When canvassing for Democrats in Hanover last weekend, my partners and I made some important observations. A large majority of the houses had at least one voter registered as Democrat or undeclared. About one-third of the more than 100 doors we knocked on were answered. All but two of those who answered were supportive of Democrats and planned to vote on Nov 8. Most cited saving democracy or reproductive rights as their most important concerns.
The reason we canvassed in such a strongly Democratic community was to maximize voter turnout, which could be critical for overcoming Republican votes from other regions in New Hampshire. Although turnout in Hanover in the 2018 midterm election was slightly higher than turnout in New Hampshire overall, about 60% (Town of Hanover statistics) versus 53%, Hanover turnout could be improved. In the 2016 presidential election, Maggie Hassan was elected to the U.S. Senate by a margin of barely 1,000 votes statewide, despite having a margin of over 4,000 votes in Hanover! Hanover could be even more decisive for Sen. Hassan in this midterm election against Don Bolduc because turnout is considerably lower in midterm than presidential elections.
In the 2020 presidential election, Annie Kuster was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives by a margin of almost 40,000 votes in the 2nd Congressional District with 54% of the vote compared to 44% for her Republican opponent. Rep. Kuster is also currently leading her new Republican opponent, Bob Burns, by about 10% in the polls. However, congressional districting has changed since 2020 and lower turnout is expected.
The other midterm election that could be decided by turnout size in Hanover is that for Executive Council, which is a five-member body in New Hampshire’s state executive branch that serves as a check on the governor’s power. In the 2020 presidential election, Democrat Cinde Warmington was elected by a margin of about 13,000 votes over her Republican opponent in the 2nd Executive Council District. However, Executive Council districting has also changed since 2020 and lower turnout is expected.
Please vote on Nov. 8!
William C. Black
Hanover
Larry Satcowitz for Vt. House
I’m writing to encourage everyone who can to vote for Larry Satcowitz for the Vermont House, Orange-Washington-Addison district. I’ve observed Larry’s work both on Randolph’s Selectboard and for us in the House. He works tirelessly for both bodies. In the House he sponsored or co-sponsored 37 bills or resolutions, 15 of which were enacted or passed into the record.
I’m voting for Larry because he’s honest and humble; he’d rather work for us than talk about working for us, a very rare quality in politics.
Tamara S. Morgan
East Randolph
Vote for candidates
who prize action
As a relatively new resident to New Hampshire, Cornish and the Upper Valley, I was eager to meet new neighbors and participate in community events.
Early on I met Virginia Drye, a young lady from Plainfield who was a candidate for State Representative. Virginia asked to host a community event for the Governor on my property, which I was happy to accommodate. As the event drew near, I came to know Virginia and her family and was impressed with the organizational skills, passion and tenacity of such a young lady thoroughly committed to serve her community and Granite Staters.
As a retired career federal employee, I lived the ideals of selfless service, responsibility and accountability of one’s actions, and stewardship of national resources on behalf of all citizens. I immediately saw these traits in Virginia. Then I learned just how passionate and committed to serve Virginia really was through her actions.
As a young intern in the Executive Council, Virginia spearheaded an initiative to dedicate of the Lafayette Trail historical marker on the Statehouse lawn. This was no easy feat. She was met with the often-typical churning and handwringing of government bureaucracy, but her persistence and tenacity prevailed. After nearly two years of tracking down the various leadership approvals in both the executive and legislative branches of state government, Virginia’s efforts were realized and the Lafayette Historical marker was dedicated in May. Not bad for a 23-year-old who was able to tactfully challenge and gain approving consensus from those who said “it couldn’t be done.”
Virginia is running to represent District 2 in the state House. It is refreshing to see young people such as Virginia with a commitment to serve wanting to represent the people of New Hampshire.
On Nov. 8, please get out and vote, and when you do vote for those who demonstrate their commitment to serve through action.
Michael Belanger
Cornish
Vote for Dr. Palmer
We residents of Cornish and Plainfield support Dr. Bill Palmer’s candidacy for the Sullivan County District 2 House seat. Unlike his opponent, he is a strong advocate for: access to health care; reproductive rights; public school funding; affordable property taxes; affordable housing; and green energy solutions. Every voice counts! Please vote.
Susan Russo, Ilsa Pinkson-Burke, Briane Pinkson, Martha Zoerheide, Ros Seidel, Regina Barker, Linda Hammond
Cornish and Plainfield
Public schools
are on the ballot
Good public schools financed by public tax dollars serve as the foundation of our democracy. New Hampshire’s school voucher program takes some of our public tax dollars and uses them to send students to private or religious schools or to support home schooling. School vouchers remove much-needed funding from our community public schools, which need those dollars to maintain school buildings, staff and services for all students who remain.
When a school or district begins to decline, it causes community-wide problems, including affecting property values. The distribution of tax dollars is unfair in New Hampshire, as some needy communities receive far less than others and equity has not yet been resolved. To become informed about the bipartisan Commission to Study NH School Funding search fairfundingnh.org.
Please make certain when you vote on Nov. 8, the candidates you support understand the critical importance of and the role of public schools in our democracy.
Dorene Lengyel
New London
Support for Bill Huff
Bill Huff is a solid family man, former commercial airline pilot, bush pilot and a 20-year financial professional. He is more than qualified to represent Windsor County in the Vermont Senate. He is practical, makes sense with his programs for cleaning up Lake Champlain and bringing solvency to our state pension system. He will make a difference. Let’s make sure he wins a seat.
