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The four GOP candidates in the First Congressional District primary showed Tuesday night they are up for a fight, whether it’s incumbent Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas, President Joe Biden, or occasionally each other.

Two business owners and veterans, Chris Bright and Hollie Noveletsky, joined Manchester Alderman Joe Kelly Levasseur and former Executive Councilor Russell Prescott at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College for the NHJournal GOP primary debate.

The number one question: Which candidate has the best chance to defeat Pappas?

“We have a perfect example: Manchester, New Hampshire,” said Levasseur when asked to make his case.

“For the first time since 1998, the board is red. We have seven Republican aldermen and a Republican mayor. And for the first time since 1998. We have a Republican chairman: Joseph Kelly Levasseur.

“There’s no one Chris Pappas, the Invisible Man, fears more,” Levasseur added. “I have won seven straight elections in a blue city as a Republican — and not a milquetoast Republican, a Republican that is Trump tough.”

Bright pointed to demographic changes, as well as the GOP’s struggles with the abortion issue.

“We have to get somebody [to D.C] just back at the table,” Bright said. “When I moved here in 2005 this was a red state. Then it became a purple state, now it’s a blue state. We need to engage with independent voters, and the abortion issue hurts us. We have to get our act together on abortion.”

Prescott, who ran unsuccessfully in the GOP primary for this seat in 2022, said his strategy of staying positive is the winner, pointing to his victories over Maggie Hassan in state Senate contests in 2002 and 2010.

“I look back at my races against Maggie Hassan, and it was a positive message that gets the independent voter to take a second look at a Republican,” Prescott said. “A Republican with a positive message, that’s what I have been doing for many, many years.” Prescott also mentioned his time working with Pappas on the Executive Council.

“We don’t need more of the same. We don’t need people who worked with him and caused this problem,” Noveletsky retorted. “We need something different.”

She also blamed an influx of voters from blue states.

“As people have moved to New Hampshire because it is such a favorable state to live in, because of our taxes and because of our quality of life, they bring with them their politics,” Noveletsky said. “We need to educate them about the values here in New Hampshire, and about why we’re different. And teach them to leave their politics at  home.”

Pappas was the main target Tuesday night, as Republicans accused him of failing to stand up for New Hampshire and instead acting as a rubber stamp for Biden.

Asked what one question they would ask Pappas on a debate stage, Noveletsky answered, “How do you sleep at night?”

All four candidates said Biden is too infirm to serve another four years, and they noted that Pappas has met with the president several times and must have seen the deterioration — not to mention the steady supply of stumbles and bumbles in Biden’s public appearances.

“We’ve been lied to for the last two years,” Bright said.

Noveletsky, a nurse who worked with the elderly and dementia patients, said Biden is clearly infirm and cannot do the job. Levasseur likened Biden’s situation to the movie Weekend at Bernie’s, and Prescott noted Biden’s infirmities are a national security danger. 

Asked to name their priority if elected to Congress, Prescott, Bright and Noveletsky identified out of control spending, skyrocketing inflation, and illegal immigration as top concerns. The more discursive Levasseur simply offered to follow the lead of former president and current GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.

“Elect me and send me to Washington and I will be Trump’s main guy working on an America First agenda,” Levvasuer said.

Trump’s “America First” political philosophy influenced the public policy proposals from the candidates on stage. Noeveltsky wants to close both southern and northern borders to stop illegal immigration and build Trump’s oft-promised but never-completed wall at the southern border. All four candidates also said they support Trump’s call for stepped-up deportations of illegal immigrants.

“I do believe we need to deport them, I don’t believe we’re going to go door to door,” Noveletsky said.

Bright acknowledged he supported former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the primary after voting Trump in 2016 and 2020. He said Haley offered most of the policies of Trump, but with a younger candidates and far less “baggage.”

“We need a younger generation coming in,” Bright said. 

Prescott declined to say who he backed in the First in the Nation primary, calling the issue “old news.”

On abortion, all of the candidates are following Trump’s lead again. No one on stage supports a federal abortion ban, a major plank in past GOP platforms. Instead, like Trump, they all say with the Dobbs decision sending the question back to states, there is no longer a need to push for a federal ban.

Pappas has handily won every general election since taking office in 2018, and the Cook Political Report currently rates the district as “likely Democrat.” But a weakened Biden candidacy could hurt Democratic turnout and give a strong Republican candidate the chance to pull an upset.

Tuesday’s debate also generated its fair share of laughs, with some of the audience’s loudest prompted by a lightning round question session asking candidates to name a local restaurant where they’d pick up the tab for lunch or dinner with the debate’s moderator.

