Our state’s future is tied to our choice of governor. The last eight years have been marked by record vetoes, usually but not always of Democratic bills. These have hurt our collective and individual ability to address climate change, cost of living and rising property taxes, health and reproductive issues, struggling public schools, and housing initiatives aimed at blue-collar and other under-resourced families.
We have the ability now to change course, and we have two great Democratic candidates for governor, both raised in blue-collar homes and motivated to work for all New Hampshire citizens and residents. But only one of them has dedicated her life to learning how to govern effectively for the public good.
I support Joyce Craig for governor because she has the administrative experience and the proven capability to create systemic change for our state. She has just finished six years as the mayor and hands-on manager of every public program in our largest and most complex city, from struggling schools to trash disposal.
The young Joyce Craig obtained a business degree from the University of New Hampshire and worked with growing companies in Boston for several years. She then returned to Manchester to start a family. All of her three children went through the public school system, and she ran for school board. Three terms later, realizing that their mayor runs the schoolboard, she ran for mayor against a powerful four-term Republican incumbent. She reached out to all the neighborhoods in her city to understand their most urgent needs, and won the election — the first Democrat elected since 2003 and the first woman ever elected.
She served three terms, winning handily each time because of her base in the blue-collar families of Manchester and public school parents, and the success she had in acquiring grants that brought 7,000 new, good-paying jobs to the city, building new affordable housing units, turning a capped landfill into the largest municipal solar array in the state, investing in law enforcement to reduce crime, and above all working with teachers and parents to strengthen the city’s public schools.
During her time as Mayor, Joyce also worked tirelessly to address the state’s housing crisis. When state efforts stalled, Joyce stepped up. Under her leadership, Manchester opened the state’s first city-run and funded homeless shelter, partnered with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, and hired a Director of Housing Stability to reduce homelessness and provide people with the support they needed to find a safe home. As a result of these initiatives, homeless encampments fell in Manchester by 70%.
After serving three terms as Mayor, Joyce decided to run for Governor. She knows the struggles facing New Hampshire’s communities and families, and she knows the state could do more to help. She brings two decades of experience in making change happen.
Joyce Craig has the stamina, the guts, and the experience to take on the budding revenue crisis that the current administration is leaving the state. Through grants, better management, and stopping the massive handouts to the wealthy, Joyce can put us on the path to make our energy systems more efficient and climate-friendly, establish funding and improved quality for our public schools, higher education and training, pass a constitutional amendment for reproductive rights, fund our housing programs and make them more equitable and efficient, and lower our property taxes.
It won’t be easy, and parts of it will take time. But with Joyce Craig as Governor, we can get there together.
Susan Almy is a state representative who represents Lebanon in New Hampshire House.