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There's a strange phenomenon going on right now in Merrimack.
Many people, especially the Republicans, are taking their lawn signs down.
This isn't just the people who have lost their primary and had to have taken them down by yesterday under RSA 664:17, strangely enough, some of those are still up.
In the end, the lawn sign purge made some people I talked to think that the election season was over, that the primary was in fact the election itself.
It's an interesting phenomenon to be sure. I cannot discount the saavy and work ethic of the Republicans for a second, but I don't think this will make a big impact.
However, if you know someone who voted in the primaries who thought that was the big enchilada, please tell them to vote on November 4th.
Now that the Primary is over, I figured it would be a good time to report stats so far.
To date, my campaign has identified 915 voters at 491 different homes. I was aiming for 1,000, but including the random contacts on the 4th of July as well as occasional knocks on doors without recognized registered voters, i've probably reached that goal.
In the fundraising department, i've hit my goal of $1,000, raising $1,007.85 from 35 different people, an average contribution of $28.79, 17 of those donations were $25 or under, and only one of them came from someone who did not live in New Hampshire, although since they have moved here.
However, that may change since I haven't asked anyone in my extended family for campaign contributions yet. If my aunts in New Jersey aren't a special interest i'm beholden to, i'll never hear the end of it at Christmas.
In terms of visibility, i'm up to 67 signs on lawns and businesses across town. My goal before election day is 100, which seems within reach.
Those lawns share space with signs from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Kenney, John Lynch, Jeanne Shaheen, John Sununu, Carol Shea Porter, John Steven, Bill Boyd, Deb Pignatelli, Mike Kaelin, Jim O'Neil, Kim Kojak, Pete Hinkle, Peter Batula, Bob L'Hereaux and Dick Hinch.
It might seem strange to share critical campaign benchmarks like this in fear that my opponents will see that I have not reached my goals or it will give them something to gauge their own internal efforts by.
However, that's part of the beauty of being at the bottom of the ticket as well as the complexity of Merrimack politics.
Of my 15 combined opponents in both major parties, so far five of them have my sign on their lawn, including a Republican. I'd probably be able to get that sign on another three or four if it weren't for the fact that they live in Condos.
Each one of my opponents is a saavy campaigner and cannot be underestimated, but my biggest opponent is myself.
Hopefully this sad story will have a happy ending.
During one day's canvass, I knocked on the door of a man who was a former enlisted man in the Air Force.
He had served several decades ago, he didn't go into detail except for the fact that he had no healthcare coverage and he figured that hopefully the VA could get him something.
A few years ago, this wouldn't have mattered, but the job he had as an engineer was sent overseas to someone who could be paid far less. Even though he's in his early 60's, and not eligible for Medicare, he needed help with his prescription costs as well as saving up for retirement.
His desire was to be an engineer again, but even with A+ certification and other job training enhancements to his resume, he could not find a job in the area that paid nearly as much as before. He now works part time as a janitor in a local church.
His wife is a lifelong Republican but will be voting for Obama due to the plight of her husband.
Due to Carol Shea Porter's expertise with helping Veterans, I recieved his permission to pass along his info to her congressional office. I had met a guy in a similiar situation from Manchester in 2007.
This essay is dedicated to Roy, the biggest Obama fan in Merrimack
My journey in politics began in the Spring of 2003 volunteering for Howard Dean at Keene State College. That year and that campaign made me believe that anything was politically possible, and eventually led me to come back to my hometown to help assail what seemed to be the impossible task of getting Democrats elected here in Merrimack.
While the core of what being a Deaniac meant never left, as the weather grew colder that year, so did I. The fatigue and tedium changed my focus that year changed from helping elect Dean to helping elect a Democrat that would defeat Bush, no matter who it was. By December of 2004, I became jaded towards Presidential Politics.
During this presidential primary cycle, the ambivalence hadn't worn off, but the scale and scope had changed. I must've went everywhere and saw everything that all of the campaigns on both sides had to offer across this great state and beyond.
