Following President Donald Trump’s lead, three Republican candidates in New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District cited the killing of 20-year old college student Mollie Tibbetts as a reason to tighten the country’s immigration laws.
“We have to build the wall. We will never correct this national fiasco of immigration policy while our borders remain porous. It’s actually more than a fiasco, it’s a tragedy. Look at the story of Mollie Tibbetts. She died because we allow violent criminals into our country,” Dr. Stuart Levenson said at a debate Monday night.
Last week authorities in Iowa charged a man with Tibbetts’s murder they say is an undocumented immigrant.
Former state Rep. Lynne Blankenbeker of Concord also mentioned Tibbetts’s murder.
“We’ve got to support our president and build a wall,” Blankenbeker, who’s spent over 30 years in the military. “We need a physical wall, an electronic wall, boots on the ground.”
Bedford businessman and former Hillsborough County treasurer Robert Burns followed suit, then kicked the rhetoric up a notch.
Burns called for “deporting illegal aliens, especially those who have been committing crimes that are already on our radar so we can avoid terrible tragedies like Mollie Tibbetts.”
Then, he went a step further.
“One thing that’s not being talked about a lot is the amount of people who are coming here on vacation to have what are called ‘anchor babies’ and that’s something that we do need to crack down.”
Anchor baby is a term – considered by many to be derogatory – used to refer to children born in the United States to non-citizen parents that automatically become American citizens.
As he has in past, state Rep. Steve Negron of Nashua, an Air Force veteran who started his own small business working in the high-tech defense industry, highlighted that “as the grandson of a Mexican immigrant, it’s very close to my heart where these immigration policies are. My grandfather came over here the right way. We had laws. We need to make sure we enforce those laws and get back to doing that.”
Generally speaking, the five major Republican candidates running in the 2nd District have continued to embrace Trump and his policies as they targeted Democratic incumbent Annie Kuster.
“We need to support our president so that we can continue those great policies that he’s put in place that are benefiting the Granite State,” Blankenbeker said.
“The president is doing some great things,” Negron emphasized. “I believe the president is doing those things that are important to us. He’s looking at the trade deals and I think those are the things that are going to bring the economy back and make us strong.”
Burns touted that “one of the important factors I bring to the table is being an early Trump supporter and knowing Donald Trump and his family.”
Burns, who served as chair of the Trump campaign’s youth coalition and as a delegate to the 2016 GOP presidential nominating convention, said that president has been very successful and Trump’s supporters “want somebody that they can believe in who’s going to go down there and help the president drain the swamp.”
Levenson, of Hopkinton, a former U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs regional director who in 2017 was one of the top whistleblowers at the Manchester VA Medical Center, argued that “some Democrats are scheming to impeach our president. Why, because he isn’t a career politician. He is looking out for us and not them. Together we’re going to deny the Democrats this plot.”
Levenson also repeatedly took aim at Kuster, the three-term Democrat from Hopkinton who’s running for re-election this year. The winner of the Sept. 11 Republican primary will face off against Kuster in November.
“Anne Kuster voted against tax cuts that put money in the pockets of 80 percent of the citizens of New Hampshire,” he highlighted.
And Levenson claimed that “it’s almost like she doesn’t want the New Hampshire economy to succeed.”
Blankenbeker touted that “there is one person on this stage that can accomplish the mission of defeating Anne Kuster and bring civility to Congress and you’re looking at here right here.”
And Negron said he’s looking forward “to debating Anne Kuster.”
Blankenbeker – who served as a combat nurse both in the U.S. Air Force and Navy – repeatedly highlighted her military service.
“Tragically I have held the hand of wounded warriors who’ve died in my arms and taken their last breath,” she said in her opening statement. “That is what happens in a combat zone and I’ve been there. It is an honor to serve my country and it is unfortunate that some chose to dishonor and our veterans by choosing politics over patriotism.”
Her comments came a few days after Republican state Rep. Sean Morrison of Hampton – a Negron supporter who served in combat in the Iraq War – criticized Blankenbeker’s “combat proven” campaign signs, saying the appeared “to be close to stolen valor.”
New Boston’s Brian Belanger argued that “the number one thing we need to do is get the lobbyists out of Washington … until we get rid of them we are going to keep spinning our wheels.”
The candidates shared the same stage for a second straight night, as they took part Tuesday evening at a forum in Hopkinton. Next week the Republican contenders face off a final time in a televised debate on WMUR.