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0000017a-15d9-d736-a57f-17ff8d410000Race: U.S. SenateParty: RepublicanPolitical Experience: 1994-1998 – New Hampshire SenatePersonal: Married, one child; lives in HanoverEducation: Dartmouth CollegeCampaign WebsiteIssuesFormer chairman of the Granite State Coalition Against Expanded Gambling, Rubens says his top priority is restoring economic growth and good-paying jobs. He supports a “simpler, flatter” tax code to keep companies from outsourcing jobs and fewer regulations on American businesses.“We need to fix our regulatory structure. We are now the seventeenth most economically free country in the world, we've slipped from third in just thirteen years. We've got to dial back these regulations. I'm proposing that every ten years, all these regulations be sunset. They go back to Congress, Congress looks at them... are they compliant with statute, are they constitutional, are they doing what they are supposed to be doing….”Rubens supports repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with ideas that “harness market forces” and increase consumer choice. That includes the interstate sale of insurance, allowing “young invincibles” to purchase a low-cost catastrophic policy and expanding health savings accounts.“I'm not in favor of mandating people to buy a product or service, and that includes health insurance. So we need to restructure the insurance marketplace so that people are incentivized to buy insurance. How do you do that? You let the free market - you let insurers and hospital and health providers, whether they be insurers or not or networks of hospitals and care providers - provide products and services that people want to buy.”Rubens is highly critical of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq and Syria, which he calls “crazy, haphazard” and has not made America safer. He believes the American military needs a long-term strategy to strengthen its intelligence-gathering and cyber-warfare capabilities.“So if there are cases when ISIS and other organizations are threatening American national security, we can use surgical mechanisms to eliminate these specific threats when on-the-ground and other means of intelligence discloses such threats, where ever they may originate from in the world.”

Ayotte Faces Primary Challenge From Former GOP State Senator

NHPR Staff

 

Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte is facing a primary challenge in her re-election bid from Jim Rubens, a former state senator who unsuccessfully ran in the GOP primary against Scott Brown in 2014.

Rubens tells The Associated Press that the Republican base has "divorced" itself from Ayotte and that the GOP will not keep the Senate seat if she is the nominee. Two-term Governor Maggie Hassan is running on the Democratic side.

Rubens says he has never seen such dissatisfaction with the Republican establishment, including Ayotte.

In response to Rubens' announcement, Ayotte's campaign says she has "deep grassroots support" and a "strong conservative record."

Rubens has run unsuccessfully for statewide office several times and received just over 20 percent of the vote in the 2014 GOP primary.

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