President Joe Biden’s “Bidenomics” spending spree is buying nothing but record debt, lower wages, and a weaker economy, and Democratic U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) keeps cosigning the charges, according to a new campaign out this week from Americans For Prosperity.

AFP, a libertarian-leaning grassroots activist organization, is launching an ad campaign in five states targeting Democrats who, like Pappas, are in more centrist districts but embraced Biden’s entire economic agenda, including trillions in post-COVID spending.

The 15-second streaming ad highlights the negative consequences of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, like the inflationary increase in prices for gas, groceries, and housing now faced by average Americans. According to AFP, it takes an extra $11,400 to afford the standard of living Americans had when Biden took office in January, 2021.

“Rep. Pappas has done nothing but rubber-stamp President Biden’s agenda. And it couldn’t be further from what Granite Staters expect of their elected leaders,” said Greg Moore, AFP-NH’s state director. “You can see the difference between the heavy hand of Bidenomics and the light-touch policies that have made New Hampshire the freest state in the nation with robust economic growth.

“Rep. Pappas needs to give up on Bidenomics and take a page from the New Hampshire Advantage,” Moore said.

AFP’s campaign, which will include the streaming ad as well as direct mail and door-to-door outreach, is a response to Biden’s reelection campaign Bidenomics Bus Tour. Despite polls showing nearly twice as many Americans believe Biden has hurt the economy (49 percent) than helped it (28 percent), the incumbent president has made “Bidenomics” a centerpiece of his campaign for a second term.

“No president’s had the run we’ve had in terms of creating jobs and bringing down inflation,” Biden claimed last week. “It was 9 percent when I came to office, 9 percent.”

(Biden’s claim is false. Inflation was actually 1.4 percent when Biden took office, though it soared to 9 percent in June, 2022.)

Not surprisingly, the candidates in the First Congressional District GOP primary aren’t fans of Biden’s economics.

“As a small business owner, I have felt the implications of President Biden’s painful inflation and Congressman Pappas’ reckless tax and spend agenda in Washington,” said Republican Russell Prescott. “As a former state senator who has balanced budgets and stopped a sales and income tax, I have the necessary experience of governing in a fiscally responsible way. Our campaign is uniquely positioned to hold Chris Pappas accountable for his out-of-control spending spree in Congress, and we look forward to doing so this November.”

Pappas is also a business owner — his family owns the Puritan Backroom restaurant in Manchester — a fact noted by GOP contender Chris Bright.

“Thanks to the disastrous Biden-Pappas economic agenda, New Hampshire families pay more for their mortgage, more for groceries, more for gas and even the chicken tenders at the Puritan Backroom cost over 30 percent more than they did before their reckless spending spree.

“It’s time for a dramatic change of direction that reins in overspending, puts our economy back on track and gets the cost of living under control.” 

And Hollie Noveletsky, another GOP candidate, said the spending pushed by Pappas and Biden adds up to fiscal pain for everyone else.

“As the owner of a small business that has been debt-free for over 30 years, I have to be fiscally responsible. If I wasn’t, my company would be bankrupt and my employees would lose their jobs,” Noveletsky said.

“Unfortunately, career politicians like Chris Pappas have blown out government spending which has been the main cause of inflation and higher costs. Those increased costs are putting the squeeze on middle-class families when they go to the grocery store. That real life impact will definitely impact the ballot box this November.”

Pappas voted for all of Biden’s major spending proposals, including the American Rescue Plan of 2021 ($1.9 trillion), the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act ($1 trillion) and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act ($1 trillion), which economists agree is not reducing inflation.

The spending has driven the U.S. federal debt to $35 trillion. In fiscal year 2022, the deficit was $1.38 trillion. The following year it was $1.7 trillion. This year, the budget deficit will total $1.5 trillion and grow to $2.6 trillion by 2034, with interest payments on the debt going from $659 billion in 2023 to more than $1.6 trillion by 2034.

“Interest on the national debt, already higher than federal spending on children or Medicaid, will exceed spending on defense next year, on its way to $1 trillion by 2026. This is no way to run a country,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The debt is also cutting into income and wages for most Americans, according to the CBO. Over the next three decades, the national debt is expected to cut wages and income by at least $8,000 per person, though if more debt is added under Biden’s proposals, that could jump to as much as $141,000 in lost income over 30 years, according to the CBO.

MacGuineas said it’s past time for Congress to take responsibility before the debt crashes the economy.

“We can start by actually passing a budget and by establishing a bipartisan fiscal commission to tackle some of these issues. We need a real plan to put the national debt on a downward sustainable path before it’s too late,” MacGuineas said.

Pappas declined to respond to requests for comment.