Today I began my campaign for State Representative in the General Court of New Hampshire, filing for candidacy in the City Hall of my hometown of 19 years,
Nashua.
I'm lucky to live in a state with over 400 representatives, which makes this all possible for me. Our state is being turned blue by Governor John Lynch, and we're trying to oust both our U.S. Reps this year. At home, however, an uncooperative Republican majority still maintains control of both houses in the state legislature. The average age of an NH State Rep is around 60 years old. The Democratic party here is dwarfed by the Republicans, in power and in size, and so my fellow candidates and I plan to rebuild our party from the ground up, starting at its weakest point: the local party.
The constituency I am fighting to win over, NH Congressional District 26, is drawn up from most of the southern half of our city of 90,000 people, and is almost entirely suburban. It is an abnormally large district in the city, with 15,000 registered voters and 10 seats in the state house.
There are currently 6 incumbent Democrats and 4 Republicans, and as of my writing this there are 7 Republicans and 6 other Democrats, besides myself, who have filed for candidacy.
Two of my friends are also running, one in the same district as me, and we have plans to start a PAC to promote progressive values and help reform our local party.
The three of us are 19 years old and college students. We've considered the difficulties that might arise from serving while also going to school, however we've realized that this takes top priority for us and we can make it work if we want to. The City Clerk who did patronize us a fair bit, asked us if we realized how far a drive it is from Boston to Concord, NH. I sharply responsed that it is no farther from the capital than the seacoast or the mountains of New Hampshire are, and that doesn't stop people there from participating in democracy.
After reading CtG, I felt more compelled than ever to go out and do something to make change, and what better way than to run for office? We don't have the financial means neccesary to make any substantial contributions to any campaigns and when it came down to it, we really didn't see any candidates who represented us.
It's time for some fresh blood in politics, and many of the issues concerning the voters of NH have directly affected us, as we've experienced the effects of our state's education funding crisis.
We are planning on trying to tap into the youth demographic, with some sort of absentee ballot registration assistance for the hundreds of college students who live in our district, however we plan on primarily engaging the working-age and retired population.
Our greatest fear is being marginalized because of our age, but we know that is truly our greatest strength.
We are best able to see how the politics of the democratic establishment isn't working, and as young folks we see ourselves as the strongest force of innovation and change.
Our campaigns are in the planning stages right now, as we are trying to decide how to craft our image and our message. It's unfortunate, but we've got to market ourselves much more aggressively since we can be so easily written off as youthful, inexperienced, and naive.
I wish we could focus more on policy, as we do have a good range of issues that will help us:
health insurance
education
reform of the tax code
environmental protection
gas prices and alternative energy
All of these are safe bets for us, the problem is deciding which one(s) to stress for acheiving maximum impact
I'd greatly appreciate any input.
Update --I deleted the poorly written poll, sorry it has been a long day for me