David W. Barrell
Quechee
It could happen here
Perhaps most Americans have been too coddled by peace since World War II. Perhaps we’ve just lived too far from horror. But read Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, about Russia under Stalin. Read Elie Wiesel’s Night, about Nazi death camps. Closer to hand, look at the horrors wrought by Putin upon Ukraine. Could we expect any less from his admirer Trump? Totalitarianism, whether arising from left or right, leads inexorably to mass murder. We’re all human. It could happen here. Unless we act to avert it.
Voters are often ashamed to admit choosing “the lesser of two evils.” They shouldn’t be. Avoidance of evil is the #1 principle of human rationality. Voting is no different. This year, more than ever, we must vote against the authoritarianism embodied in Trump and his acolytes. We’ve seen posters warning that public education and reproductive freedom are on the ballot. But more crucially, with democracy under attack, I’d say evil itself is on the ballot this year. Please, please vote against it.
In 1945, from the liberation of Buchenwald, a Nazi extermination camp, Edward R. Murrow broadcast graphic details of the horrors — the stench of the cadaverous living, crammed five to a ratty mattress; the skeletal unburied corpses “stacked like cordwood.” He then said “If this report offends anyone, I am not sorry.” In other words, truth outweighs possible offense. In that same spirit, if this letter offends anyone, I am not sorry.
Bernie Waugh
Hanover
GOP no-shows in Sunapee
I had the pleasure of attending an event in Sunapee a couple of weeks ago that was supposed to be a “meet the candidates and Q&A.” It was sponsored by Project Sunapee and to be moderated by the League of Women Voters (LWV). There are two state Senate seats and three House seats being contested in Sunapee/Springfield. All three Democratic candidates for the House contests were there. No Republicans for these seats showed up. On the Senate side both Democratic candidates were there and only one Republican candidate.
All five Democratic candidates were impressive: they answered questions directly, explained their positions succinctly on a variety of issues, and seemed comfortable having dialog with voters regardless of a voter’s sometimes obvious leaning on a particular issue.
We are left having to assume that the Republicans who didn’t show up will follow the Free Stater/Republican line, to the detriment of public education, public school funding and women’s rights. If this is a bad assumption it is the fault of those who were afraid to show up to tell us what they felt about various issues.
I will be happy to cast my votes for Charlene Lovett, Hope Damon, Rob Lovett and Linda Tanner, who all showed up at the Sunapee forum, and I would certainly vote for Sue Prentiss if I lived in Springfield rather than Sunapee.
Tim Eliassen
Sunapee
Russian war instills dread
Your recent spate of letters and editorials admonishing Americans not to go “wobbly” on endlessly escalating the Ukraine war and repudiating negotiations puts me in mind of Edith Wharton’s warning that our human grasp on a fragile world has been steadily diminishing in inverse ratio to the modern technological means of spanning it.
I was 10 years old when the fate of the world last swayed like a playing card on edge ready to fall either way, during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, and I never forgot the pervasive fear that filtered down to the kid realm from our parents and the nuns teaching us in grade school. Theirs was a generation deeply scarred by the lived experience of total war and it was not shameful “wobbliness” but a healthy dread of nuclear annihilation that I will be forever grateful to them for instilling in me.
What I find totally deranged in present circumstances is the lack of that same dread of omnicide in the stay-the-course bromides of a U.S. foreign policy establishment whose long record of reckless adventurism has joined forces with its Russian counterpart in steering the world back toward another rendezvous with possible human extinction.
Patrick Flaherty
Hanover
Republicans target
Social Security
Be afraid. Be very afraid. If Republicans take Congress they won’t solve world inflation. Kevin McCarthy has announced that Republicans will cut Social Security and Medicare and shut down the government if Biden vetoes the bill. I don’t know what that will do to prices, but will you be better off? Rick Scott wants to also raise taxes on the working poor.
Elise Stefanik is running a TV ad that says that Republicans will “recover” millions from Social Security and Medicare and spend it on veterans. They will happily steal your old age pension and your children’s survivor’s benefits, but don’t hold your breath expecting them to spend the money on veterans.
The Social Security Trust Fund isn’t their pot of gold for them to pay for their tax cuts for the wealthy. OASDI is your old age pension, your children’s survivor benefits if you die young, and cancer patients’ disability insurance.
No stipend is large but they are a safety net which the stock market won’t destroy. My college roommate brought up her granddaughters with only her old age pension and their survivor’s benefits.
Republicans have been gunning for Social Security since the New Deal. It is a trust fund separate from the general budget for a reason, so that they can’t get their paws on it. Let us hope that voters will see that every change is not necessarily good. Liz Truss bankrupted the UK in 44 days with her supply side economics. The Republicans will do the same to us.
Ruth Stephenson
Lebanon
Election could cause collapse
When a character in Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises, is asked how he went bankrupt, he answers, “Gradually, then suddenly.”
This is the trajectory for the collapse of the American experiment and we are approaching the end of the “gradual” phase, 100 seconds to midnight on the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock. Climate change, nuclear holocaust and pandemics all linger on the doorstep, each capable of turning the gradual into the sudden.
And just when we need them the most we suddenly realize that our political representation has been hijacked by the 1%, who have gradually harnessed the anger, ignorance, and malice of — who knew there were so many? — 40% of the electorate.
Nov. 8 could see the end of the gradual phase and the triumph of fascism in America. If you’re white, male, fit, heterosexual, and under 50, you probably don’t need to worry. The rest of us? Better watch out!
Dale Copps
Enfield