But even that couldn't bring me back to the summer of 2003. Whenever I heard the candidates speak, what I heard wasn't what they said or what their words meant, but the substance between the words: how those words were said and perceived by potential voters.
I've begun blogging about my travels along the campaign trail here at the bottom of the ticket because so much attention is given to the Presidential campaign that you would think it's the only race being contested this year.
However, the campaign for President is so large that even us small fries get caught up in it, and that happened the other night at a small convention watch party the Merrimack Democrats had at our town chair's house.
Obama's speech was pleasing because of how he said it, he was finally attacking the attacks of McCain, but other than the tone of what Obama said, I honestly couldn't tell you a single thing other than a single part that resonated with me...
"...You have shown what history teaches us - that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because the American people demand it - because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time..."
I have lost track of how many times I had heard Barack Obama speak, either to an audience I was in, or even to my own face. (in Hampton he told me he didn't like stickers on his suit, in Nashua he told me I had asked him too many questions and that somebody else deserved a turn, etc.) Each time I heard him speak, it was in that hardened mold that was born in the Fall of 2003, not caring what he said, but how everybody perceived what he said.
But for that paragraph at Invesco Field, I was transported back to Jack Spratt's farm in Walpole listening to Howard Dean tell us we could change the world, because it captured why the hell I was here better than I could say it myself.
It may seem cliche, but we are at a critical moment in our history where a new way of thinking must replace the old ways, where new leaders challenge the beliefs of the established elite in order to make sure our entire way of life does not collapse from a tired complacency of failed tactics.
The voters of Merrimack are sick of those failed tactics in Concord, whether they be constitutional amendments on education, the 150,000 residents across the state without healthcare, taxes rising without seeming to return any immediate value, or here in Merrimack the endless failures from proposing doomed legislation to bring us a just toll system.
That change isn't going to come from Concord, it is going to come to Concord.
Several days now after he spoke those words, their essence is still rattling around my mind.
These words may sound unusual since I am a Democrat, and both houses of the legislature and the Governor's office are Democratic, and what may sound more unusual is that there are many talented people on both sides of the aisle currently serving in Concord.
Those public servants are like the words in the candidates' speeches, what is the issue is the substance between the words: the actions that trickle down to the average person who is not as politically involved as we are to help them believe that things can get better, that solutions can be obtained.
That is not going to change from the inside, it will take new people.
And that's why four years later, i'm still here in Merrimack, trying to come to Concord.
I was in a business that I frequent here in town the other day and the owner asked me about what I thought about the presidential race.
That question has generally bugged me considering there are so many other races on the ballot in November, and was part of the reason why i'm blogging about what it's like to be running a campaign at the bottom of the ticket, but I figured i'd tell him what I really thought and tell him that it's only on the periphery of my focus right now and that I was focusing on myself.
He replied to me "Good, in economics there are things we can control, and things we can't control. It's best just to worry about the things we can control and forget about all the rest."
Barack Obama wasn't going to put Hillary Clinton as the VP just because somebody might have asked him out of fear that the Hillary voters weren't going to show up at the polls for me. Nor should we fear the zombie narrative that these tidal shifts are going to be the deciding factor, and i'm talking to Republicans too on that. This will be a Democratic year, generic Democrats are consistently polling 5 to 10 points better than their generic Republican rivals, but the races will be decided on the ground everywhere, regardless of anything else. Whoever works harder will win.
I may be wrong, but if I am, there's nothing I can do about it, so why worry about the things out of our control? I am working hard and that's all that I can control.
I want to apologize to all of you reading these journals from the campaign trail.
I knew that the transition from pre-convention campaigning to post-convention campaigning would be a jarring one, but it still caught me off guard.
I didn't expect anyone else to start up seriously until the last week of August, and here we are. I'm just glad I took my opponents seriously enough to start six weeks earlier than the traditional state rep campaign in Merrimack has begun in the past.
