Selectman attends State of the Union as Pappas' guest

WASHINGTON — When President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address Tuesday night, Freedom Selectman Melissa Florio sat in the gallery of the House chamber of Congress as a guest of U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.).

Each representative is allowed to bring one guest to the address. They are seated above the chamber floor in the gallery.

Pappas, who serves on the House Committee on Small Business, met Florio last August while touring the plastics design and development business she co-owns in Albany, Ambix Manufacturing Inc., and wanted to recognize a small business owner as his guest.

“It’s such an honor to be here,” said Florio, who joined Pappas for a phone interview with the Sun on Wednesday morning. “I couldn’t believe it when Victoria Laracy (Pappas’ community liaison) contacted me and asked me to accept the invitation, which of course, I was like, ‘Of course I’m going to accept.’

“From there, everything was all scheduled out with an itinerary. I just had to get through Boston traffic to get to the airport. That was pretty much the only struggle I had,” she recalled.

She said she got to do some interviews at the Capitol with Pappas, “which was a great experience, getting to share all the work that Rep. Pappas has been doing for small businesses in New Hampshire, and the Mount Washington Valley in particular.

“And then we went to a reception, and it was phenomenal,” Florio said,

“It was packed, of course, but just to be standing next to former Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe I’m doing this.

“We had to leave our cellphones and everything, which left us feeling naked because we couldn’t take pictures,” Florio said. “You know, ‘There’s Bono (of the band U2), there’s first lady (Jill) Biden,’ and you just want to take pictures and capture the memories.”

She added: “I sat next to Brittney Griner’s agent (Lindsay Kagawa Colas), so I got to talk to her. And then another gentleman (Chris DeShields) was being honored because he was a bus driver in Philadelphia, and he saved a woman’s life when she was being carjacked.”

She added: “Just being part of the whole experience of the speech and the representative and senator responses, which for my whole life I’d watched on TV and to actually be sitting there in person, it was phenomenal. It was great.”

It wasn’t quite comparable to the annual town meeting in Freedom.

“I would have to say our people in Freedom are a little bit more polite,” Florio said. “No one yells out ‘liar’ to us (in Freedom).”

That happened when Republicans were heckling the president during his speech.

Pappas interjected: “It’s too bad when you hear those kinds of outbursts because it’s a moment that is really important for the country to hear directly from the president.

“I think some people won’t take their political jerseys off. They think everything is about scoring points for their political party and not about what’s best for the American people,” he added.

“And that’s why bringing a guest like Melissa is important. It’s a way to show what our small businesses experience regularly. Some of the legislation that we’ve passed recently we think is going to help our domestic manufacturers and secure our supply chains. But of course, there’s more work to do and this is about putting American people’s voice front and center and trying to push incivility and extremism in politics to the side.”

Florio liked that Biden spoke about small businesses.

“I must have been standing up with all the representatives and cheering because just to hear, like Rep. Pappas said, all the work we have done in the last year or two that’s going to set the stage to help rebuild manufacturing and small business in America and bring back onshore products and jobs, it was just great to hear,” she said.

There were many highlights in the speech, according to Pappas and Florio.

“The whole speech in general (was a highlight),” said Florio. “He reassured us that he’s going to fight for things that matter like Social Security, Medicare is important, not just for the senior citizens, but for the next generations that are paying into it now.”

Pappas said: “I think he presented a unity agenda that we should be able to act on. He talked about the opioid epidemic and mental health crisis. He talked about immigration and some ways where we might be able to work together to have better technology along the border to stop illegal drugs from coming into this country. So I think there were things that we clearly can do on a bipartisan basis. He helped sketch that out.”

Along with bringing home Pappas’ Small Business Committee card, Florio is returning to the Mount Washington Valley with a better understanding of how the government can help small businesses.

“I’m able to bring back that there are resources for us here in the federal system and that Rep. Pappas is here to help us navigate because as a small business, we don’t have people dedicated on our staff every day to go and hunt down, you know, someone with the expertise in exporting, on how to sell our goods overseas. Or there’s just so much that we have to navigate ourselves. And to know that we have representatives to help us do that is huge.”