State Representative Al Baldasaro, R-Londonderry announced just before Christmas that he is exploring the possibility of making a bid for U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen’s seat in Washington.
Shaheen is a Democrat.
“I’m exploring the possibilities and seeing what kind of support is out there,” Baldasaro said.
In addition to serving in the Legislature for the past seven years, Baldasaro chairs the Londonderry Elder Affairs Committee and served 22 years as a U.S. Marine, joining in 1975 and retiring in 1998.
“After seeing Shaheen vote for an internet sales tax and vote against disabled veterans to cut COLA (Cost-Of-Living Adjustments), it was time to run,” he said Friday, Dec. 20. “Then she gets on the floor of the senate and tells the same lie as Obama that if you like your insurance, you can keep it.”
Baldasaro said that he has always been an advocate for “the little guy” and would continue to be one.
Baldasaro moved to Londonderry from Delaware in 2001, where he had been Inspector Instructor 1st Sergeant for a Marine Corps Reserve unit. He lived in Massachusetts from 1986-1989 as a Marine Corps recruiter.
In the Legislature, Baldasaro has been on the State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs Committee for over seven years and was chairman for 2011-2012.
“I am a voting member on the State Veterans Advisory Committee, which consists of all the military organizations in the state,” he added. “I am one of the Tri-Chairs of the House Republican Alliance, where we take on constitutional and platform issues.”
Baldasaro is proud of his outspokenness. “It is no secret that I am not a politically correct guy, who will speak out and exercise my First Amendment rights,” he said.
“I have been involved with politics since I was 5, where my grandfather, Alfred E. Vellucci, was a four-term mayor (of Cambridge, Mass.),” he said. “I have sat many times growing up with the Kennedys, Tip O’Neill, who were great friends with my grandfather. I was a Democrat up until the third year of the Ronald Reagan presidency, where I’d seen the light and wanted the government out of my pocket.”
He and his wife, Judy Seppala, together have
11 children, five granddaughters and two great-grandchildren.
“I believe that New Hampshire must have a loud voice in Washington – someone who will speak up for the state and not vote on issues that continue to take food off your table and change your quality of life,” he said. “I am a freedom guy, one who stands up for liberty and believes in the constitution.”
As far as a possible run by Scott Brown of Massachusetts for the U.S. Senate from New Hampshire, he said he knows Brown and that Brown is a “nice guy,” but he would not be deterred by a Brown candidacy.
Right now, deciding on his own candidacy is foremost in his mind, including raising the possible $4 million it would take to fund such a campaign.