Will 2020 Dem Governor Primary Be Battle Of The Concord Lawyers?

CONCORD, NH — One of the worst-kept secrets of the politerati in New Hampshire is that two candidates with a lot of similarities have been chomping at the bit to run for the corner office – and appear to be making their moves. State Sen. Dan Feltes and District 2 Executive Councilor Andru Volinsky both appear to be close to announcing gubernatorial runs for the 2020 cycle. Feltes sent an email to supporters Thursday saying that he and his wife, Erin, were excited to announce that they are "strongly considering" a run for governor.

In a fundraising pitch, he stated, "Working together, we’ve gotten a lot done. That work has been based on that fundamental belief that in order to move New Hampshire forward, we cannot afford to leave anyone behind."

[ANALYSIS]

Last week, Volinsky – who has been holding presentations around the state for months about school funding, which he says is inequitable and unfair – made a similar pitch to supporters, announcing an exploratory committee of more than 170 Granite Staters, who will hold "conversations to gauge grassroots enthusiasm" around his positions on school funding, climate change, health care and economic inequality. Volinsky has been hinting at a corner office run for many months.

"The challenges facing New Hampshire are immense, whether it’s our school funding crisis or the growing gap between rich and poor, or the existential threat of climate change," he noted. "I appreciate the broad range of support from the members of the exploratory committee."

Both candidates have a lot more in common than they do differences. They are both members of the progressive/Democratic socialist wing of the party; they both considered running for governor two years ago but sat it out instead; they are both white; they are both men; they are both fathers; they are attorneys who have either sued government entities or represented people in need against powerful state interests; they both live in Concord and represent the city's citizens; and they both can't seem to wait to take on one of the most popular governors in the nation, Chris Sununu, a Republican.

Challenging A Popular Governor

Part of any political campaign – whether it is a city council race or presidential one – is to be critical of the incumbent, even if that person is a popular elected official or community leader, or to find an issue to galvanize others around. It is irrelevant which political party the candidate belongs to; it's a given of modern campaigning. For both Feltes and Volinsky, that means coming out swinging with a bold agenda while targeting Sununu with what they believe are his inefficiencies.

The early numbers appear to give the impression that it is will be a difficult campaign. In the most recent Morning Consult poll on governors around the country, released in late April, Sununu was listed as the third most popular governor in the nation – up from fourth in previous polls, where he had been hovering for more than a year. With approval numbers as high as a 64 percent – in other words, close to Gov. John Lynch's approval territory – while offering approachable likability (let's be honest: on Twitter, he's like Gov. Kardashian in the selfies department) – one might question the validity of a winnable challenge.

Sununu announced two weeks after the poll, and a few hours after the release of a "best states" study, that he would run for re-election in 2020.

But both Volinsky and Feltes believe they have openings – via the governor's most recent veto of a conference of committee budget, which included retroactively increasing business taxes along with many popular spending increases, and the rejection of Sununu's nominee of the state's attorney general for chief justice of the state Supreme Court.

In a Concord Monitor column Thursday morning, Volinsky called Gordon MacDonald a "smart lawyer" who had worked with the New Hampshire Legal Assistance (not unlike Feltes) on behalf of domestic violence victims. But he said MacDonald's "aggressively partisan views" on issues like abortion and voting rights while working for "shockingly extreme" politicians were a non-starter. Volinsky criticized Sununu's Judicial Selection Commission for recommending MacDonald – a third partisan with no prior judicial experience, to the state's highest court.

Feltes said Sununu's partisanship and refusal to compromise for "broader positive change" are holding the state back, especially on issues such as property tax relief, affordable housing, climate change and clean energy jobs.

"This legislative session, we tried to address many of these concerns, but Governor Sununu has repeatedly vetoed critical pieces of legislation, joyfully claiming that he’s going veto everything we send to him," he said. "Governor Sununu’s record number of vetoes are holding New Hampshire back from making progress on issues critical to our families, our communities, and our economy. From vetoing bipartisan legislation on paid family leave, to clean energy, to campaign finance reform, to emergency support for our opioid and mental health treatment providers, to recently vetoing an entire state budget with over $200 million in property tax relief, simply because he didn’t get even more tax breaks for out-of-state corporations."

Volinsky offered similar sentiments to supporters earlier this month.

"Chris Sununu has shown he is not the right person to guide our state through these challenges," he said.

Both potential candidates have been through hard fights.

A legal aid lawyer for more than a decade at NHLA, Feltes was elected to the state Senate easily in 2014 after a nasty primary fight. Concord's state Senate seat – which it shares with Henniker, Hopkinton, and Warner – was gerrymandered to be a "safe" Democrat district (meaning the race ends after the primary).

At the time, outgoing state Sen. Sylvia Larsen had a handpicked successor – Concord Board of Education member Kass Ardinger. Many of the politically connected class of Concord were not keen on Kass after she promoted the demolition of perfectly sound historic school buildings during the city's elementary school consolidation project, which eventually cost $90.8 million. Her husband was also a prominent Republican attorney at Rath, Young, and Pignatelli, which five years ago raised questions about where her loyalties lie.

Feltes's jumping into the race overturned the applecart. While both candidates had their progressive and liberal credentials – 100 percent ratings from NARAL-NH, as an example – Ardinger became flustered by his accurate account of her support for building new schools that were obsolete the day they opened and not properly structured for full-day kindergarten classrooms. (The school district is now considering spending $60 million to $80 million more to build a new middle school and shift fifth-graders from the elementary schools to the new middle-school, to free classroom space in the new elementary schools.) Charges and counter-charges flew back and forth via expensive glossy mailers.

Feltes also put together a long list of supporters among community leaders, and in the shellacked Ardinger by a more than 2-1 margin in the primary. He easily bested Lydia Dube Harman, a Republican from Warner, by a similar margin in the general election. In 2018, he beat Republican Jeffrey Newman by 6,800 votes.

Volinsky cut his teeth as a public defender in the 1980s and later joined the prestigious Bernstein Shur law firm.

When he first decided to run for the District 2 Executive Council seat in 2015, Volinsky was brash and honest.

"I am a bit of an unusual candidate," he wrote online. "I have never held public office and much of what I know about state government I learned by suing it."

One of those cases was the landmark 1990s Claremont decision school funding lawsuit – a case that reverberates to this day. Volinsky represented the city's school district in successfully suing the state because it was unable to fund – or guarantee – a student's access to an adequate public education, a fundamental right under the state constitution. Since that time, there have been many skirmishes among local communities, the Legislature and executive branch on how to properly fund education, because the state does not have an income tax and has limited sales taxes to rooms and meals, gasoline, liquor and cigarettes.

The District 2 Executive Council seat – nicknamed the "upside crescent moon seat" because it runs from one side of the state to the other, from Keene to Dover – is also a gerrymandered "safe" Democrat district. When Volinsky announced his run – not unlike Feltes in 2014 – he received the endorsement of the state's largest firefighter union as well as those of a myriad of political activists and politicians. In 2016, Volinksy beat John Shea, who held the seat between 2006 and 2010, in the Democrat's primary by a nearly 2-1 margin and went on to win the general election against Sam Cataldo by around 7,500 votes. In the 2018 general election, Volinsky bested Republican James Beard by more than 17,000 votes.

While he hasn't made a decision, Feltes said he and his wife will make one by the end of the summer, after speaking with voters around the state. Volinsky will make a final announcement after examining the outcome of his exploratory committee's findings.

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