GOP candidates Bill Hamlen and Lily Tang Williams will participate in a candidates forum at Dartmouth on Monday, Aug. 19, in the race for the Republican nomination for New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional District.
The race is now wide open after the announcement in March by six-term U.S. Rep. Ann McLane Kuster ’78, D-N.H. that she would not seek reelection.
The forum, co-hosted by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and Dartmouth Conservatives, will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Filene Auditorium. John Coleman ’26, vice president of Dartmouth Conservatives, will moderate. A meet and greet with the public will follow.
The public can register to attend through the Rockefeller Center, and the event will be livestreamed. The event comes a week after a Democratic candidates forum at the same venue.
Hamlen is a Hanover resident who graduated from Dartmouth as an economics major. After Dartmouth, Hamlen built a career in commodity trading over 30 years, specializing in energy derivatives, fuel oils, and feedstocks. In 2015 he started a second career in real estate.
He calls himself a commonsense conservative who will “fight to secure the border, rein in the runaway government spending that is fueling inflation, and protect our communities against the rising crime wave destroying our nation’s largest cities.”
Tang Williams, a resident of Weare, N.H., grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution, an experience that spurred her to a lifelong mission to spread her message against communism. Tang Williams attended Fudan University law school in Shanghai. In 1988 she left China to study in the United States, earning a master’s degree in administration and planning from the School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin. Becoming a U.S. citizen, she later went into business providing consulting and expert witness services in China-related business and legal cases, and she and her husband also manage residential real estate properties they own.
She says her mission as a citizen and a candidate is to share her story “about the horrors of socialism and communism, inspiring people to value their American heritage and their freedoms and opportunities.”
A total of 13 candidates are vying in the Republican primary for the seat in the 2nd Congressional District, which includes Concord and Nashua, New Hampshire’s second-largest city, and runs through Keene and the Upper Valley to the Canadian border.
Candidates who filed a second-quarter campaign finance report with the Federal Election Commission by July 15 have been invited to participate in the forum.
In addition to Hamlen and Tang Williams, the candidates in the GOP primary are Tom Alciere of Hudson, Gerard Beloin of Colebrook, Michael Anthony Callis of Conway, Randall Clark of Hollis, Casey Crane of Nashua, Robert D’Arcy of Stoddard, William Harvey of Colebrook, Vikram Mansharamani of Lincoln, Jay Mercer of Nashua, Jason Riddle of Keene, and Paul M. Wagner of Danbury.
The New Hampshire primary is Tuesday, Sept. 10.
The Rockefeller Center, Dartmouth Democrats, and Hanover/Lyme Town Democrats hosted a forum with Democratic candidates Maggie Goodlander and Colin Van Ostern on Aug. 12. The Democratic candidates for New Hampshire governor, Joyce Craig, Jonathan Kiper, and Cinde Warmington, attended a forum at Dartmouth in May.