Even though we're a swing town, old habits are hard to break, and many people still don't believe a Democrat can win unless they have been politically active for decades, so I need to work harder than anyone else.
Even if I didn't have the stigma of the partisan version of the Curse of the Bambino to fight, the candidates I face are all incredibly formidable, so I knew i'd have to go above and beyond what is considered traditional campaigning for a state rep in Merrimack.
I wish I had gotten a picture of the grass in front of Zyla's, a really cheap retail store here in town, and a local landmark of sorts, particularly when it comes to gauging who is seriously campaigning.
At the beginning of August/end of July, my signs were the only ones up along with Pamela Coughlin for Registrar of Deeds.
Right now, there are signs for me, Coughlin, John Stephens, Jeb Bradley, Deb Pignatelli, Stephen Stepanek, Peter Batula, Jim O'Neil, Arthur Beaudry, and I believe one or two more. By the end of September, you won't be able to see the ground on that tiny strip of grass and dirt.
Some people have asked me why I got my signs up so early, and to that I now quote Pedro Martinez...
The answers to my Nashua Telegraph questionaire are up, you can see it here by typing in your address in Merrimack
In it, I mention information about our state budget, which i'm going to be discussing here on my website, continuing with the evolving discussion on the state budget a few weeks ago.
To kick off this restart of the discussion, here is an excel spreadsheet overview of the six major parts of the state budget from 2006 to 2009 and where the money for it according to the New Hampshire Legislative Budget Assistant's office.
Merrimack is part of State Senate District 9, which consists of Merrimack, Bedford, New Boston, Lyndeborough, Mont Vernon, Lyndeborough and Greenfield.
I can understand Bedford, but the only thing Merrimack has in common with any of the other towns is that we're in the same county and we share a State Senator. I don't think i've actually been to Greenfield before, but I came close the other day when going to Representative Mike Kaelin's house in Lyndeborough.
Mike lives way out in the middle of nowhere. If you don't believe me, ask him for an invitation to his house sometime, but before you go, make sure you have really good shock absorbers.
I had heard alot about him, that he was an accomplished polka accordionist, that he lived in a solar powered house, that he had a black belt in Aikido, but one fact that came up in conversation really floored me.
His site for his house was originally too mountainous to build anything, so he had to clear several tons of rock.
Ignoring all the great legislation he's sponsored as a state rep, whether it's trying to make the state legislature paperless, trying to get incentive payments to people who produce renewable energy, or fighting predatory lenders, just think about what he had to do to build his house for a second.
He literally moved a mountain.
Isn't that someone who we deserve in the State Senate?
You can do your part by contributing to him through Act Blue.
In 2006 when I was running for state rep, there was a guy who came out of nowhere at the polls and started yelling at me.
"Oh, you're Andy Sylvia? You got a D from the NRA! You don't deserve to be a state rep, you don't know anything about guns, you need to learn!"
And he was livid, out of the blue he just walked over yelling. "What did I ever do to this guy?" I asked myself, perplexed at what had transpired.
Then a conservative friend of mine starting talking about guns, and strangely enough I began to understand it the same way I, and many people on the left see abortion rights, which in itself is enough for an entire article.
That conversation, along with seeing the degradation of our Constitution* gave me new respect for the Second Amendment of the US Bill of Rights as well as Article 2a of the New Hampshire State Constitution, which is almost identical in its scope.
I probably construe the the Second Amendment/Article 2a differently than that guy who yelled at me that day since I don't construe shooting people as part of bearing arms or defending yourself(in 2a) except in a militia (which now I assume means the National Guard).
Fortunately, word had gotten to him that apparently I don't bite, and we had a good discussion at Deliberative Session a few months ago. He's never shot anyone, but on top of that he's a proud union member and is just as angry at run of the mill Republicans for trying to harm labor rights that affect him as a blue collar worker as he is at run of the mill Democrats for trying to deny his Second Amendment rights.
