In a crowded field of 13 Republicans running for Congress, three front-running candidates laid out their plans this week to represent New Hampshire’s second district.

Lily Tang Williams and Bill Hamlen spoke at a forum at Dartmouth College on Monday, and she and Vikram Mansharamani both participated in a debate on the Jack Heath Show on Tuesday morning.

Williams, who lives in Weare, immigrated to the U.S. from China in 1988. She centers her campaign around personal freedoms, detailing her survival of what she calls an oppressive communist regime. Previously, she ran for the U.S. Senate in Colorado as a libertarian in 2016.

Hamlen, a Dartmouth College grad who lives in Hanover, had a career in commodity trading, where he specialized in energy. He stresses his hardworking values and middle-class upbringing, and he brands himself as a commonsense conservative.

Mansharamani, a Lincoln resident, is a former business advisor and economics professor at Harvard and Yale universities. He’s running on a platform to restore economic prosperity and American strength internationally.

Dartmouth’s Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, which cohosted the event with Dartmouth Conservatives, had to thin out the playing field. Since there was a lack of polling available, the college only invited the candidates who had filed campaign finance reports for the second quarter of 2024. Only four of the 13 candidates did so – Mansharamani couldn’t attend the forum due to a scheduling conflict. Candidate Paul Wagner could not be reached by the university.

Here’s what the candidates said about the issues.

Economy and inflation

All three candidates said their primary economic concern is bringing down inflation by cutting government spending. Hamlen, drawing on his experience in the energy sector, said the U.S. needs to reverse President Joe Biden’s “war on energy.” If up to him, he’d freeze the federal budget now and examine where the process is going wrong. He also said he’d use his skills to free up energy and, in turn, lower costs.

Mansharamani advocated for less government spending as a way to decrease inflation. He said down-payment credits on housing, for example, don’t bring down the cost of the house – they just make the house that much more expensive. He emphasized a need to lower energy prices, too, which he said would “bleed into everything,” like transportation costs.

Williams said the federal government has failed to do its No. 1 job: balancing the budget. It’s “always addicted to spending other people’s money,” she said. She also argues that the U.S. should stop printing money, make former president Donald Trump’s tax cuts permanent and spur capitalistic economic growth.

Immigration

When asked about immigration reform, Williams cited her own status as a legal immigrant. She also helped sponsor her brother’s immigration to the U.S. and said it took 13 years for him to make it through the system. In addition to securing the border, Williams said U.S. immigration policies are outdated and stressed a need to streamline and speed up the immigration process for people who are going about it legally.

Hamlen expressed a need to secure the border first – it’s the top issue in his campaign and for this district, he said. He supports building a wall on the southern border, hiring more guards and declaring war on drug cartels – he said one way to stop drug deaths and overdoses in New Hampshire is to start by securing the border. Hamlen said the U.S. needs to focus deportation efforts on the “bad people” and said some sanctuary cities have gone too easy on immigrants who commit crimes.

Mansharamani, whose parents immigrated from India, said it’s “despicable” that there are U.S. veterans who aren’t housed while the country protects illegal immigrants. He said he wants to shut down the border, crack down on illegal immigration and improve the legal process. He and Williams, asked about the fentanyl crisis in New Hampshire at the debate, also drew that back to a border security issue – the U.S. needs to close its borders to keep out drug cartels.

Military aid and national security

The U.S. is currently sending military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine to defend itself from Russia and to Israel in its war against Hamas. All candidates advocated for reigning in government spending, but what does that look like for the military?

Williams said she favors spending money for her own district first based on what she hears from constituents. She said both Israel and Ukraine have a right to defend themselves, but she would not commit to increase, decrease or continue U.S. funding for these countries. She said she’d only vote on a bill if she had time to read and decide on it first, and in the debate she said she supports Israel but has questions about accountability and long-term result of the war in Ukraine – China is a bigger threat to the U.S. than Russia, she said.

Mansharamani and Hamlen both voiced their unequivocal support for continuing to fund both Ukraine and Israel.

As for national security in the U.S., Hamlen said inflation is the single greatest threat: “If not checked, this inflation could destroy our country,” he said. Williams said from a foreign affairs standpoint, China is the biggest threat to America. She said China is behind pushes for communism around the world, and she wants to help Trump defeat China and communism.

Social security and helping caregivers

Asked in the debate whether they’d protect social security, Mansharamani and Williams both said they would – especially for current seniors who’ve contributed to the program and now depend on it. Long-term, Mansharamani said, he looks to work on bipartisan reform for social security to make it more sustainable for younger generations.

As for helping caregivers who take care of elderly and disabled family members, Mansharamani suggested financial support in the form of tax credits and enabling more care assistance. Williams said in the debate that the U.S. needs to help caregivers instead of passing extraneous spending, like military aid for Ukraine.

Abortion

All three candidates support New Hampshire’s current six-month abortion ban. Williams said she supports the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to leave abortion access and term limits up to individual states. Hamlen also pledged not to vote for any abortion ban that’s more restrictive than the Granite State’s and instead said the way to reduce the number of abortions is to increase access to reproductive care and the adoption system.

College affordability

College tuition has climbed exponentially in the past several decades. All three candidates opposed federal student loan relief. Williams went even further, saying she’d push for the federal government to hand education funding back to states entirely. The country shouldn’t be subsidizing student loans or education at all, she said.

“Compared with other developed countries, their academic performance is not high. They come out of college, and lots of them think and look like Karl Marx,” Williams said. “Is that government solution to continue to fund education, or should we get back to state, get back to local control and parent control?”

Hamlen said he supports public education, but one of the biggest cost increases is administrative bloat. He proposed putting a cap on administrative spending. He also referenced two of his nephews who didn’t go to college – one owns a pool cleaning company, and the other is a diesel mechanic.

“There’s no reason these boys should be paying for anyone else’s education,” Hamlen said. “I’m fundamentally opposed to the idea of any type of federal bailout for education. I just think it’s an insult to all those hardworking Americans who didn’t go to college. It’s just not fair to them.” Mansharamani shared that sentiment.

Party loyalty andcompromise

All three candidates touted their wide-ranging backgrounds and said they’ve learned how to work with people they disagree with. The forum moderator, a Dartmouth student, ended by asking Hamlen and Williams about their ties and commitment to the Republican Party.

When she came to the U.S., Williams said, she became a Republican and was one for a long time but felt deserted by the party after 2008. Soon enough, the Libertarian Party asked her to run for Senate in Colorado, and she did so unsuccessfully – partially because as a libertarian, she couldn’t get into debates or get enough of a party platform. She eventually returned to the Republican Party, and she previously chaired the party committee in Weare.

Hamlen recently voted as a registered Democrat. He said he’s been registered as a Republican for most of his life, and he donated to Trump several times and voted for him in 2020. When Hamlen thought Trump was going to win in a landslide, he said, he switched his party affiliation solely to vote against Biden. He then switched his registration back to Republican.

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Report for America. Follow her on X at @charmatherly, or send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.