Meet the man looking to unseat the senator he calls Maggie 'Hasn't'

Senate hopeful Kevin Smith on a stop at Brickstones in Gonic for a chat with The Rochester Voice. (Rochester Voice photo)

GONIC - When former state rep and Londonderry town manager Kevin Smith announced he was tossing his hat into the ring to unseat Democrat U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan, he referenced her lack of presence in her own home state.
"Maggie Hassan has been an absent senator, more comfortable holed up in Washington," he noted during the January speech. "We rarely see her in the Granite State. So I have come to view her not so much as Maggie Hassan ... but as Maggie "Hasn't."
"And she hasn't cared about our community," Smith told The Rochester Voice on Friday.
Smith, who served as chairman of the Pease Development Authority till just recently, calls himself "a kitchen table conservative" looking to deal with "kitchen table issues."
"Look at the rising cost of gas," he said. "We are in an economic crisis, and we have a crisis at the southern border. And Hassan is tone deaf on these issues. She votes with (Senate Majority Leader Chuck) Schumer 90 percent of the time. She voted to get rid of the filibuster. I think folks are ready for the next generation of leaders, who have street cred and can get results."
Smith definitely has the street cred. As chair of the PDA, he oversaw the running of Manchester Boston Regional Airport, the Portsmouth International Airport and the Port of Portsmouth. He served as Londonderry's Town Manager for almost nine years, returning $11 million in property tax relief.
Smith puts the blame of Ukraine and rising gas prices squarely on the Biden administration, much of it due to reckless energy policies including freezing drilling on federal lands and killing the Keystone Pipeline his first day in office.
He calls Biden's statement that oil and gas companies have thousands of leases ready to go "disingenuous."
"It can take years to find and identify oil or gas on those leases," Smith noted. "He should open the Keystone pipeline immediately and suspend all the earlier restriction he placed on energy producers in his first weeks of office. And to hear he wants to get energy from Venezuela and Iran is just crazy."

"We need a Senator who will stand up to the failed Biden-Hassan socialist energy agenda, reopen American energy markets to restore Energy Independence, and stop the endless out-of-control spending to fight inflation. Maggie Hasn't - I will."

Smith has also served as an adviser to former New Hampshire Gov. Craig Benson and former U.S. Sen. Bob Smith (no relation).
He'll face Brigadier General Don Bolduc and New Hampshire Senate President Chuck Morse in the Republican primary in September.