HUDSON – Can a pro-immigration, pro-choice, pro-environmental protection Republican defeat President Donald Trump in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary?

Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld is determined to find out. On Friday, Weld brought his presidential campaign to government and civics classes at Alvirne High School.

Weld immediately told the students that despite being a Republican, he has very little in common with Trump. For example, the issue of climate change.

“Your generation and the generation, maybe, a little bit older than you, you’re going to reap the whirlwind on that issue,” Weld told students Friday.

“If we don’t prevent the Earth’s atmosphere from rising more than 1.5 degrees centigrade between now and 2050, the polar ice cap in the Arctic is going to melt and all of our shorelines, including the shoreline of New Hampshire, are going to be blown away because of the rise in the ocean levels.”

“The White Mountains of New Hampshire will no longer be white; there will be no snow there,” Weld added.

When asked by a curious student how he would approach climate change if he were elected, Weld listed several steps he would take.

First would be rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement. Next would be putting a price on carbon and taxing those who pump CO2 into the atmosphere.

“Let’s say I’m an oil and gas company and I know it’s going to cost me, say, $40 a ton to put carbon into the atmosphere. I might say, that’s a pretty high price. I don’t want to put so much carbon out,” Weld said.

As president, Weld said he would also work to bring the country back together.

“You will notice that if nothing else, Mr. Trump likes to divide the country, likes to divide people and lash out after various groups. First, it was Muslims; then it was Hispanics. Now, it’s people of color serving in Congress. Trying to divide the country instead of trying to unite it, I think, is very insidious,” Weld said. “We’re supposed to be the United States of America.”

Weld believes there are two factions within the Republican Party itself – social conservatives and libertarians.

“I can tell you, I think individual liberties should be paramount,” Weld said.

In the past, Weld said they could get past their differences, but not today.

When he was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1990, he said he would get together with representatives of opposite parties once a week for “coffee and cookies” to “shoot the breeze.”

“Washington is famous for being a poisonous atmosphere these days and the two parties, the Rs and the Ds, despise each other and they demonize each other in order to scare their base into giving them so much money so they can get re-elected,” Weld said.

“This is a real problem and I’m not of that mind,” he added.

Instead, Weld believes one should go to Washington D.C., serve a few terms and let someone else come serve.

If elected president, Weld said he would work across party lines.

“People say to me, if you get to Washington and you’re president of the United States, how are you possibly going to reach across the aisle, and they’re referring to how that’s not done in Washington today,” Weld said. “My answer to that is the way you reach across the aisle is you reach across the aisle.”

During his visit, Weld spoke on several controversial topics. For his stance on immigration, Weld said he believes the country needs more work visas, not less.

“I spent a lot of time in the western half of the United States in the last election. You cannot populate the construction industry or the agriculture industry anywhere Texas or west in this country without the immigration population,” Weld said.

He added, “The whole notion that these 11 million illegal immigrants, they say, all want to be citizens and they didn’t wait in line so this is a disgrace. Well, most of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country just overstayed their visa. I’ve done that. I’ve been in European countries and I’ve had a 30 day visa. At the end of it, I was still living in this house I liked, so I came back nine days late. That would make me an undocmumented alien in their definition in the United States.”‘

As for gun restrictions, Weld made several points.

“I don’t think we should take (guns) away. Proposals for universal registration of guns makes me very nervous,” Weld said. “Year one, it’s show us your gun; year three it’s staying at the police station. However, we can’t do nothing now with all these mass shootings.”

Weld said he favors red flag laws, which would allow police or family members to petition a state court to order the confiscation of firearms.

“Those laws don’t trouble me,” Weld said. “That’s going right at the most sensitive thing, which is identifying someone who might be a problem with gun, and if it pans out, they take the gun away. If it doesn’t pan out in a consistent way, it doesn’t get done.”

Weld also said as president, he would “absolutely put more funding into mental health.” However, background checks for mentally ill citizens trying to get a gun doesn’t lead his list.

“The red flag laws lead my list,” Weld said.

Weld is one of three Republicans who are officially challenging Trump in the primary, with the others being former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh and former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

Time is running short for three potential high-profile GOP challengers who have considered mounting challenges: Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich; 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who is now a U.S. senator from Utah; and Jeff Flake, a former U.S. senator from Arizona.

Grace Pecci may be reached at 594-1243, or at gpecci@nashuatelegraph.com.

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