EXETER — Chris Pappas says the Seacoast is very much on his radar. Pappas is arguably the most high profile of the seven candidates running for the Democratic nomination in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, a wide-open race to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter.

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series of articles interviewing the field of candidates running in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District.

EXETER — Chris Pappas says the Seacoast is very much on his radar.

Pappas is arguably the most high profile of the seven candidates running for the Democratic nomination in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, a wide-open race to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter.

Pappas, who’s currently serving his third term on the state’s five-member Executive Council, is well known in state government circles. And he’s pretty much a household name in Manchester, where he runs the Puritan Backroom, the restaurant that his family has owned and operated for 100 years.

But that isn’t the case in the Seacoast.

That’s probably one reason why on the day he announced his bid for Congress in November, he immediately hit the campaign trail in Exeter, Portsmouth and Dover.

Pappas, 37, was back in Exeter on Wednesday, speaking to some 50 activists and voters gathered at the first in a series of events with the 1st District candidates hosted by the Rockingham County Democrats.

“The Seacoast is going to be an important focus of our campaign. We’ve got some good early support in the Seacoast area,” Pappas said in an interview with Seacoastonline after he fielded questions from the audience for more than an hour.

In recent weeks Maura Sullivan, one of his rivals for the Democratic nomination, has been in the spotlight.

The U.S. Marine veteran who was deployed in the war in Iraq and who served at the Veterans Administration and the Pentagon under President Barack Obama announced earlier this month that she raised an eye-popping $430,000 during the first nine weeks of her campaign.

But 80 percent of the money she raised came from out of state contributions, which fed some criticism that Sullivan, who moved to Portsmouth with her fiancé last summer, was a "carpetbagger."

Asked if such attacks were legitimate, Pappas said, “I’ll let the people of New Hampshire decide on that. I just know that as someone who’s rooted in the communities of New Hampshire I feel like I have the experience in the issues and the understanding of the values of this state to be able to effectively represent it in Congress.”

Pappas, who has yet to announce his fundraising from the fourth quarter of 2017, said he would “absolutely” have the money needed to wage an effective campaign.

“We’ve been humbled by the amount of support that our campaign has been attracting in terms of endorsements, in terms of people signing up on line, and also in terms of folks who have been chipping in for our effort,” he said.

Pappas then pointedly added that “this is largely a New Hampshire-based effort.”

Pappas was in Exeter two days after a brief federal government shutdown came to an end, thanks to an agreement between U.S. Senate Republicans and Democrats to fund the government for three weeks The compromise struck also reauthorized for six years the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides low-cost health coverage to children from families that earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid.

The controversial part of the deal, which liberals and immigration activists denounced, was the agreement by Senate Democrats to reopen the government in exchange for the promise by Senate Republicans to hold a vote by mid-February on a bill that would extend protections to thousands of young undocumented immigrants who are losing legal protections. The protections for the so-called "Dreamers," through the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, are currently set to expire in March.

New Hampshire’s two U.S. senators, Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, were part of a group of lawmakers who came up with the compromise. They voted in favor of the deal, as did another member of the all-Democrat state congressional delegation: Rep. Annie Kuster. Shea-Porter voted against the compromise.

Pappas told the audience that if he were in Congress right now, he would have voted against the deal as well.

”I would have voted no. I don’t think that governing by continuing resolution is the way to run a government. It’s not the way I run my business. And I think that Washington has got to do a lot better,” he said.

Pappas also criticized President Donald Trump, saying that “this president has debased our democracy and appealed to the lowest common denominator.”

But Pappas said he feels it’s “premature” to try and impeach the president, a move Shea-Porter supports, while special counsel Robert Mueller continues to investigate alleged collusion between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.

“I think it’s really important that the Mueller investigation continue, goes forward, gets all of the information out on the table so that we can have a full and transparent reckoning of exactly what happened in this election,” Pappas said. “There are investigations happening at the congressional level as well that I think need to continue to press on.”

“I think there is the possibility that there was collusion between his campaign and a foreign power, which is really dangerous and destructive for the electoral process and the confidence that people have in our democracy,” Pappas added. “So there are some really serious issues at stake here, and I want to wait and see what all the facts look like.”

Pappas told the audience that the state’s acute heroin and opioid epidemic would be his top priority if elected to Congress.

“I hear about no other issue in the way that I hear about the opioid crisis and how it’s affecting families,” he said.

“Beyond declaring a state of emergency, as the president’s done, we need to get resources and leverage them from the federal government so we invest in the community efforts ... that are working and saving people’s lives. And there’s no promise that’s more important in this election than that one that that’s going to be my top priority as we move forward,” Pappas vowed.

The 1st District is considered one of the most high-profile swing congressional districts in the country.

The district, which stretches from Manchester east to the Seacoast and north through the Lakes Region to White Mountains, has flip-flopped the past four elections between Shea-Porter and former GOP Congressman Frank Guinta. And the purple district in a purple state is also one of only 12 across the country controlled by Democrats that Trump won in the 2016 presidential election.

To make things even more exciting, it’s the first time in 16 years that there’s no incumbent running for re-election.

Pappas is one of seven Democrats running for the seat. The others are Sullivan, state Rep. Mark Mackenzie of Manchester, a former fireman who served more than two decades as head of the state chapter of the AFL-CIO, retired Portsmouth trial lawyer Lincoln Soldati, a former Somersworth mayor who also spent 17 years as Strafford County attorney, state Rep. Mindi Messmer of Rye, an environmental scientist, Army and Iraq War veteran and current Rochester city attorney Terence O’Rourke, and technology executive and community activist Deaglan McEachern of Portsmouth.

The three declared Republicans in the race are businessman and conservative state Sen. Andy Sanborn of Bedford, Eddie Edwards of Dover, a Navy veteran and former South Hampton police chief who also served as top law enforcement officer for the state’s liquor commission, and Mark Hounsell of Conway, a Carroll County commissioner and former state senator.

Hoping to stand out from the rest of the field, Pappas highlighted his state government experience and of being a “progressive leader” at the Statehouse.

“I think that having state level experience is really valuable,” he shared.

He also pointed out that his executive council district covers one-third of the 1st Congressional District.

And he touted that he’s “won some tough races ... in a district that voted for Donald Trump and Scott Brown and Mitt Romney and just about every other Republican that has run state wide the last few cycles.”

“I’ve done it because I’m a local business owner and I have a profile outside of politics and I’m able to relate to people and get a crew of independents and Republicans who feel disaffected and feel that Donald Trump doesn’t represent them to come out and support me,” he said.

“That was my experience in 2016 and that’s the kind of broad-based campaign that I hope to build this year,” Pappas added.

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