Former State Senator To Run Again For District 12 Seat

NASHUA, NH — New Hampshire's first Black state Senator, who lost a re-election bid in 2020, will run again in 2022, in an effort to gain back the seat she held previously.

Melanie Levesque (D-Brookline) said Monday she would be running again for the District 12 seat, a race she called, “highly competitive.” She won the seat in 2018 against current state Sen. Kevin Avard (R-Nashua) by less than 170 votes. But in 2020, Avard bested Levesque by more than 800 votes after a recount. Avard was first elected to the seat in 2014.

While not specifically targeting Avard, Levesque was critical of the GOP that holds not on the state Senate but also the corner office and the House of Representatives.

“It pains me to see the place I love so dearly treated as little more than a drain on resources by extreme far-right forces in this state,” she said. “And when they aren’t treating our community like a burden, they are ignoring us. New Hampshire Republican legislators are dismantling our public schools, which is where opportunity itself begins for every child. They treat women as if they live in the 1900s and should vote and act accordingly. They do absolutely nothing to make our streets safer while they run campaigns telling us we should be afraid of each other.”

Previously, Levesque was a state representative in the Brookline, Hollis, and Mason district in the mid-2000s. She is a small businessowner, working in telecommunications consulting. She has an Associate’s from Nashua Community College, Bachelor’s from Daniel Webster College, and a Master’s in business administration from SNHU. Levesque has also served on a number of boards and worked to organize Nashua’s chapter of the NAACP.

Levesque, who said she had lived her entire life in the district, added that voters needed a candidate who would not sit on the sidelines. She looked forward to being “the ear and voice this community deserves” if elected again.

District 12 covers the west side of Nashua as well as Brookline, Greenville, Hollis, New Ipswich, and Mason.

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