The New Hampshire House is a 400 member legislature, with (at this moment) 199 seats held by Republicans, 196 seats held by Democrats and two seats held by Independents. Three seats are vacant, one will be having this upcoming special election next month in Rockingham County’s District 1, which includes the towns of Northwood and Nottingham.
The two candidates are Hal Rafter, a former Nottingham selectman and school board member and Jim Guzofski, currently a selectman for the town of Northwood and a pastor of Destiny Christian Church in Concord.
Last year Rafter ran for but lost, by 25 votes, the same seat he is running for in next month’s special election. According to his candidate page, Rafter is a strong advocate for women’s rights, including the right to an abortion. He is a strong supporter of voting rights, not restricting them. He will improve and protect public education and understands that in order to protect our environment, climate change MUST be addressed.
On the other hand, Guzofski couldn’t be more further opposite. For example, he is against any form of marijuana legalization and/or sales, stricter gun laws, action addressing climate change and electric vehicle fees. He is against mail-in voting and conditional affidavit ballots for new voters. He is against increasing the minimum wage and business tax credits for student loan repayments. However, he is all in for the school voucher program, banning teaching certain concepts pertaining to race, banning phasing out Interest and Dividends tax along with decreasing the business tax. He supports banning abortion during the 1st and 2nd trimester.
While Republicans have a very slim majority, not all show up to vote on every bill. This has given Democrats the occasional voting majority to pass such crucial legislation as blocking a terrible anti-LGBTQ+ bill known as the “Parental Rights” bill and requiring utility companies to pay their fair share into the state's Renewable Energy Fund to name two.
Fun fact: Districts in the New Hampshire House are very small. To put it another way, if U.S. House districts were proportioned like ours, there would be more than 96,000 members of Congress. Yikes!
If you are able and want to get involved with bringing common sense back to Concord, go to Rafter’s Facebook page to either donate to his campaign or sign up to help in any way you can.
By putting our grassroots people power to work, we can take back the New Hampshire House and bring common sense governance to our state again!
We can do this!!