Paige Beauchemin showed up at Ledge Street Elementary School in Nashua at 5:45 a.m. on Election Day came with a mission.

The state representative for the city’s fourth ward said she’ll be camped out by the polling place throughout the day and plans to stick around until the ballots are counted so she can report the results back to various Democratic campaigns.

As congressional candidate Maggie Goodlander arrived to a group of campaign staffers and supporters and went inside the school to vote, Beauchemin and her son held four signs for Colin Van Ostern, who’s running against Goodlander in the Democratic primary to represent New Hampshire’s second district.

Beauchemin supported Van Ostern because she believes Goodlander is “everything that needs to be out of politics.”

“I find it very hard to trust her,” Beauchemin said.

She thinks Goodlander overstates her ties to the community. Goodlander is a Nashua native but has made her career in Washington, D.C., serving in all three branches of federal government. Still, many of Beauchemin’s supporters know either Goodlander or the Tamposis, her family that rose to prominence in Nashua from her grandfather’s real estate developments. Many of them are all in for Goodlander, “and that’s OK,” she said.

Goodlander started her day at the Broad Street Elementary School, the polling place where her mom went to vote while she was in labor. She then came to Ward 4 to vote herslef around 9:30 a.m. before traveling across the district on Election Day.

“It couldn’t be a more beautiful day for democracy,” Goodlander said. “The things that make this country and this state great are on the ballot, today and again on Nov. 5 … This is the beginning, but we’ve gotta win.”

As for the governor’s race, Goodlander said front-running Democrats Joyce Craig and Cinde Warmington are “two amazing candidates” but declined to say who she voted for.

Van Ostern talks to voters about having a working-class background, being raised by a single mom, feeling crushed by student debt and lacking health insurance earlier in his life. In a financial disclosure required for congressional candidates, Van Ostern reported millions in assets from a venture capital firm he previously ran.

Van Ostern’s campaign message stuck with Beauchemin.

“I feel like he can relate to working-class people and that he really, really knows what the troubles are and how that feels,” Beauchemin said. “That’s an experience that is really, really hard to understand if you haven’t lived that life.”

Beauchemin recently submitted an ethics complaint against Goodlander’s campaign after she left many of her financial disclosures undeclared in a required report for congressional candidates. Goodlander has since fixed those documents, disclosing assets that could amount to more than $30 million.

Beauchemin said she plans to vote for Craig in the governor’s race.

“A lot of the policies are the same. So for me, it comes down to trust and also who I think is more relatable so that they can beat the Republican candidate,” Beauchemin said. 

She added that Jon Kiper, another Democrat running for governor, most closely aligns with her values – she loves his message and his candor and wants him in politics, but she doesn’t think he has enough experience yet to serve as governor.

About 15 feet away was Johanna Schulman, a resident of Cambridge, Mass., who came up to Nashua to hold Goodlander signs at the polling place at the urging of a friend in her home state.

“This is not just about our own state,” Schulman said. “This is a national crisis we’re facing.”

On her way in and out of the polling place, Goodlander was stopped by several voters who recognized her and said they were glad to support her. Tom Lopez, a Nashua alderman, was tagging along with Goodlander at the polls and said he believes she has the necessary experience and knowledge to serve in federal government. She most recently directed the White House Unity Agenda for President Joe Biden.

Voters in Nashua’s second ward said they mostly voted along party lines, like Gene Denbkoski, who showed up to vote early Tuesday to vote for Kelly Ayotte for governor. He likes her straightforwardness, which he said she exhibited during a recent debate appearance.

He and Philip DuBois, another Ward 2 voter, cast their ballots for Lily Tang Williams in the Republican primary for Congress. 

“She sees where our country is headed,” DuBois said, and she sounds the alarm on what he believes is the wrong direction for the U.S.

DuBois also voted for Ayotte.

“She’s not willing to change things as much,” DuBois said, “and she’ll keep us moving in the right direction.”

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, or send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.