Since we talked back at Deliberative Session, we've talked a few more times, and I figured this time i'd ask for him to teach me about gun issues while doing the NRA questionaire again considering he made such a big deal about it in 2006.
I honestly don't know if i'll submit the NRA questionaire this year irregardless of my new friend's help. There are many people I trust who have told me just to ignore it, and that i'll be downgraded just because I am a Democrat, as it seemed with some other voter guides.
In the end though, the grade from the NRA if I decide to submit the questionaire isn't as important as hearing his views as well as the views of people in Merrimack who favor gun control so I can hopefully be part of crafting solutions to issues that reflect the views of Merrimack in the legislature.
He said I got his vote and he's going to put my sign on his lawn.
*-Ambiguity of "Free Speech Zones" breaking the 1st Amendment, The FISA Vote breaking the 4th Amendment, many cases of ignoring the Geneva Convention among other treaties ratified by Congress and signed by past presidents breaking Article VI, abuse of Executive Signments breaking Article I, etc. etc. etc.
It's always refreshing when you knock on a door and you don't get someone screaming at you or completely indifferent to state politics.
I've had a few instances like that, but one in particular has really stuck in my mind. There was a little old lady a week or so ago that saw that I was running for office and out of the blue gave me three dollars. She was just so grateful that someone asked for her vote it seems.
She's asked me not to reveal her name, so if you think you know who i'm talking about, it's somebody else. Still, I wanted to thank her publically even though I know she might feel embarrased that I am thanking her.
She shouldn't. It'd be nice if we could all try to be nicer to each other, and if at all possible, perform a kind deed like she did.
Due to an emergency yesterday, I used the toll booths in Hooksett on I-93.
For many of you, that might not seem like a big deal, but I see using a New Hampshire toll booth the same way a Jehovah's Witness might see testifying in court or voting. I only wish I were as pious as they seem to be, i've lost track of how many times i've gone through the tolls this year, I suppose i'm fortunate that i've kept it in the single digits despite going from Merrimack to Concord and back just about every day.
Tolls are the second biggest issue from people i've talked to at doors, but unfortunately in their eyes it's tinged with the biggest issue: nobody can do anything about it.
For those of you who are reading this article from outside Merrimack, let me explain simply.
Our town has 1/20th of New Hampshire's population. We have 1/3rd of the state's toll booths. Last time I checked, we do not have 1/3rd of the state's wealth.
If that is not economic injustice, I don't know what is.
The story of the tollbooths comes from the late 1980s, we wanted our exits onto the F.E Everett Turnpike expanded. So, the state came to us and said "if you want your exits expanded, you'll need to approve 'temporary' tollbooths". Twenty years later and those temporary tollbooths have become permanent due to a multi-million dollar profit the state rakes in and a lack of organized resistance from the town itself.
That must change.
It will take two years, and it will take more than myself, but I have a three point plan to fight back effectively against the injustices of the Turnpike System.
First off, we as Merrimackers must stop using the tolls. I've tried to live the example I want to preach, only using the tolls in absolute emergencies, but it'll take hundreds of Merrimackers to stop using the tolls and start saving their toll money in a grassroots effort, led by the Town Council and our delegation in Concord. Executive Councillor Deb Pignatelli has already made a great foundation with her Tolltalkers group.
Second, we need to find more Deb Pignatellis: people from outside of Merrimack who are affected by tolls. This is not an issue about Merrimack, this is an issue of social justice, if we are to succeed in Concord, all of the effort cannot come from just Merrimack. Dover faces a similiar plight to us, and many other towns and cities feel the disproportionate focus on certain areas that the Turnpike System has.
And finally, we need to use that money saved from avoiding the tolls to build a warchest to fight the tolls. Legal fees, political action groups, mass media communication, all of it costs money and all of it will probably be necessary in order to make progress on the toll issue.
