Hassan, Simpson Look to Nov. 4 Election

Citizens across New Hampshire will be casting their votes for their favorite candidates in the general elections on Tuesday, November 4, in which two members of the PEA community will run. Incumbent Governor Maggie Hassan, wife of Principal Tom Hassan, aims to be reelected for a second term, while Alexis Simpson, wife of religion instructor Thomas Simpson, hopes to become one of the Granite State’s state representatives.

For the past few weeks, both Gov. Hassan and Simpson have been actively campaigning and promoting their plans to improve the state of New Hampshire in order to earn the support from voters.

Simpson’s main platform is promoting food security and addressing the key issue of public education, both of which she has had much previous experience in.

"I am for a healthy community, a healthy environment and a healthy economy," Simpson said.

"We need to be planning for a future where we use our New Hampshire agricultural resources to feed all of our people."

According to Simpson, the candidates are currently in the "Get Out the Vote mode."

As the voting date quickly approaches, the two candidates have been pooling votes and encouraging the Granite Staters to take some time out of their day to vote.

"We all lead fast-paced, busy lives, and a day can slip by the best of us. We don't want that to happen for any voter on Election Day! It is our job to remind people that this is our democracy," Simpson said.

In the previous weeks, Simpson has been more involved in the town, introducing herself and her platform. According to her, this provided great opportunities to find out what issues people were most concerned about and start planning the best ways to address them. Simpson has tried personally to stay on top of issues on the local, state and national scale.

In addition, Simpson has been answering a questionnaire from the Exeter Newsletter and another from a group of academic researchers. She is part of a coordinated campaign with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Gov. Hassan and U.S. Representative Carol Shea-Porter.

Similar to Simpson, Gov. Hassan has devoted much of her time recently to refining and sharing her goals for if she is re-elected. After helping to bring New Hampshire’s unemployment rate to the lowest it has been since 2008, Hassan believes it is important to strengthen the foundation of its current economy.

"We know there are families still struggling to make ends meet and we need to continue working to keep our economy moving in the right direction," Hassan said.

"We can continue working to keep our economy moving forward by making higher education and healthcare more affordable and accessible, reducing the cost of energy for families and businesses, helping innovative businesses start up in New Hampshire and making it easier for our existing companies to grow."

Hassan added that the Granite Staters face a clear decision: "Do we continue to move forward together, building on our bipartisan efforts to solve long-standing challenges, or do we go back to the slash-and-burn policies of the Bill O’Brien era that hurt our small businesses, middle class families and our economy?"

She emphasized that the people of New Hampshire can't afford to let her opponent, Walt Havenstein, take the state backward with his "anti-middle class Koch Brothers agenda."

Many Exonians have become very active in following their campaigns and supporting both candidates. Students have been spreading awareness about these candidates’ platforms through forums and meetings across campus. Students are even becoming active in local politics, especially the democratic and republican clubs who have both been passionately exploring the two candidates and their goals. One of the members of Democratic Club, lower Bonnie LaBonte, explained her two views on the candidates.

"Simpson comes to Dem Club events and she's very personable and smart. I'm also a big fan of Maggie Hassan," LaBonte said.

"She's done a lot to advance New Hampshire by lowering the university tuitions to make education more accessible. She's also credited for being extremely bipartisan to advance policy and helping lower the unemployment rate to the lowest it's been since 2008."

Joe Platte, a co-head of Democratic Club and resident of New Hampshire, agreed, praising the progress Hassan made in her first term and how it will translate into her second term.

"In her first term, Gov. Hassan has been unbelievably productive. She has lowered the cost of community college and frozen state college tuition, expanded health coverage and made critical investments," Platte commented.

"I think her future plans for a potential second term are to simply keep expanding opportunity for the people of New Hampshire like she has been doing for the last two years."

Senior Hannah Fuller said that she is both proud and glad to see members of the Academy community actively involved in state politics.

"I think that members of the PEA community being involved in our government reflects well on the academy because it shows how we are more than just a community within ourselves and instead we are connected to the place that we call home."

Faculty members echoed Fuller’s sentiments and noted the effects of the candidates’ involvement on campus.

"It’s great to see people who are at the Academy taking an interest in government and doing their civic duty," Bill Jordan, history department chair and instructor, said.

"We have been talking about goodness lately in our discussions lately and one of the things that I think we should be focusing on more than we are and always be focusing on is that issue of citizenship. We should be educating people to be good citizens of our democracy and one way of doing that is to give them the example of us doing our civic duty in different ways."

Townley Chisholm, science instructor and advisor of the Republican Club, agreed with Jordan and emphasized that Hassan and Simpson are not only promoting a sense of good citizenship, but also one of the Academy’s core value of "non sibi."

"Having members of the community who are active and engaged in local and statewide issues is a nice example of ‘non sibi’ and offers a great example to students of people who care enough about their community to undertake these campaigns and to work very hard with folks with many different philosophies of government to serve the state," Chisholm said.