Two Republicans are vying for the District 17 seat in the New Hampshire Senate.
In next Tuesday’s primary, incumbent Sen. Howard Pearl of Loudon will face challenger Julie Smith of Epsom, who has not held public office before.
District 17 spans a dozen towns east of Concord: Allenstown, Barnstead, Canterbury, Chichester, Deerfield, Epsom, Loudon, Northfield, Northwood, Nottingham, Pembroke and Pittsfield.
Voters can cast their ballot on Tuesday, Sept. 8. The winner of the Republican primary will face Robert Lawliss, a Democrat from Pembroke, in the general election.
Howard Pearl
Pearl, who runs a local wholesale produce farm, seeks to build on 10 years in the Legislature. Before he was elected to the Senate in 2022, he served six years in the House of Representatives.
If he wins another term, Pearl said he wants to continue focusing on agricultural issues and the state’s professional licensing system. The state’s licensing laws can be amended to make the state more business-friendly and ease the transition for people to move to and work in New Hampshire, he said.
He also supports the state’s zoning overhaul, in which lawmakers have sought to lift local restrictions that impede housing development, though he wants to balance that with small-town autonomy.
“There’s been a lot of new housing starts that have come in — that’s promising — but we’re watching that median housing rate that’s approaching $600,000 now, and that’s really out of reach for a lot of our first-time homebuyers and our younger families,” Pearl said. He wants to build policies that encourage development, “especially stuff on the lower end where you can keep those first-time homebuyers looking in New Hampshire and not trying to look elsewhere.”
Some local residents are expressing concerns about Pearl’s past online. In 2014, before he was elected to the Legislature, he was charged with misdemeanor sexual assault for touching a 15-year-old girl. The charges were later dropped after Pearl’s attorney argued that the prosecutor’s taped interview with his accuser was not provided in a timely manner before the trial.
“That’s an old story somebody’s trying to bring back up,” Pearl said. “Our legal system works. I have full faith and confidence in our system, and I participated at the level that I needed to.”
Julie Smith
Smith, who’s retired after working for Comcast for many years, is a self-described “serial candidate.” She’s run and lost campaigns for state representative twice before, as well as a race for alderman in Nashua.
She left the Gate City for Epsom last year in search of a political climate that she gels with more, calling her previous hometown a “blue city lost at sea.”
Smith said she pays close attention to state politics and is unhappy with her current representation in Concord. She disagrees with a range of Pearl’s votes on what she refers to as “Democrat bills,” though several were sponsored and supported by a number of Republicans.
She singled out Pearl’s support for a paint product stewardship program that passed in the Republican majority but was vetoed by Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who branded it as a sales tax. She also opposed a Republican-sponsored bill that would’ve imposed a surcharge on crisis hotline calls to help fund mental-health services awareness.
She’d be a default “no” on any new or “hidden” taxes, Smith said.
“My default vote would be ‘no’ if something involves new taxes or more taxes, and that includes hidden taxes such as the paint tax,” Smith said.
Smith supports a right-to-work law and so-called “Defend the Guard” legislation, which would prohibit the state’s National Guard from being deployed by the federal government unless Congress officially declared war. She also wants to create a cash carveout for New Hampshire drivers who don’t use E-ZPass, since the recently passed 10-year highway plan doubles tolls for drivers who do not have a New Hampshire E-ZPass transponder as a way to increase funding for transportation projects.
