Karen Liot Hill will be the Executive Council’s sole returning member — and she feels the pressure to deliver.
“I’m definitely feeling the weight of voter expectations. I think that we’re gonna need to deliver results, and we’re going to have to make life more affordable, and make life less stressful for people,” she said. “That’s what I’m focused on, and I feel optimistic about our ability to do that.”
Liot Hill, who represents Dublin, Hancock, Peterborough and Sharon as part of District 2, will be joined by four other Democrats. That includes Melanie Levesque, who unseated David Wheeler in District 5, which covers much of the Monadnock region.
It’s the first time Democrats have ever won total control of Executive Council, acts as a check on the governor’s power. It approves and supervises state contracts over $10,000 and confirms high-level appointments, including judges.
Given how difficult it is to govern, Liot Hill said the Council will keep prioritizing accountability, lowering costs and addressing ethics concerns around Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald’s resignation in September as well as the Supreme Court as a whole.
“I do feel confident that Democrats will be able to rise to the challenge, and I am optimistic that there is enough area of common ground that we’ll be able to work with the Governor across party lines to actually deliver results for the people,” she said.
Liot Hill defeated her Republican opponent, Tobin Menard, by more than 37,000 votes.
Menard said he was disappointed with the results but declined to comment further.
District 5 turns blue
Levesque will join the Council for the first time, and she said that with a full Democratic majority, she expects Granite Staters to better understand the Council’s role.
“I’m excited that because we have a majority, there are things that we want, like people to have healthcare, for our taxes to be lower and we will do what we can to make those things happen,” Levesque said.
Her plans include researching the departments that work alongside the Council, accepting more federal funds and communicating better with constituents.
When asked about the pressure that comes with a majority, Levesque said that, based on her experience in the House and Senate, Democrats simply need to be better at communicating their wins.
“We have to be more visible when we do something good, or we stop something that’s not good. We need to let people know,” she said.
Levesque won by roughly seven percentage points in her second campaign against Republican incumbent Wheeler, after losing to him by the same margin in 2024. She said she learned a lot between the two elections.
“This year, I was able to go back to the people that I had met and also meet new people, do a lot of listening and a lot of accountability work,” she said.
To Wheeler, the election results reflected disappointment with the Republican Party at the national level.
“I think the voters sent a loud message that they weren’t happy with Washington, and that bled over into the state offices,” he said.
Levesque will represent District 5: Francestown, Greenfield, Greenville, Jaffrey, Lyndeborough, Mason, New Ipswich, Rindge, Temple and Wilton.
The elected Council members will be sworn in in January and serve for two years.