Leading up to the state primary on Sept. 10, NHPR is speaking with the top candidates running in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District to learn more about where they stand on some of the biggest concerns we’ve heard from voters.
Read on for NHPR All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa’s interview with Republican Chris Bright. He’s a business executive and Army veteran.
What questions do you have for the candidates running for Congress and governor in the 2024 election? What issues do you want them to address while seeking your vote? Share your thoughts here.
Editor’s note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Transcript
Many voters we've talked with are concerned about the high cost of living in New Hampshire. What kind of policies would you propose or support to make the state a more affordable place to live?
Yeah, I'm hearing the same thing between the border and the economy. Those are the top two issues. So with respect to the economy, we've gotten ourselves into quite a mess. It's not a quick fix, but there are certain things that you can do. I mean, what's driving this right now is inflation. And so what Granite Staters, what Americans, are feeling is just the overall cost of everything from groceries to gas is up. And then a lot of folks because their paychecks haven't kept up with inflation, they've gone on credit card debt. The interest rates on that, the interest rates on affordable or on adjustable rate mortgages, those are all up. And so it's literally taking less money out of everyday Granite Staters pockets to buy the things that they need most.
To combat that, you need to look at it from a couple of different ways. You need to put inflationary practices in place. Government spending is one of the biggest drivers of inflation. And when we came out of COVID, all this extra money that was pumped into the economy overlaid with a kind of a supply and demand issue, where supply chains both here and overseas couldn't keep up. It just drove the prices up. And then all that extra money that Americans had created competition. So we need to bring that back down. And one of the ways that you do that unfortunately, is higher interest rates. So that's going to take some time to bring down the overall inflation. But what we can do from a policy standpoint is prevent reckless government spending and government spending on a lot of other programs that aren't going to have an actual effect on inflation. In fact, that entire Inflation Reduction Act is ironically named because it just pumped more money in and actually drove inflation up.
(Editor’s note: The inflation rate has actually dropped in the last year, though most economists do not attribute that decrease to the Inflation Reduction Act. You can read more about inflation in the U.S. from NPR here.)
And what specific areas would you like to see spending cuts start?
Well, I'll give you a great example that came out of the Inflation Reduction Act, something that they put in. It was $7.5 billion for EV infrastructure, which on the surface looks great, right? Energy across all spectrums is a good thing to drive the economy. But when the government gets involved in those types of civil infrastructure projects, they're literally the least efficient organization to do that. And so we spent $7.5 billion to improve our EV infrastructure. To date, only four charging stations have gone in in three years. So that's something.
Student loan forgiveness is a massive tax on all Americans. A lot of folks consider that unfair. I mean, I've paid back my own student loans. Most Americans have. And so now to take that and kind of put that cost out across a lot of hard working Americans who are already struggling. Those are two examples of government spending that can be tamped down on day one.
(Editor’s note: Congress allocated $7.5 billion in 2021 to build out electrical vehicle charging stations across the U.S. The funding has led to seven operational stations across four states. Read more from the Washington Post here.)
You mentioned immigration earlier. I'd like to move to that. Immigration and border policy are top concerns with many voters as well. What's one specific immigration policy that you would point to that you would want to support?
Well, I actually have a couple and I'll cover them real quickly. We talk about Remain in Mexico. I think that needs to be expanded to Remain in Canada. So Remain in Mexico [and] Remain in Canada. Meaning if someone's coming from outside of our borders and wants to come into Mexico and Canada, and they're saying they're coming into the United States, we don't allow them to just traverse through those countries and come in. So in fact, on our northern border, it's abnormally skewed where more folks on an international terrorist watch list are coming across our northern border. And that's scary.
(Editor’s note: According to data from the U.S. Border Patrol, there have been five encounters with non-U.S. citizens on the terrorist watchlist since 2023 at ports of entry along the northern border.)
And when you say ‘our,’ you mean New Hampshire?
Yeah, exactly.
Although recent data has shown that there have been no border crossings of late. Is this what you're referencing?
Yeah, that's actually not true. There was 15,000 folks that came across that border.
New Hampshire's border?
New Hampshire's border, right. And so the Swanton sector has seen record numbers of crossings. And we know that just in January and February alone of this year, and again, it's starting to get a little bit—I haven't looked at the data recently—but there are 49 people on an international terror watch list that were apprehended. So that's a stat that's been thrown out there. I don't know where that's coming from. Border Patrol has cited those stats themselves. So I know [in] an election year, they're trying to kind of tamp [it] down. I know that that's something that the Harris administration views as an Achilles heel for themselves. So they're touting these non-border crossings. But I mean you can look at CBP.gov and that statistic is right there.
(Editor’s Note: The U.S. Border Patrol’s Swanton Sector office patrols New Hampshire, Vermont and portions of eastern New York. Along the 58-mile international border in New Hampshire, there were zero apprehensions of migrants made by federal authorities between January to May 2024, according to records obtained by New Hampshire’s ACLU from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In Vermont and portions of eastern New York, more than 15,000 people have been apprehended for suspected immigration violations since October 2023. Read more from NHPR here.)
Chris, Republicans in Congress have voted along party lines to restrict access to abortion. Would you support any federal restrictions to abortion?
No, I don't support any federal restrictions on abortion at all.
If your colleagues, were you to be elected, supported a policy that could have effects here on voters in New Hampshire, would you vote alongside them? Or rather, could have effects on women here in New Hampshire? Would you vote alongside them?
No. At the federal level, I wouldn't. I mean, I think that on a very contentious issue like abortion, the closer you can get it to the electorate, the better. And I like where it sits here in New Hampshire. It's a states rights issue. We voted on it. We've got a very good policy here in New Hampshire. And I would just stick with that.
Any restrictions to contraception or IVF?
I don't have any restrictions. But when you get into that conversation, a lot of times, people want federal funding for it. So I think if it's going to stay at the state level, it should stay at the state level. And that includes federal funding.
We continue to hear from voters that they are tired of political polarization. Trust across party lines in Congress is dwindling. What about your background qualifies you to work with members of all parties to do what's best for New Hampshire?
Yeah, actually, that's my number one reason for running. [It] was just how dysfunctional and how polarized we've become as a country. And we could talk about the border, we could talk about the economy, abortion, all these different issues that are important to folks. But until we can start having civic discourse and actually start talking to each other and hashing things out, I don't know how you start solving any of these problems.
So when I first launched, I felt like without some level of intentionality of starting to kind of pivot back to a spot where we, as political leaders, can engage with one another and kind of represent the views of the district and come and start to solve some of these problems, we're not going to get anywhere.
That's kind of what I've been doing in my career. So, I'm an Army officer. I worked in civil affairs. We did a lot of geopolitical work around the world, and I actually worked with the Bosnians, in areas of genocide. I worked in Kosovo, where we got the Albanians and Serbians to work together to build a bridge. It's just leadership and it's being real and it's being transparent with people to reestablish that trust and to kind of stay engaged in the community and have them hold you accountable, and you be accountable to yourself. So if you know what your principles are, you know what you're working on. And for me, it's country first. It's not a political party. It's not any special interest group. It's looking at these issues that we have and trying to think what's in the best interest for the greatest amount of people. And then just getting to work to solve those. If you can do that, then it doesn't really matter how polarized you are because you're focused on the right issues.
