State Senator Launches Bid To Become NH's Next Governor

CONCORD, NH — After receiving a standing ovation during his NH AFL-CIO Labor Day breakfast speech, a Concord attorney announced Tuesday that he will be a candidate for governor in New Hampshire in 2020. State Sen. Dan Feltes, D-Concord, launched his campaign by releasing a 4 minute video that was mostly biographical in nature. In the video, the two-term Senator, who is majority leader and a former legal aid attorney, talked with his parents about life growing up and the values instilled in children to become what they are supposed to be – all behind a backdrop of families playing in White Park in Concord, feeding animals on a farm, and workers surveying a construction site.

"My wife Erin and I are excited to announce that I'm running for governor of New Hampshire," Feltes said in a statement. "Our state has great potential, but working families are being left out and left behind with the highest health care costs in country, including crushing prescription drug costs, rising electric rates, and skyrocketing property taxes."

Feltes said most of the political establishment in Concord didn't give his state Senate race in 2014 a chance. In that race, his first, the outgoing state Senator, Sylvia Larsen, had anointed Kass Ardinger, a school board member in Concord, as her predecessor. The battle between Ardinger and Feltes was a bitter primary with arguments about full-day kindergarten, casinos, and nibbling around the edges issues consuming most of the race.

In the end, Feltes shellacked Ardinger, by a more than two-to-one margin, and then he easily beat Republican Lydia Harman in a what was gerrymandered to be one of the safest Senate districts for a Democrat in the state.

In the past two terms, Feltes said he has worked to forward a paid family leave program and helped to put tens of thousands of people on the Medicaid rolls. At the same time, he said, the state's current governor, Chris Sununu, R-NH, does not understand what residents are going through while facing these every day obstacles. Feltes also attacked Sununu's vetoes– the most ever in the modern political history – and his tax policies – including business tax reductions approved two sessions ago.

"That's not fair," Feltes said. "And we're going to change that. My parents taught me to work hard, leave no one behind and get things done. That’s the kind of Governor we need right now."

The 2020 race for governor on the Democrat's side is expected to be a cordial but generational (Baby Boomer vs. Gen-Xer) battle of the progressive Concord attorneys as District 2 Executive Councilor Andru Volinsky has also signaled that he may be running. In July, Volinsky announced an exploratory committee of more than 170 residents to discuss potential issues that will come up during the 2020 election, including the never ending or resolved school expense and funding issue, climate change, health care, and income inequality.

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