Suzanne Vail
Nashua Ward 3 District 30
State Representative
Born in Nashua, I have lived here most of my life. Nashua is where I raised my three daughters, and all are graduates of Nashua High North. Four generations of my family have attended Nashua Public schools. Furthering the New Hampshire connection, I am a UNH graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in psychology.
I devoted more than 20 years to our community mental health system, providing case management, counseling, and crisis management at NH Community Mental Health Centers, and as a member of the Disaster Behavioral Health Response Team. The skills I used to help those in need give me great depth in understanding and advocating for the needs of our community.
In my first legislative term, I served on the House Municipal and County Government Committee, and for the current term am a member of the House Transportation Committee.
I also serve on the Hillsborough County Executive Committee, where I have been involved in budgeting and advocating for county workers and services to the communities that depend on Nashua and Manchester. This past Spring, I advocated to make sure the county portion of your taxes does not increase during the pandemic and subsequent financial fall out the residents of NH are facing.
I will continue to fight for all of Ward 3, Nashua, and New Hampshire, in order to:
- Protect and enhance public education, including bringing mental health services into the schools.
- Provide appropriate access to healthcare and and community mental health services, including treatment and care for opiate addiction, and all other addictions.
- Increase access to fair housing, and work hard to prevent evictions, foreclosures, and address our housing shortage.
- Protect our community from racial violence.
- Safeguard clean water and continue to advocate for immediate commencement of PFAS remediation, PFAS health impact studies, and providing the community with education on how to protect their families from toxins in their water.
- Protect voter rights and promote fair elections both in legislation and by assisting our citizens to vote during this confusing time.
- Improve infrastructure essential to fair education across the state, including improving access to rural and urban broadband, including updated communications equipment where needed.
- Protect our wildlife and state lands, and our environment from exploitation and destruction.
I am running for my 3rd term as NH State representative, because I know I must continue to help with the priorities and risks we face in New Hampshire today. During my two terms, Democrats made great advances in the areas of Healthcare (Expanded Medicaid), support for public education, and increased access to health and mental health services. We have made progress in making new standards for clean water, as well as studying the effects of contamination. We managed to pass a budget that had been vetoed in a previous form, in order to deliver almost nine million dollars to the city of Nashua, in unrestricted aid, and school aid.
The unprecedented pandemic health crisis that caused our legislative process to come to a halt before the conclusion did not stop New Hampshire House Democrats. In the spirit of continuity of state government, we were able to meet outside of Concord, and complete the work in the form it had taken. A large volume of constituents needed help to access benefits and navigate through executive orders and state agencies to get their needs met. During the time of shut-down, we developed the contacts and expertise to assist those in need. We are proud of the work we have accomplished due to these tremendous efforts.
Now, more than ever, we need effective hard working elected officials in the New Hampshire House, who will never leave the table when there is work to be done, regardless of party, partisanship, location or inconvenience. As the elected, we owe our service to our district’s voters and residents. We need legislators who can build on the progress we have made in the past 2 years, recognizing the significant amount of work and time it has taken to make our bills ready to be laws. We know that the hard work performed in bi-partisan legislation can only make the legislation that we had to sacrifice better, and we will continue this work in the form of better bills for the 2021 legislative session. There has never been a more critical time or more frontier to conquer, and people need competent and empathetic legislatures to do that.
Endorsements
Sierra Club
NEA-NH
Rights and Democracy
Nashua Teachers Union
Nashua Firefighters Union
I am requesting and truly appreciate donations. This year we are depending on the US Mail, and on delivering materials by hand, though not doing traditional door-knocking. Additionally we are updating the household communications software and devices, to meet the need for remote participation in hearings, sessions, private meetings, and town halls.
Here is the link to donate:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/suzanne-vail-for-state-representative-1
I am looking forward to meeting you to discuss your priorities for this legislative session to come. This is a great opportunity to discuss my legislation, this past term’s legislation, and to offer help with navigating new benefits and emergency orders.
Please contact me to set up a remote meeting, at: