s support and overt admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin and a growing tendency toward isolationism within the GOP have led to division within the party over whether to support the Ukrainian war effort against the full-scale Russian invasion that began in 2022.

“Vladimir Putin is an evil dictator; he’s a bully,” Hamlen said, and referred to the war in Ukraine as a “failure of diplomacy,” and a “failure of deterrence,” for which he blamed Biden’s weakness. “And what do bullies do with weak people? They push them around.”

Mansharamani criticized the American response to the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014 as a “slap on the wrist” and said that “we should support our allies.”

Hamlen and Mansharamani both highlighted the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. forces and personnel from Afghanistan in 2021 as an example of a display of American weakness. That exit was a “horrific failure,” Hamlen said, that “made us look weak on the world stage.”

Williams, too, voiced concern about the image that the U.S. projects to worked leaders such as Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, who she said was a “very shrewd dictator.”

Trump is “very tough, and that is the kind of leader that we need,” Williams said.

Candidate backgrounds

Hamlen, 61, a Dartmouth graduate and resident of Hanover, is a retired commodities trader. He calls himself a “commonsense New Hampshire conservative” in the tradition of Ronald Reagan. Since he arrived on the Dartmouth campus in 1980, he’s been a regular visitor to the Granite State prior to making Hanover his primary residence in 2015. “I think I share the values of the people of New Hampshire,” he said.

“I know more about energy than anyone in Washington,” he said.

He is especially eager, he said, to replace Kuster on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Lincoln resident Vikram Mansharamani, 50, says that he is a “businessman, not a politician.” A former financial analyst and university lecturer, he is a strategic advisor for a Boston-based consulting firm. The author of two books, he refers to himself as an “independent thinker.” Mansharamani ran an unsuccessful Senate campaign in 2022, for a seat that was ultimately won by Maggie Hassan.

He emphasized his ability to listen effectively and said that his second district constituents will have access to at least two town halls a year, and a priority phone line “ahead of lobbyists and other corporate interests.”

Lily Tang Williams, 60, is a resident of Weare who emigrated from Maoist China to the U.S. in 1988. Her policies emphasize personal freedoms and resistance to tyranny, based, she says, on her experience living under an authoritarian regime. She ran an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate in Colorado in 2016 as a libertarian. She relies more heavily on social media and non-traditional outlets such as YouTube than other candidates, and is suspicious of traditional media. Williams says that she is “not a politician,” and does not have establishment endorsements.

Williams owns a legal consulting business specializing in cases related to China, and she and her husband manage residential properties. She is the co-founder and chairwoman of the New Hampshire Asian American Coalition.

The economy

Concerns with curbing government spending, controlling inflation, and bringing down the federal deficit were common to all three candidates.

Hamlen’s background in the energy industry was evident in his concern about Biden canceling the Keystone pipeline project and placing a moratorium on new natural gas export terminals. “Joe Biden declared war on domestic energy,” he said.

Mansharamani takes an “all of the above” approach to energy. (“Drill, baby, drill,” he said.) He argued that because of America’s strong environmental laws, American energy is cleaner than energy produced anywhere else. The nation should, therefore, maximize production of all types of energy.

Williams’s economic platform focuses on controlling “out of control spending” and the national debt.”

Our national debt has crossed $35 trillion and not many people talk about that,” she said. She said that she would use her role in Congress to encourage fiscal responsibility.

Education andcampus protests

Each candidate emphasized different aspects of education policy, but hewed closely to longstanding Republican concerns about progressive content in schools, the role of the Department of Education, and student loan forgiveness.

Hamlen advocated for limits on administrative growth and for the reduction in size of the Department of Education. He described K-12 education as “one of the pillars of our society,” but also that he is concerned that education spending “needs to be brought under control.”

Mansharamani steered away from his policy views on education, saying that it was more of a state and local issue that “doesn’t play a prominent role” in his campaign for federal office. Even so, he ranged broadly over a number of issues, including the presence of “identity politics,” and “the systemic racism stuff,” which he said is “offensive and needs to be stopped.”

He opposed any sort of student loan forgiveness and said that there is a “moral hazard” attached to any such program. A college graduate who “studied something that can’t generate a return,” should not have access to loan forgiveness, Mansharamani said, regardless of how the loan impacts their participation in the broader economy. “Those people probably shouldn’t buy a house if they can’t afford it. They need to learn to live responsibly. That’s what capitalism is. There will be winners and losers, and I’m OK with that,” he said.

Williams focused on test scores, curriculum and the importance of local school control to New Hampshire residents. “After billions of dollars the Department of Education spent, our kids are not scoring higher,” she said. She also expressed concern that subjects such as Mao’s cultural revolution have not been adequately taught in schools, leaving students naive to the threat of authoritarian tyranny.

Turning to campus protests over the ongoing Israeli offensive in Gaza, the candidates all defended the right to free speech and peaceful protest, while also coming down on the side of law and order when speaking about the May 1 arrests on the Dartmouth campus.

“Fundamentally I believe in the right of peaceful protest,” Hamlen said. But “I believe there was extreme hate speech,” he added. Regarding the arrests, he said that it was “disappointing that it ended that way.”

Mansharamani referred to the protests at Columbia University and said that he “didn’t know the specifics” of what happened at Dartmouth. Asked whether a candidate wishing to represent the 2nd District of New Hampshire should be more familiar with what happened at Dartmouth than at Columbia, he replied “Perhaps.”

Williams said that she speaks regularly at events on college campuses, and tells students to “peacefully protest and exercise free speech. Be grateful for this country.”

Polling and fundraising

New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District is geographically large and demographically diverse, including the western half of the state from the Massachusetts border to the North Country. Kuster, who has represented the district for six terms beginning in 2012, announced in late March that she would not seek reelection.

Democratic candidates Maggie Goodlander and Colin Van Ostern are competing to become their party’s candidate for the seat. In an Aug.13-14 St. Anselm poll, Van Ostern, who has Kuster’s endorsement, trailed Goodlander by 10 points.

The same St. Anselm Poll showed Mansharamani and Williams tied at 16% and Hamlen coming in third at 6%.

Notably, 57% of respondents were “unsure” who they would vote for in the September primary.

According to the Federal Election Commission, Mansharamani has raised the most money, with $400,800 in reported campaign contributions, with Tang Williams at $307,777 and Hamlen having raised $269,645.

New Hampshire’s primary election is Sept. 10.

Christina Dolan can be reached at [email protected] or 603 727-3208.