I cannot guarantee a timeframe on success, but I can guarantee that we will fail if we decide to give up or continue on without any effective strategy like the one I just said above.
When you knock on a door out campaigning, you never know what you're going to get on the other side.
A little while ago, I go up to a house, ring the door bell, and hear somebody yell "hey, somebody's at the door, go get it!"
So, I wait for 2 or 3 minutes until a young man comes to the door followed by what I assume was his grandfather.
The grandfather has no shirt on, and looks like a slightly shorter version of Telly Savalas, and I start to go into my script.
Apparently his most important issue is also what i've found to be the most important issue to voters, saying that things suck and all the politicians are crooked and only looking out for each other, so on and so forth.
Once he started talking about the municipal level politicians, I had to be more neutral due to my position on the Merrimack Ethics Committee, telling him about the Ethics Committee and letting him know that it's here for oversight of public employees and public officials and what to do if he thought a town employee or a town elected official was acting unethically.
However, I told him that even with the Ethics Committee, I couldn't promise anything in regards to helping him regain his trust in government, and for that matter I couldn't promise him anything other than the only three things I can promise anybody, and he replied with an interesting statement...
"I don't expect any more out of you, but the only thing anybody can ever truly promise is that one day they'll die."
We talked for another few minutes about things, and he wished me luck, thanked me for coming by as well as for running for office, and said I had gotten his vote.
Still, after that moment of clarity, I doubt that in the grand scheme of things that his or anyone else's vote is truly 100% guaranteed.
One thing I learned the hard way in 2006 is not to burn out too quickly. Sometimes you've got to take a day off, and that goes for writing too.
Still, i'm making progress on the ground, so far I have more signs on lawns in Merrimack than all other State Rep candidates combined, I probably have about as many as Jeanne Shaheen, Barack Obama and John McCain for that matter.
Add to that pretty good fundraising numbers for a state rep candidate (about $600), an appearance on WMUR's Close Up this morning (i'll try to get the video of it up asap), and i'm more than happy to hold back a bit.
After all, the next few months are going to be busy. I gotta keep up this pace.
Never mind the polling, if you'd all like to know what truly is the biggest issue on the minds of voters, the best way to find out is to get out there and ask them yourselves.
This can be done pretty much anywhere in New Hampshire where there are people who are stationary and not engaging in a particular activity at that moment.
You can go to Market Square in Portsmouth, Railroad Square in Keene, Eagle Square in Concord. You can go to Mine Falls Park in Nashua, Victory Park in Manchester, or Androscoggin Wayside Park in Errol.
No matter where you go in New Hampshire, you're going to get the same results for the most part when it comes to the biggest issue on the minds of voters, and this goes for Merrimack too.
However, if you'd like to know what i've found in all those places, you'll have to read tomorrow's article! Until then my friends, it's 97 days and counting...
You ignore them, and they'll grow and possibly cause problems with those who can't feel bothered to verify what they hear before they accept it as truth. You take them too seriously, and then people will accept them as truth irregardless of their veracity. Either way, i've found that you can't let them rule your actions under any circumstances or it'll just drive you mad.
So, I was a little stunned a few weeks ago when I had heard I was breaking the law in regards to lawn signs.
Before 2004, RSA 664:17, New Hampshire's state law on lawn signs, said that you couldn't put them out before the last Friday in July. In 2004, that law was challenged in court, the court found that telling people that they couldn't put up signs before a certain date was unconstitutional, and then in 2006 the legislature passed HB 349, a bill that removed the the last Friday in July provision from RSA 664:17.
So now you can put up lawn signs at any time, provided they are on state owned rights of way or private property. Here in Merrimack, the zoning ordinance regarding signs on town owned rights of way isn't enforced, so it's a judgment call for the most part on where to put signs.
The rumor about me breaking this law that had been repealed a few years ago probably wasn't a big deal in the first place, but I figured it was a big enough of a deal to mention and clarify.
