State Sen. Tara Reardon, a Concord Democrat, is sailing toward reelection to the New Hampshire Senate.
She was unopposed in the Democratic primary, and her Republican opponent is not mounting a campaign.
Reardon is a well-known Concord figure who has represented Concord, Bow and Hopkinton in the Senate since 2024. She’s a real estate attorney with previous service on a slew of local government bodies and time in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, and housing bills were at the center of her first campaign and first term.
Her opponent, Republican Dennis Blankenbeker, declined a candidate interview. Blankenbeker, a self-described moderate, explained that he put his name on the ballot at the request of a friend, to ensure there was a Republican candidate in the race. He said he is not campaigning for the seat.
“I don’t want to get elected, to be honest,” he said.
The district lines are drawn in a way that heavily favors Democrats. Reardon faced a contentious primary when she ran two years ago, but had no opposition in this year’s primary.
The Monitor asked Reardon about her outlook on the next two years.
On housing
Over the last two years, a bipartisan cohort of state lawmakers, including Reardon, passed a raft of new laws aimed at reducing regulatory barriers to housing construction in the state.
New houses don’t get built overnight, she emphasized, but lawmakers can do more to pave the way.
She backs the idea of reducing the minimum lot size, but in a targeted way. The idea has drawn pushback from some parts of the state, especially “small communities who think that we’re changing their character,” Reardon said.
“We need to keep working to show that we don’t need to change a historic downtown of a town,” she said. “We just need to make someplace in each town where smaller lots are available.”
She also backs the idea of finding state-owned land that could be used for housing.
On the funding side, Reardon is among those pushing to fund the Housing Champions program again. It had set aside state money to help pay for infrastructure expansions in select towns. Eligible areas, including Concord, established local regulatory standards open to new development. The idea was to incentivize housing-friendly policies at the local level by helping to cover the municipal expenses that growth brings with it.
The program was defunded in 2025.
On other issues
Reardon favors bringing back taxes eliminated by Republican legislators and administrations over the last decade.
“The last 10 years, Republicans have ruled all branches of the State House, and we’ve lost a billion dollars just by the decreases in the business profits tax and the interest and dividends tax,” she said.
One result is increased financial pressures on property taxpayers.
Separately, Reardon has said she would push to bring “accountability” to the state’s school voucher program, which now grants state funds to students attending private schools, regardless of their family income.
She also said she plans to introduce legislation aimed at making child care more affordable.
Reardon also favors legalizing recreational marijuana, repealing New Hampshire’s ban on abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy, and raising the state’s minimum wage.
According to the nonpartisan site Citizens Count, Reardon was the prime sponsor of 18 bills in the last legislative session, with one becoming law. She also had a 100% attendance record and voted with her party 100% of the time.
On being in the partisan minority
While polls are bullish about Democrats’ chances in statewide and national races, the odds of a legislative flip in New Hampshire are lower, especially in the Senate. Many seats, including this one, are drawn to be solidly blue or red. Republicans hold a 16-8 majority.
“The Senate is pretty collegial on 50% of what we do,” Reardon said at a recent Concord City Democrats event. “On the other 50%, they [Republicans] totally ignore what we say.”
She’s found collaborators on housing bills especially, she said. While she sees the chances of a major swing in the Senate as slim, Reardon said she thinks state Democrats have put together a group of high-quality, competitive candidates, especially in two races Democrats hope to take back this year, flipped two years ago by Republicans Victoria Sullivan and Tim McGough.
