Two experienced legislators will vie to represent state Senate District 10, which includes Peterborough, Hancock and Peterborough.

The Democratic incumbent, Donovan Fenton, served three terms in the state’s House of Representatives before heading to the Senate in 2022. His opponent, Republican Richard Merkt, served in New Jersey’s legislature for 12 years.

Donovan Fenton (D)

Fenton, who grew up in the region, is seeking his second term in the Senate. He’s focused on the issues he sees affecting working families like his own: housing, public school funding, child care, the environment and health care.

Those are all “building blocks to a strong economy,” he said, which entails attracting and retaining workers and young people in New Hampshire.

Fenton got into politics when he called his state representative to ask why his student loans were so high and see if the Legislature could help. 

“She goes, ‘Donovan, I’m retiring. Why don’t you run for the seat?” Fenton said. 

He ran the House in 2016 and was elected at age 27. At 33, he became the youngest state senator in about 50 years, he said, which he believes equips him to represent a different age group than most of his colleagues. He also owns a Subaru dealership in Keene.

“I bring a different view set to the Legislature,” Fenton said. “You kind of educate your peers on what younger, working families are going through and what’s needed right now.”

As a member of the Democratic minority for most of his time in the Legislature, Fenton said he’s experienced at working on bipartisan laws.

Looking ahead to his potential next term, Fenton said he’s already working on legislation for veterans’ benefits and exploring how to improve safety, especially after the Monadnock region saw multiple fatal accidents in recent months.

He’s “diving into where the funding is for that, what we can do to prevent those types of things,” Fenton said, and working on laws to “hopefully solve those issues.”

Richard Merkt (R)

Merkt lives in Westmoreland. He believes in lower taxes and less government, and said his main priority is “preserving the New Hampshire advantage” – saying the tax structure is the reason he and his wife moved here from New Jersey.

“We liked New England, and the only state that made any sense for us economically was New Hampshire,” Merkt said.

Merkt arrived in the Granite State in 2017 and ran unsuccessfully for the state’s House of Representatives in 2020 and 2022. Before that, he served in New Jersey’s General Assembly from 1998 to 2010. He’d given up his seat there to run for New Jersey governor but lost to Chris Christie.

He supports the Legislature’s recent repeal of the state’s interest and dividends tax, which Fenton voted against. While some legislators want to reinstate it to help fund housing and education, Merkt said the tax is unfair to New Hampshire’s older residents.

“It’s an extreme anti-senior tax,” Merkt said. “Seniors are most dependent on dividend and interest income because they don’t have wage jobs anymore. Most of them are retired, so it really hits people in the fixed-income area the most.”

Merkt also supports separating school sports by biological sex. It’s “dangerous” to have transgender girls, who he said have more physical strength and size, compete against other girls. The state is currently tied up in lawsuits regarding a new law that prohibits transgender girls from playing on girls’ sports teams. One judge has blocked the implementation of the law, saying it’s unenforceable without classifying people by sex or gender.

Merkt is also a co-founder of the Lionheart Classical Academy, a charter school in Peterborough that teaches a curriculum created by a conservative college in Michigan. Merkt said he supports “educational choice” and parental rights.

Overall, he also wants to see more interactions with constituents.

“Very few people have any idea who their state senator is,” Merkt said. “If you ask them who the members of the House are, they don’t know either. I do believe there’s a communication problem.”

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