This week, it’s time to wrap up the series on NH
gubernatorial hopefuls by taking a look at the Democratic candidates. There
are five of them. I’ll be reporting on their various positions as shown on
their websites.
Mark Connolly is a former Deputy Secretary of State, and former Director of the
NH Bureau of Securities Regulation. Connolly wants NH students to have a world-class
education, with more emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics.) He doesn’t mention K-12 education funding. He would, however,
like to return the funding of our state university system to the pre-2011 levels.
This would certainly improve the situation, but even if he tripled the level of
funding, NH would still rank a firm 50th in the nation for funding
post-secondary education. Mr. Connolly would like to modernize our state
government, which is certainly a worthy goal, and quite necessary. He wants to
strengthen our campaign finance laws. He supports renewable energy and expanded
passenger rail. He mentions the need to repair NH’s infrastructure, notably the
rural roads and bridges. His site does not mention Northern Pass.
He’s taken The Pledge.
Derek Dextraze has a website. It is not a good one. There
are too many fonts and too many paragraphs written in capital letters. There is
no biographical information. Digging deeply into the site, I was able to discover
that Dextraze is from Dover. He supports raising the minimum wage to $15. He
favors legalizing marijuana, and wants tougher laws for heroin dealers.
Dextraze wants to lower property taxes. He has taken The Pledge, and favors a
constitutional amendment to prohibit an income tax. He also wants to keep the
DMV open later in the evening and possibly on weekends. My daughter recently
spent nearly 2 hours on hold with the DMV. The reason for this is that NH
doesn’t raise sufficient revenue to fund our state agencies and/or run our
state as if it mattered. Mr. Dextraze doesn’t seem to understand the role that
taxes play in funding our state government. In any case, the real goal of his
website seems to be selling his children’s book.
Ian Bernard Freeman does not have a website. Ian Bernard
moved to NH as part of the Free State Project. He’s since changed his name to
Freeman, an affectation that is common amongst Free Staters, who seem eager to
adopt new names once they move to a new state. Ian has been the leader of the
Free Keene cult, but has had some problems this past year. The FBI raided his
house and took a bunch of computers, amidst rumors of a child porn
investigation. This is the house that he’s repeatedly tried to get tax free
status for, claiming it is a church. No arrests have been made as a result of
this raid, but the raid brought up the old stories about Ian’s views on the age
of consent for adult/child sexual relations. He doesn’t think there should be
one. This made life a little embarrassing for the new corporate Free State Inc.
so they decreed that Ian wouldn’t be welcome at their large public gatherings. Ian
has no website or Facebook page for his gubernatorial race. From the NH Liberty
website, I learned that Ian wants to legalize marijuana and end enforcement of
victimless crimes. He wants equal ballot access for all candidates regardless
of party affiliation. He wants NH to secede, and he wants to make all taxes
voluntary.
Steve Marchand has been an auditor, auditing municipal, county, and state
governments around the country. He served on the city council in Portsmouth,
and also served a term as mayor. Marchand supports legalizing marijuana. He’s
opposed to the death penalty. He supports paid family leave. He opposes
Northern Pass. He’s in favor of eliminating the cap on state education grants.
He lists restoring school building aid as an infrastructure issue, where it
merited 5 paragraphs. The red listed bridges got one paragraph. He does include
municipal and state employees as part of the NH infrastructure, and emphasizes
the need to repair the retirement system for these employees. Roads got nothing.
Telecommunications infrastructure got nothing. He thinks that college/business
partnerships will bring down the cost of college tuition. Marchand had nothing
to say about education funding. He refuses to take the pledge, but is opposed
to a sales or an income tax. This sounds a little bit like Kelly Ayotte saying
she will support Trump, but not endorse him. The late Antonin Scalia might have
called this, “jiggery-pokery.”
Colin Van Ostern was a business manager at Stonyfield, Inc.,
helped launch the College for America at Southern NH University, a college that
helps adults get a college education with little to no debt. He’s also served
two terms in the Executive Council. He has the best organized website. Colin
mentions a lot of issues that the other candidates did not. He believes that NH
needs to expand access to rural broadband! He opposes Northern Pass. He points
out the need to safeguard NH’s drinking water. Van Ostern also supports fully
funding the NH Alcohol fund. If he succeeded, it would be the first time it’s happened
since the initial appropriation in 2003. Five percent of the revenue raised in
our state liquor stores is supposed to go to directly to that fund to help
finance treatment and prevention. He believes in expanding supportive housing
for recovering addicts, and working with businesses to give people in recovery
a second chance, by giving them a job. He’s also a supporter of expanded passenger
rail and raising the minimum wage. He, too, has taken The Pledge.
Taking The Pledge is a tacit admission that nothing will change. There will
still not be enough money to run the state in more than the most rudimentary
fashion. The infrastructure will continue to decay, while the costs of repairs
will continue to rise. And the libertea crowd will still bray about cutting
business taxes, as if that will entice businesses to ride into NH on their
unicorns, despite our failing infrastructure, high energy costs, high housing
costs, and various other failings. The Pledge allows Mel Thomson and Bill Loeb
to continue to run NH from the grave.
Not a one of the candidates mentioned the serious housing problem we have in
our state. All of these candidates face an uphill battle with statewide name
recognition.
The state primary election is on September 13. Be sure to research all the
candidates, be sure to bring a photo ID (to combat the non-problem of
non-existent voter fraud), and be sure to vote!
This was published as an op-ed in the August 19 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.
