The New Hampshire Senate is going to look different next year, as multiple high-ranking senators have stepped away — including in the Capital area.

Three Democrats — Angela Brennan of Bow and Rebecca McWilliams and Tara Reardon, both of Concord — are hoping to succeed Becky Whitley of Hopkinton, who ran for Congress and then ended her bid. All three have spent time as state representatives but, beyond that, their resumes diverge. They largely agree on which issues are most crucial for this district and for the next legislative term: landfill regulations, housing supply and affordability, access to reproductive healthcare, childcare costs and education funding. But they outlined different strategies, and with varying specificity, for addressing them in what has been a Republican-led Senate.

Here’s what they had to say about four top issues.

Reproductive rights

Reardon said the state needs to cement rights to contraceptives, abortion, especially mifepristone, and IVF in state law.

“We need to have reproductive freedom ensconced in the law so anything that happens federally can’t affect the reproductive and privacy rights of all people — not just women, of all people — here in the state of New Hampshire,” she said.

McWilliams explained how abortions banned under the current state law, after 24 weeks, are largely those needed for medical reasons by parents who wanted to deliver a child.

“This policy hurts parents who are hoping for the best outcome and putting them in an impossible situation where they need to leave the state in order to do the right thing for their family,” she said.

But the law, which she wants repealed, harms more than just parents.

“If you live in a rural area and you need some other kind of surgery, the surgeon who could save your life may no longer be in the state because they’ve been chased out due to this abortion policy,” she said. “So it’s hurting our economy, hurting our healthcare system, it’s hurting everybody.”

Brennan didn’t cite a specific reproductive policy she’d advocate, but the decision overturning Roe v. Wade is what sparked her run for the house two years ago and she named reproductive freedom as a top issue.

Housing

McWilliams said the starved housing market merits the state stepping in to override local zoning hindering growth. Specifically, she said the state needs to make it easier to add in-law apartments to homes or retrofit existing spaces into duplexes.

“We’ve had 50 years of not in my backyard, NIMBY local zoning that has created this patchwork quilt of different zoning across the state,” she said. “The state needs to step in and make some changes… and that means that we’re giving up some local control in order to build more housing,”

From zoning changes, to stable options for those with intellectual disabilities to building more housing at all price points, Reardon emphasized that addressing the housing shortage would take a many-pronged approach.

“We’ve got to make some efforts to solve a crisis that’s been more than 20 years in the making,” she said.

Landfill regulations

All three brought up landfill siting and expansion as something they expect to take a defining vote on in the next term.

“This race is really about whether there will be enough votes in the Senate to prevent Casella from expanding,” McWilliams said, referencing the battle behind a proposed landfill at Forest Lake in the North Country. It’s something she staunchly opposes. Last term, the Senate killed multiple bills that would have restricted landfill expansion and the storage of out of state trash in New Hampshire.

“We need someone who’s vocal on the environmental side to fight against that in the Senate, and I do believe that this is going to be the key environmental issue for the next two years,” McWilliams said.

Reardon brought up that critics say she would have a conflict of interest when voting on landfill rules: Casella, a Vermont-based company behind the proposed new landfill up north, is a client of the lobbying firm of her spouse, Jim Bouley.

She made clear how she’d vote: “I’m anti-landfill,” she said. “We shouldn’t be talking about siting any new landfills right now. We should be talking about reducing waste, and why companies haven’t improved their technology so they’re not letting leachate run into our water supply.”

Childcare

Each candidate cited the ballooning costs of childcare as a crisis.

“Being a young mother and not having access to affordable childcare, having a lot on your plate just to get through the day, it’s a lot,” Brennan said, “and it’s taught me a lot. ”

Reardon argued that the state should subsidize childcare – as it does other essential services, like transportation. She also wants to set up services that help the people running childcare businesses get support: from doing their payroll to applying for grants.

“Child care is a critical need for our community, no matter whether you’re the clerk at a 7-Eleven or you’re a doctor at the hospital, we need child care in all of those situations,” Reardon said. ”

McWilliams pointed to her existing work to support the industry, helping childcare workers get access to benefits through the state’s 2023 “momnibus” as well as a law she sponsored that slashed zoning restrictions in some towns preventing childcare businesses from being run out of homes. She also said the state needs to better fund childcare.

Brennan didn’t highlight landfills and housing as top policy priorities, however, she listed election reform and making the area welcoming for all among her top issues.