I answer to you.
Laser-focused on bringing down the cost of living, reducing your property taxes, and fighting corrupt special interests.
Laser-focused on bringing down the cost of living, reducing your property taxes, and fighting corrupt special interests.
Dear Neighbor,
My name is Lucas Coriaty. I was born in Concord, grew up in Manchester, and have lived here in Hooksett for the past 10 years. I have been an activist and organizer my entire adult life, working on presidential and congressional campaigns while serving coffee, rolling burritos, and bagging groceries to put myself through college. I am especially proud of my organizing work while at UNH, where I led efforts to activate and engage my fellow students, registering hundreds to vote and encouraging them to exercise their right to testify, protest, and speak out.
I have seen up close the influence of dark money on our broken political system. I am proudly running as a Democrat, but I believe my party must be far more forceful in its rejection of special interests. Right now, competing against the floods of dark money propping up state Republicans has forced a defensive reliance on the very campaign finance system we need to dismantle. I am proud to say that I, alongside my fellow candidates for State Representative, refuse to accept what is and will fight for what should be. Our elected officials can free themselves from this deal with the devil by introducing legislation each year to ban Super PACs and Corporate PACs from the Granite State, making it clear to our constituents exactly whose side we are on.
I believe this unjust influence, a lack of balance between encouraging economic growth and protecting the interests of the people, is at the core of why folks have lost faith in the democratic process. It is not profitable for the extremely wealthy to expand healthcare access, build new affordable housing, fund public education, and invest in renewable energy, so they lobby our politicians to fight against legislation that uplifts the working people of our community. The majority in Concord seeks to divide us on religion, race, and gender so we don’t notice when they reach into our pockets, slash revenues to give tax breaks to the rich, and force our towns to operate on shoestring budgets. I believe in limited government and I will never support an income or sales tax, but we need representatives who ask a single question before each vote: how does this benefit my neighbors?
New Hampshire is the only home I’ve ever known, and I want to be able to afford to live, work, and raise a family here. I truly resent that Free State Project transplants, enabled by Republicans, have targeted our community to lecture us about how our local and state government is always the enemy. They want us to believe we’ll all be more free when we hand over even more power to the private equity firms, pharmaceutical companies, and Big Tech conglomerates that have no interest in the well-being of our towns.
In the last few years, our representatives have repeatedly lowered and abolished taxes that only affected the very wealthiest, and the results of their experiment have been devastating for Hooksett and Dunbarton: property taxes have skyrocketed, and essential services have been cut. Neighbors who have lived here their whole lives are being priced out of their homes. Meanwhile, our young people are paying the highest in-state tuition rates while struggling to find housing on stagnating salaries, and working people remain just one crisis away from drowning in medical debt.
I’m running for State Representative here in Merrimack County District 10 because I am tired of decent, hard-working people suffering and being unable to get ahead. I am laser-focused on bringing down the cost of living, reducing your property taxes, and fighting corrupt special interests. I’m not taking any donations from Super PACs, and as your representative, I will not take marching orders from either party or any special interests. I will take them from you, my neighbors in Hooksett and Dunbarton.
Lucas Coriaty Candidate for State Representative
Where I Stand
Our high property tax rates are the result of drastic cuts in state spending towards local governments, which has downshifted $3 billion in costs from the state to municipalities and school districts. In fact, without the $3 billion state downshift, the total statewide property-tax levy today would be lower than it was 10 years ago. Without the effort from state Republicans (especially those affiliated with the Free State Project) to dismantle the power of our state government, your property taxes actually would have decreased in the last 10 years! It will be no easy task to repair the damage, but here's where I believe we should start:
We have underfunded differentiated special education aid to such an extreme that our Superior Court has declared it unconstitutional. Due to federal mandates, when the state evades the responsibility of funding these programs, school districts are left with the burden. The fact that it took a few years to get the funding to fix a gaping hole in the roof of Hooksett Memorial School is a great illustrator of how our representatives’ cuts have squeezed our towns of funding, forcing the working class taxpayers to foot the bill.
For the bottom 80% of Granite State homeowners, property taxes represent 5% of their annual earnings, a figure that only rises in high tax towns like Hooksett and Dunbarton. The 1%, those who make more than 720k a year, only allocate 2% of theirs. As Granite Staters struggle to afford to buy or to stay in their homes, people from across the country are building multi-million dollar homes on our lake shores and across the White Mountains. We should harness the natural beauty of our state that attracts wealthy vacationers by correcting our disproportionate tax system, introducing a 1.5% luxury tax on properties worth more than $4 million, targeting out-of-state residents and bringing in badly needed revenue.
Housing prices have surged, far outpacing income growth and pricing out residents from their homes and preventing young people from putting down roots in communities like Hooksett and Dunbarton. We need to fight this crisis by loosening restrictive zoning regulations that prevent Granite Staters from building add-ons or in-law suites (ADUs), and build new affordable housing to be made available to current residents specifically. By removing bureaucratic red tape, we can and must make it easier for Granite Staters to age in place and raise families in our community.
Thousands of our neighbors are a single medical crisis away from crippling debt, in large part thanks to our broken healthcare system. That means taking on the powerful healthcare and pharmaceutical lobbies by capping insurers ability to raise deductibles, ensuring that pricing is transparent and accessible, and investing in preventative care that can save the state millions. I believe it’s a moral disgrace that our healthcare system is set up to prioritize profit over care, and will work diligently to ensure that our state government restores funding cuts to Medicaid and fights for working families.
Politicians’ first move after office is commonly to offer their services and connections to lobbyist firms that represent large companies and special interests, strengthening the ties between corporate power and government. I support a “cool down” period of two years in between an elected official leaving office and being able to register as a lobbyist to slow down this corrupt back-and-forth and ensure that politicians are focused on serving the people, not chasing a future paycheck.
The Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court has done untold damage to our political system, and its ruling that corporations can spend unlimited money to influence our elections is as anti-democratic as it gets. In Hawaii, state legislators have led the nation by passing a bill into law to negate the effects of the Citizens United decision and ban corporations from spending millions to choose our leaders. I would work to pass similar legislation in the Live Free or Die State.
Current Rep. Yury Polozov has called neighbors who oppose the building of data centers in New Hampshire “radical left activists”. Only 14% of Manchester area residents agree with him. A bipartisan consensus and I believe there is nothing radical about opposing the construction of grey rectangles that suck up our precious natural resources and put immense strain on our electrical grid, all to store personal information that tech companies shouldn’t have in the first place. Data centers employ skeleton crews of a few technicians and security guards and are built by outsourced contractors, and when Big Tech is finished, it leaves our community to deal with the consequences while funneling profits out of state. If elected, I will immediately introduce legislation to ensure the decision to build data centers remains in the hands of the people of Hooksett and Dunbarton.
As a student at UNH, I watched as my peers became increasingly reliant on AI tools to do classwork and thinking for them, rather than using it as a supplemental resource. Legislation often safeguards against new technology far too late, and as a young person with high familiarity with how AI can be used correctly (and incorrectly), I will make it a priority to “AI-proof” our public universities by returning to paper exams and finals when applicable and utilizing AI-detecting services to ensure students get the most out of their education and learn and retain the knowledge needed to succeed in a changing career environment.
Though we often see our elected representatives around town and some communicate through social media, it can be difficult to keep track of how our public servants are voting unless you research their records individually. To save constituents the effort, I intend to hold scheduled and promoted coffee chats and talks not just throughout this campaign but throughout my term, if elected. New Hampshire is unique in how small our constituencies are, and I will take full advantage of this by being available both online and in-person to chat about the struggles you and your family face, explain my positions and my votes, and respond and listen to criticism knowing full well that the most important advisors I will ever have will be my constituents.
Additional policies will be added over the course of the campaign, check back soon!
Get In Touch
Have a question, a concern, or want to help out? Send a message and it'll come straight to me.
Submissions are sent to lucascoriatynh@gmail.com