Not sure otherwise about the rumor though, so far i'm the only candidate in Merrimack who has any signs up other than two candidates for Registrar of Deeds.
The other day I was walking a neighborhood in the central part of town, better known as Souhegan Village, when I met a voter who brought me an interesting question.
She talked about two of her sons, one in private school, the other in public school. The one private school was older, she thought she would be able to put both of them in private school, but it turned out not to be the case, and she didn't want to separate the older child from his friends he had made and she could afford to send one of the two kids to private schools.
She wondered why the two children received such different educations despite going to schools only a few miles apart from each other. The private school child received much more emphasis on a core curriculum while the public school child in her eyes was not being challenged.
She also said the private school staff were being paid far less and received fewer extraneous assistance in teaching, yet the results she was seeing from the private school were greater than those she was getting from the public school child, who was getting far less homework.
I can't affirm or oppose her assertions in regards to the private school she mentioned, and while I was on the School Board Budget Committee last year, I have to admit that our job seemed to be one of oversight rather than real hands on fiscal policy in the school district, due in large part to the excellent job the School Board did before we convened shortly before the Deliberative Session in the spring.
However, when I was going over those budgets, it was difficult to discern what the value of each line item was, due in large part because there were so many.
This was part of why the woman I talked to wanted to see our town's school budget cut. "When I go to the supermarket, I see so many brands of pasta sauce now that I can't tell them apart, I get overwhelmed" she said. "So in the end, I just look for the price, and find the cheapest one."
I believe a government budget is no different than that woman's dilemma with the spaghetti sauce as well as how she viewed the educations of her two sons.
If the choices that need to be made within a budget are overwhelming and it isn't clear what value one would get from spending on a certain item, it's understandable that people would go into a default mode and make a decision on the clearest value you're going to see on just about any spreadsheet: price.
However, with her kids, she saw more than just price. She saw something that may well be intangible in terms of her childrens' education, but is never the less just as valuable as the money spent on it, if not more so.
It appeared that she agreed with my belief on budgets that any dogma of an extreme, whether it be cutting everything or spending indiscriminately without understanding of the cost, wasn't a particularly good idea.
We had a good discussion, and even though she didn't say specifically that she'd vote for me, she offered me a Fresca since it was a hot day, so i'm guessing i've gotten her vote.
And to top it off, I was actually aiming to talk to someone else in her house that wasn't home....
(Interesting. Looking forward to it. - promoted by Dean Barker)
It's July 26th, and that means there is only 100 days left until the 2008 Election.
For us here in New Hampshire, we've already had a long journey towards this election due to our status with the First in the Nation Primary, but today is a milestone towards the beginning of the end.
For those of you who don't know me, my name is Andrew Sylvia. I am a candidate for State Representative in the district of Hillsborough 19, which consists of my hometown: Merrimack.
Over the next 100 days, I aim to write 100 articles about the stories I see on the campaign trail here at the bottom of the ticket. I will try to focus most of the stories here on Merrimack, particularly the stories of the average voter on the street.
I may write more than 100 articles, I may write less than 100 articles, I may write controversial statements, I may write stories you find dull, I may write partisan propaganda or post-partisan drivel, I may write about just about anything, but I will write and I will show you what I see because that is part of who I am, and who I will be if I am to be elected as a State Legislator.
There are only two things I can promise in these campaign journals.
Other than the only things I can normally promise, I will not use any names unless in praise of someone, if the person is already a public figure and it's necessary to advance the narrative, or i've been explicitly asked to by the person themselves.
I also won't share anything that people have asked me to keep confidential that isn't unethical. I'm sure it will take alot up in Concord to build enough trust with other legislators to get the votes I'll need to pass the legislation my constituents will want, and it's hard to build trust when you're blabbing about what everyone else is saying and doing as I have found out the hard way.
I look forward to sharing this journey towards election day with all of you.
