Merrimack 18 includes one seat representing Concord’s Ward 4. Republican Elijah Wilson is facing Democrat Lisa Beaudoin.
Wilson did not respond to the Monitor’s candidate survey.
Lisa Beaudoin
Party affiliation: Democrat
What town/city do you live in? Concord
Political experience: I serve as chair of the Concord City Democrats, and I’m vice chair of the Neurodiversity and Disability Caucus of the NH Democratic Party.
Professional experience: I am an NH-based nonprofit leader, having led two statewide organizations and founded Strategies for Disability Equity. I’ve worked on over a dozen bills. I’ve drafted LSRs that eventually became law, provided policy briefs to elected officials at the state and federal level and testified dozens of times. For over a decade, my professional life has required me to be politically engaged, and one guiding tenet is to bring an intersectional approach to advancing opportunity, access and belonging.
Community service experience: A sampling from newest to oldest: Concord’s New Middle School Building Committee; Volunteer at NH 50501 rallies; Ran the sensory tent at the Multicultural Fest in 2024, 2025; Member of the Concord chapter of GSOP; Occasional volunteer at the Friendly Kitchen; Boys, middle school basketball coach; President of the Standing Committee of the Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church; VISTA volunteer in NYC before graduate school.
Policy Positions
Should NH legalize recreational marijuana use and position?
It depends on the bill. My concerns include whether it protects children from marijuana marketing, establishes strong product-safety and potency standards and adequately addresses impaired driving and public safety.
What is the No. 1 action the Legislature should take to address the housing shortage?
Mandate municipalities adopt housing-friendly zoning policies.
How involved should NH government and law enforcement be in immigration enforcement?
NH should not assist at all because the feds have abandoned due process, are terrorizing children and adults and refused to deal with our nation’s immigration challenges using a humanely-centered rule of law. Until there is federal reform, NH cannot abide the current policy choices taken by the feds or be complicit with these un-American and illegal immigration actions.
To what extent should NH restrict abortion, if at all?
It should not restrict abortion at all.
What is one law currently on the books in NH that you would repeal, and why?
The Education Freedom Accounts law is one that must be repealed in steps. First step, restore the income cap, then over two to four years zero out funding, then repeal. There are a litany of reasons why, among them: It is fiscally foolish to divert public tax dollars away from public schools especially when the NH Legislature has downshifted costs onto local property tax payers; the EFA program recipients have zero accountability unlike public schools; the EFA program allows private schools to discriminate against students with disabilities which is wrong as well as it puts NH at risk for litigation; the EFA program is a Trojan Horse sent by the Free Staters to undermine public education which they seek to destroy; it is bad public policy that NH is now giving out more tax dollars ($52 million) to families who were largely already sending their children to private schools than NH is spending on State Special Education Aid ($49.9 million); it is fiscally irresponsible to be giving $5,000 to the parents of 6,167 students whose family income is between $109,000 – $156,000 (or more) when we are asking Medicaid families to pay a monthly premium. Schools are a shared public institution.
NH consistently struggles with funding its government and services. What is one way you would raise state revenue, and what is one area you would cut expenses? Be specific.
One way to raise state revenue is to restore the interest and dividends tax, a tax on the earnings of investment portfolios, not the actual total value of the portfolios. Well-to-do Granite Staters paid this 5% tax from 1923-2023. 401k accounts were exempt, and there was a floor in portfolio value to protect those with modest savings. In 2023, it dropped to 4%; in 2025, it dropped to 3%, and still, it generated $180 million dollars in revenue. In 2025, the interest and dividends tax was fully repealed.
What is one way to cut expenses? As mentioned above, restore the income cap on the EFA program, then phase out the program.
As people across the state struggle with their local school tax bills, what role should the state play in funding education?
The state needs to pay its fair share of school funding by raising state revenues, and it must stop downshifting its funding responsibilities onto local property taxpayers, which it has consistently and quietly been doing for years under Republican leadership. In 2025, the state’s share of public education funding was about 28%, the rest was raised largely through local property taxes, plus a wee bit from the federal government. NH literally ranks 50th in the nation for the state’s share of funding for public education. In 2006, the state of NH provided about 39% of the funding for public education, which was lower than the national average of 46%. NH has reduced its school funding share by 28% over 20 years. Think about it this way: If education were a $100 meal, in 2006 the state paid $39; now, it pays only about $28 of the $100 check. Voters deserve the truth about the choices NH Republicans made – they reduced state revenue to give tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy, then left the rest of us to pay the price through jacked-up property tax bills.
Aside from those mentioned above, what do you believe is the biggest issue facing the state today?
The biggest issue facing NH is affordability, which is a big umbrella for the economic challenges of an inadequate and expensive housing supply, high property taxes, high fuel costs, high food costs made worse for food-insecure families and seniors by significant cuts to SNAP, inadequate and expensive child care, and an inadequate, fragile and expensive health care system now more fragile by cuts to the ACA and $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. Granite Staters lie awake at night worrying about which bills to pay first and wonder if there’s money left over to buy their children an ice cream cone. I want to serve with the team that commits to working together to creatively solve these serious economic challenges. I believe we can do this while making NH’s economy more robust than ever.
Find more information at the candidate’s website:
It should not restrict abortion at all.https://www.facebook.com/LisaBeaudoin4NH
Name
Party affiliation:
What town/city do you live in?
Political experience:
Professional experience:
Community service experience:
Policy Positions
Should NH legalize recreational marijuana use and position?
What is the No. 1 action the Legislature should take to address the housing shortage?
How involved should NH government and law enforcement be in immigration enforcement?
To what extent should NH restrict abortion, if at all?
What is one law currently on the books in NH that you would repeal, and why?
NH consistently struggles with funding its government and services. What is one way you would raise state revenue, and what is onea rea you would cut expenses? Be specific.
As people across the state struggle with their local school tax bills, what role should the state play in funding education?
Aside from those mentioned above, what do you believe is the biggest issue facing the state today?
Find more information at the candidate’s website: