Arlyss Martin, a 26-year-old Manchester resident, already knows she’ll be voting for Joyce Craig on Nov. 5 in the race for governor.

“She has a lot more views that I align with,” Martin said. In particular, she said she likes Craig’s support of abortion access, an issue that’s prevalent for her age group. She said she also fondly remembers Craig’s tenure as mayor of New Hampshire’s largest city and she wants to see more of that approach statewide.

Kyle Urban, president of the College Republicans at Southern New Hampshire University, couldn’t disagree more.

He said he didn’t like Manchester’s trajectory with Craig as mayor. He supports Kelly Ayotte and resonates with her tagline, “Don’t Mass Up New Hampshire,” which takes aim at the neighboring state’s high taxes and more liberal policies. Urban also took it a step further, hinting at the other elections up and down the ballot this November.

“Don’t ‘Mass up’ New Hampshire,” Urban said, and “don’t ‘Mass up’ America.”

As election day draws near, more people like Martin and Urban already know who they’re voting for on Nov. 5. Others remain undecided, which is why Craig, the former mayor of Manchester and Ayotte, a former U.S. Senator, doubled down on policy points and lobbed attacks at each other on the debate stage at Saint Anselm College Thursday.

Both stood their ground on taxes, pledging not to support any widespread sales or income tax. Where they differ is the tax on interest and dividends, which the Legislature recently repealed and will be phased out come 2025.

“I do not support a tax break for the most wealthy in our state, like Kelly Ayotte,” Craig said of the repeal. “What that is going to do is increase property taxes for our hard-working families.”

“It’s a tax on retirees’ income,” Ayotte said. “It’s a tax on those saving for retirement.”

Ayotte said that as mayor, Craig repeatedly posed tax increases in city budgets. Craig maintained the interest and dividends tax is one on the wealthy but said she could entertain limiting it to certain income levels.

“I’m open to increasing the threshold and looking at the top 1%,” Craig said.

Ayotte shot back: “Excuse me, what does ‘open’ mean? ‘Open’ means hold onto your wallet, folks, because that is so nonspecific,” she said. “If I were a retiree, I would not want to take that as, this is my tax plan and this is what I can expect.”

Challenges loom for the next state budget as COVID relief money runs out and the interest and dividends tax phases out. New Hampshire may have to tighten its purse strings or find other funding. Ayotte took the position of fiscal conservatism, saying that while protecting necessary services, she’d look to trim the budget by making programs more efficient. Craig focused on harnessing other sources of revenue, like federal grants. She also said she supports legalizing cannabis and using that revenue to tackle the state’s housing problem.

To address housing, both candidates said they’d leverage their own experience, relationships and leadership skills to cut bureaucratic red tape to make it easier and quicker to build in New Hampshire.

Both support incentivizing localities to minimize the small-town “not in my backyard” mentality, as the moderator put it, by sending infrastructure improvements like sewer and water to rural areas that need it.

Ayotte said she’d look for state-owned properties that could be turned into affordable housing. Craig said she’d provide technical support to help towns update their zoning ordinances to allow for more housing.

They also bickered over homelessness, particularly in Manchester. Ayotte attacked what she said was inaction on Craig’s part to deal with the city’s problem, referencing a day care that closed due to safety issues from a nearby encampment.

“She refused to take action to even move the homeless to make sure that people could live and thrive and that the daycare could continue,” Ayotte said.

During her tenure, Craig said, the city opened a homeless shelter and started construction on new affordable housing developments.

“We did everything we could to tackle the homeless crisis in Manchester,” Craig said. “It’s really important to note that this crisis is happening in communities across our state.”

Though many attendees came into the debate knowing who they’ll vote for, the conversation did help solidify that for some.

Audience member Doug Frazier declined to share his decision but said it helped him learn more about each candidate’s stance on the issues that are important to him: housing, education and securing a good future for the next generation.

Bob Leclerc, who knows Craig and her family well, said education funding and passenger rail are most important to him.

“We want rail,” Leclerc said. If rail comes to Manchester, he said it’ll bring more people to the city and allow more New Hampshire residents to venture to Boston, New York and other destinations.

Craig said passenger rail would benefit the southern tier of the state and that there are federal funds the state could apply for to build it. Ayotte argues it’s too expensive, at $700 million, and maintains that ridership and passenger rates wouldn’t be able to sustain it.

On education funding, the candidates disagreed over Education Freedom Accounts, the state-funded vouchers that subsidize alternative education like homeschooling and private school for families with a household income of up to 350% of the poverty line. Ayotte has said she’d make them universally available by eliminating the income cap. Craig said she wants to nix the program altogether, arguing that it siphons public money away from public schools.

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