Life After Lynch

by: Dean Barker

Sun Sep 18, 2011 at 20:12:54 PM EDT

As with their actions in Concord this year, actions that will hurt so many women, men and children of this state, their hubris prevents them from seeing clearly.

With Lynch's announcement the floodgates have opened.  We have a number of talented Democrats who are openly considering running, and others who will surprise us.

On their side is Tea Party favorite Ovide Lamontagne and anti-equality leader Kevin Smith, who already directs Bill O'Brien's radical agenda.

Some months back, I happened by chance to meet one of Vermont's 2010 Democratic candidates for Governor.  (Vermont, like New Hampshire, has a late primary, and you may recall that the gubernatorial contest was a nail-biter. Part of what put Peter Shumlin over the top was that the other four candidates whom he defeated in the primary worked non-stop for him up to election day.)

I asked what the secret was to a successful party primary. He said there were two key elements: 1) More than two credible candidates, and 2) They all happened to have known and/or worked with each other before in the legislature.

Both of those elements kept the race about the issues, and the number of candidates kept Democratic voices and values constantly in the media's eye.

Governor Lynch has handed us a golden opportunity to showcase new leaders and new ideas, and most of all, to present a stark contrast to the dim reality we face today in light of the veto-proof GOP majority.  

Let's not waste it by pre-anointing one candidate on the one hand, or by character attacks on our fellow candidates on the other.

If you think things are dark now, imagine that scenario with a Tea Party governor. The very welfare of our children and the state's future is at stake with this race.

It is for that reason I will be merciless and unforgiving of candidates and supporters who fail to make this race about our values and the issues. There is too much at stake for the petty ambition and temporary dramas that sometimes make their way into primary races. Furthermore, I will expect, - no, we should DEMAND - that every candidate make a pledge to clear their calendars from September to November next year on behalf of the nominee.

Speaking of pledges.

Republicans and their media enablers will try to make this race about an income tax and the pledge. You can bet your property taxes that this gotcha question will be asked over and over of the Democratic candidates, while the Tea Party ones will never be asked how to fund the basics of government on wishful thinking and tax cuts.

Don't give them the pleasure. Part of winning a struggle is refusing to engage on your opposition's terms.

Do I think it is obscene that the poorest 20% of this state pays more than four times as much as the richest 1% on every dollar earned? Am I ashamed when I see older natives on fixed incomes losing their family homes up north while Craig Benson millionaires in the southern tier pay less than they do in property taxes? Is it humiliating to see good people go at each other on town meeting day because we live 21st century lives tethered to an 18th century revenue system?

But here's what else I think. I think this is a statewide conversation that needs to start essentially from scratch, not a problem that needs to be solved during a gubernatorial race.  The first step down that path is to refuse to play pledge games put into place back in the 1970's by Mel Thomson.  Jackie Cilley provides a wonderful template for what I mean:

Thanks for asking about my position on pledges.  Here's what I said in the last campaign and here's what I would say if I were running for political office today -- and this is what I would want to hear from anyone to whom I offer my support and assistance.

The sole pledge I would offer to the citizens of my district and the people of New Hampshire is this:  To work tirelessly, to the best of my abilities and with the highest standards of integrity, in the interests of our citizens and toward meaningful solutions to the problems that face our state.  

The days of paying homage to long-dead politicians and to signing pledges to out-of-state puppet masters are over.  We now see the full, scarred face of silly political pledges as manifested by eugenics-style budgets that leave thousands of our citizens behind, fail to protect our precious natural resources, abandon our responsibility to provide a sound education to every single student within our state regardless of his/her community, treat our indispensable public employees as mere political pawns, and play Russian Roulette with the future of our state.

We are better than that.  New Hampshire, our beloved state, deserves better than that from those who claim to lead.  It is time that we all stopped settling for anything less than that!

I'm extremely proud of that statistic, and we have John Lynch to thank for it.

Our first duty should not be to pledges, but to figuring out how to preserve that status in light of the rise of Bill O'Brien and the radical New Hampshire Republican.

If we work as a team both before and after the primary, we can put a Democrat in the corner office and fulfill that duty.

(find me > 140 on birch paper; on Twitter < 140)