Former 2nd Congressional District Candidate Arrested On Drunken Driving Charge In Londonderry

LONDONDERRY, NH — A former state Representative and Congressional candidate was arrested on a drunken driving charge on Friday morning, according to Londonderry police.

James H. Lawrence, 55, of Old Coach Road in Hudson, was arrested at 3:02 a.m. on July 24 on DUI-impairment and speeding: 21 to 24 mph over the limit of 55 mph or less.

Limited information is available about the arrest.

According to scanner chatter, a vehicle with a veteran’s plate was stopped around 2:45 a.m. early Friday morning in the area of Mammoth Road and Kendall Pond Road. It is unknown if Lawrence was clocked by radar while driving or if he was visually flagged by the officer for speeding.

The first officer requested backup officers to the scene, and Lawrence was taken into custody about 15 minutes later on a “10-17,” which is code for intoxication by some police departments.

Editor’s note: This post was derived from information provided by Londonderry and does not constitute a conviction. This link explains how to request the removal of a name from New Hampshire Patch police reports.

Lawrence, according to information on Patch and online, served in the U.S. Air Force and currently works as a consultant. He was a three-term state Representative in Hudson between 2008 and 2012 before he ran for Congress in 2014 and 2016. Lawrence was the first Black candidate to run for Congress in the state of New Hampshire.

Lawrence placed third in the Republican primary in 2014, earning more than 10,000 votes, but was swamped by nominee Marilinda Garcia, an outgoing state Representative from Salem at the time, who received more than 49 percent of the vote.

In 2016, Lawrence won the GOP nomination with 40 percent of the vote in a crowded seven-candidate field. He ran on a platform of focusing on government accountability, stemming the flow of illegal immigration into the United States — including use of the National Guard for border patrol, and opposing committing troops to Iraq.

Late in the campaign, he was targeted for being three years behind on his property taxes, owing the town of Hudson more than $15,000. U.S. Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, the incumbent, three years before, was found to be overdue on her property taxes, too, about $11,000 on properties she owned in Hopkinton and Jackson.

Lawrence, however, lost to Kuster in the general election by about 4.5 percent, with John Babiarz, a former Libertarian candidate who ran as an independent that year, earning 4.9 percent of the vote.

Londonderry NH Patch has reached out to the police about the case and will update this post when more information becomes available.

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