Poll worker Mary Hauptman, of Canterbury, checks in voters at Canterbury Elementary School on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. (Will Steinfeld | For the New Hampshire Bulletin)
Amanda Cote, 42, is a lifelong resident of Plymouth, a town of about 6,700 in Grafton County. She’s felt the rising costs of living firsthand.
“I’m a middle-class citizen, and it’s hard,” she said, adding, “My bills have gone up tremendously, and I’ve exhausted almost all my savings.”
She has three jobs: a real estate agent, the owner of an equine facility, and doing work for her parents, who own a construction company and gravel pit. Cote stopped to talk after casting her ballot for the primary election at Plymouth Elementary School, a brick building where the rear parking lot filled and emptied with waves of voters on a cool morning Tuesday.
“I don’t have children, I’m not married, so it’s just myself and my animals.” she said. “I don’t know how people with a family and children are doing it nowadays.”
A registered Republican, Cote cast her ballot for the candidates she felt aligned most closely with her values, including former Senate President Chuck Morse for governor and rental property manager Lily Tang Williams for the 2nd Congressional District. (Hours later, Morse lost the nomination to former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte; Williams advanced to the November general election against former Biden administration official Maggie Goodlander.)
“I’ve met her quite a few times, and she just seems like a real patriot,” Cote said of Williams. “She loves our country, and she came from China, which is interesting because she’s kind of seen the radical end of communism and what that feels like to live in. To see her coming here and supporting something so different, I think is something to pay attention to.”
In conversations with the Bulletin outside the polls, voters emphasized pocketbook issues like inflation and housing. Abortion was also a lightning rod for some, particularly women. And in some races where there was little distance between the candidates on policy, it came down to familiarity and personality.
That was the case, at least in part, for Robert Guldner, 75, an undeclared voter who cast a ballot in the Republican races.
For governor, he voted for Ayotte. “Out of the two candidates, I prefer her. I’ve met her personally several times,” he said. “I never met Chuck Morse.”
He supported entrepreneur Vikram Mansharamani for the 2nd Congressional District for similar reasons. “He’s the only one that I’ve actually met and talked to,” Guldner said.
“I’d like to know who I’m voting for and where they stand,” said Guldner, who is retired. “And ads on TV and stuff just don’t do it.”
Some defined their connection to the candidates in different ways, like a shared identity. McKenzie Rowbotham, 22, a recent college graduate, has lived in Plymouth all her life, except for her time studying at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont. She works part-time at a local liquor store and as a substitute teacher in town but said she’s “an unemployed actress” and hopes to start doing community theater soon.
“I decided this year that I really just wanted to support women,” said Rowbotham, who voted on the Democratic ballot. “So, if there was a female name or a feminine name on there, I was like, ‘Bam, you got my vote,’ and then if there was two, I was like, ‘Oh, jeez, which one has the cooler one?’”
“It was a little more random for me this year, but in November, I’ll definitely know exactly what I’m doing,” she said. Rowbotham said she typically considers herself an independent voter, “but given the current political atmosphere, I’ve been voting Democrat for the past couple of years.” She brought up women’s rights as a motivating issue for her. “Obviously, I am a woman,” she said, “and I would like to have rights.”
The cost of health care is another issue that impacts her daily life. When she was 4, she was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and linear scleroderma. She said one of her medications is $3,600 a month, even with insurance. “I’ve been taking it since I was little,” she said. “And so it kind of builds up.”
“It’s been really tough on my family paying for my medications,” Rowbotham said. “I’m very much for universal health care, not only to help my family with our financial situation, but to help families who are less fortunate than us.” Her family is English, she said, and she would like to see something here like the National Health Service they have in the United Kingdom.
In New Hampshire, housing is top of mind for voters, with rising costs and low availability putting strains on renters and buyers alike. It outranked any other concern at least five times over in a June poll from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
Donald Hunter, 55, a general manager for a property management company, sees the issue up close.
“I see the impact constantly with families,” said Hunter, a registered Democrat. “There’s no affordable housing for that middle group. And I think we need to do something about it because we’re losing too many people in the state – young people.”
He thinks there should be more focus on the issue in the election. “I think the fact that we’re losing so many young people is, down the road, going to have a great effect, and it really needs to be looked at,” he said. “And I think that accumulates with mental health, health care, all of that.”
He voted for Colin Van Ostern for the 2nd Congressional District and Cinde Warmington for governor because he preferred their policies and they seemed to be talking about the issues that mattered to him.
Jason Neenos, 39, who works in education, also pointed to economic topics like housing as the most pressing issues in the election. He was on the ballot Tuesday as a Democrat for Grafton County treasurer.
“I’m fortunate enough to own a home at this point, because I was able to buy one before the pandemic happened, but we all know housing prices are absurd at this moment. … It’s hard to get a house in the state because the inventory is low.”
The cost of child care is “abysmal,” too, he said, and energy prices pose difficulties.
“I’ve got to figure out ways to heat my house and budget how much I’m paying for oil in the winter,” he said. “… And then inflation for general household goods of grocery bills and things like that have all gone up significantly post-pandemic.”
He voted for Van Ostern over Goodlander, the former senior Biden White House adviser who took the Democratic nomination for the 2nd Congressional Tuesday night, because “he has a better handle of being in New Hampshire.”
“Miss Goodlander claims she’s a renter in our district but owns a … million-dollar home in Congressional District 1, has lived in Washington, D.C., for quite a number of years,” he said, “and while she is from here, I don’t know if she has a true (connection) with the average voter in New Hampshire.”
For governor, he cast his ballot for Craig, citing her experience as mayor “in a competitive city,” but he wished there was a better way to show his preference for candidates.
“I considered Kiper,” he said, referring to Jon Kiper, who finished well behind Craig and Warmington with about 10 percent of the vote. “… I would just be worried about Kiper running in the general election, but I liked his thoughts and the way he went about things. This is where I really wish we had ranked-choice voting in order to really be able to show who I want to support.”
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