About

Rich Ashooh is a successful businessman, civic leader and UNH graduate who has spent his career helping to build a stronger New Hampshire. On both the state and local level, Rich is recognized as someone who brings tremendous talent and vision to every project he undertakes. In 2010, he is ready to take on the challenge of representing the Granite State in Congress. 

Following his graduation from college in 1986, Rich headed to Capitol Hill. His career began in the U.S. Senate where he worked on Sen. Gordon Humphrey’s staff, then spent six years as a senior legislative aide to Sen. Warren Rudman. Sharing Rudman’s passion for fiscal responsibility and debt reduction, Rich became the first State Director of the New Hampshire chapter of the Concord Coalition when he returned to the state in the early 1990’s. Bringing an end to deficit spending continues to be one of Rich’s most important on-going goals.

For the past seventeen years, Rich worked as a senior executive with BAE Systems in Nashua, a $5 billion global aerospace company that also happens to be one of New Hampshire’s largest private employers, and its largest manufacturer. Rich’s work there contributed to the success of dozens of programs that have increased and sustained thousands of New Hampshire jobs, and protected and saved the lives of countless U.S. and allied men and women in uniform. He believes strongly that BAE is proof that American businesses can still manufacture high-quality products and compete in the world market. Rich is also privileged to have led the company’s Homeland Security efforts following the attacks on September 11th.

Rich is recognized as a leader in both New Hampshire’s business and volunteer community. He has served on the boards of the New Hampshire Business and Industry Association, New England Council and the National Defense Industrial Association. He’s a staunch advocate for higher education, having served on the Board of Trustees for the University System of New Hampshire as well as a Trustee for Franklin Pierce University in Rindge. Rich is also the past Chairman of the Christa McAuliffe-Alan Shepard Discovery Center Commission, the region’s only air and space museum. Rich has been privileged by his association with numerous other institutions that make New Hampshire the best state in which to live, including Easter Seals Veterans Count, the Adult Learning Center, Catholic Medical Center, the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and New Hampshire Public Television.

For his dedication to these causes, The Union Leader newspaper recognized Rich as part of the next generation of leaders in the state by naming him to its prestigious “Forty under Forty” list in 2002.  Only seven years later, Business NH Magazine honored him as one of the state’s “Most Powerful People”.

Rich is 45 years old, a life-long Republican and long-time political activist. In 2004, he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention, where he served on the Platform Committee. He has also worked with the non-partisan ONE campaign to reduce global poverty and disease and co-chaired the ONE-Vote ’08 during the 2008 Presidential Primary. He’s worked tirelessly to defend New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary status through his long association with the New Hampshire Political Library.

Rich is a second-generation American whose grandparents emigrated from Lebanon and founded Ashooh Brothers Farm in Manchester. Rich is the youngest of seven children. He attended Manchester’s Catholic schools and is a proud graduate of the University of New Hampshire, the place he met and later married his college sweetheart, the former Lori Johnson of Peterborough. They live in Bedford with their five children: Sofie, Emma, Elias, Maya and Sam.