A rematch will determine the New Hampshire’s state Senate’s 9th District in the Nov. 5 election.

Republican Denise Ricciardi is running for her third term to serve her hometown of Bedford and several Monadnock region towns, including Jaffrey, Greenfield, Lyndeborough, Sharon and Temple. Her challenger is Matthew McLaughlin, a Democrat who ran against her in 2022.

Here’s what to know about the candidates.

Denise Ricciardi (R)

Ricciardi, who has lived in Bedford for 28 years, has focused on health care and family services since she was elected to the Senate in 2020.

One of the highlights, she said, is a bill known in the Legislature as “Momnibus,” which the Senate unanimously approved in 2023. The bill addresses mental and maternal health and decreases cost and other barriers to child care. She was the only Republican sponsor on it, and said she already has another version in the works.

“Momnibus 2.0 is going to even take it another step further,” Ricciardi said.

She has also worked on disability services, insurance and tax relief, funneling money from the meals and rooms tax back to towns. Bedford is getting more than $2 million and Jaffrey is getting over $500,000, among other towns in her district, Ricciardi said.

Before coming to the Senate, Ricciardi served on Bedford’s conservation commission and as a substitute teacher. During the pandemic, she started Bedford Cares, a volunteer organization where she and about 100 others operated a hotline and ran errands for elderly and immunocompromised people.

She has voted in favor of gun rights and expanding Education Freedom Accounts, and against legalizing cannabis.

Ricciardi said she’s focused on serving her district over partisan politics.

“I believe that politicians should stop trying to be right for political messaging. That hurts the people. What they should do is do the right thing,” Ricciardi said. “I vote what’s right for the people. I cross the party line, and when there’s a situation like the crisis for families and children, then I step up to the plate, and I work with the other side, because we’re doing the work of the people.”

Matthew McLaughlin (D)

McLaughlin, who’s also from Bedford, is a retired airline pilot and served for eight years in the Navy. He challenged Ricciardi in 2022 and lost, roughly 52% to 48%. It was a close race, he said, so he “decided to give it another try.”

His top priority is fending off climate change and shifting New Hampshire to a clean energy infrastructure. 

“If we don’t change the energy infrastructure and how we generate electricity or energy and transportation and everything, in 10 or 15 years, a lot of these other issues aren’t going to matter,” McLaughlin said. 

He supports the offshore wind project in the Gulf of Maine that Democrats have championed but Republicans have been wary of, due to concerns of how it would affect fishermen and their livelihood. McLaughlin, though, said New Hampshire should join Massachusetts and Maine to be part of that solution.

Reproductive freedom and public education are also at the top of his list – McLaughlin supports codifying the right to abortion in New Hampshire’s constitution and wants to do away with school choice vouchers and the “divisive concepts law” that restricts how teachers can talk about discrimination in the classroom. That law has faced legal troubles, and a state representative has already embarked on an attempt to repeal it.

McLaughlin and his wife were both union members during their careers, and he wants to prevent a right-to-work law from being passed in New Hampshire. While supporters say this legislation protects workers from being forced to join a union, its critics argue that they actually favor big companies and make collective bargaining more difficult. McLaughlin said right-to-work laws make it so people can get union benefits without contributing to it.

McLaughlin said from serving in the Navy to running for office, he’s inspired to be in public service.

“I know I will never have a job that has a greater sense of purpose,” McLaughlin said of his time in the Navy. “This one might come close.”

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.