Maggie Hassan For Governor

   Maggie Hassan, Democrat candidate for New Hampshire governor after running a strong primary against Jackie Cilley, emerged after Thursday’s debate at Rivier University with GOP challenger Ovide Lamontagne as the definite panacea to the far-right ideology espoused by the current state Republican Party. The energetic and overall courteous exchange once again delineated the stark differences between the two hopefuls.

   On the one hand Hassan stands for the Democratic principles that along with the leadership of Gov. John Lynch served to push the Granite State to the top of the nation’s fifty states in most measurable citizen-friendly categories until the Bill O’Brien-led takeover of the House in January 2011. And on the other hand we have Lamontagne who champions all of the Tea Party-favored changes/proposals since then, from education and hospital spending cuts and Scott Walker-ish anti union legislation to the dismantling of Medicare, dropping our state precipitously in those rankings.

   Here are a few position points both from the Sept. 27 debate as well as the respective platforms of the two candidates. Google them and weigh their respective merits, while keeping in mind that the Hassan manner of governance would restore most of the House-cut education spending to our colleges and kindergartens with NO INCOME TAX HIKES (both aspirants have taken the Tax Pledge), as well as prevent the already-introduced anti-worker unions/women/gay/seniors Tea Party agenda that a Lamontagne/O’Brien collaboration would strengthen.

  And seniors especially should  take a hard look at the two candidates’ differences on Medicare, as every non-partisan think tank that has studied the proposed Republican voucher system change agree that it would add hundreds or thousands of dollars onto the recipient's annual bill.

  Regarding state education spending, Lamontagne approves of the millions of dollars in financial cuts implemented by O’Brien to the University of New Hampshire among other colleges, and opposes the state mandate for kindergarten. He also will turn down all federal financial education assistance, which is right in keeping with the state GOP platform of spending less and less on this important initiative which both tangibly affects job growth in New Hampshire as well as attracts outside businesses to open their doors here.

  Re: the $200 million in Medicaid reimbursements that was cut recently from our state hospitals by O’Brien, Lamontagne said that he would restore some of the funding, prompting Hassan to ask him how his administration could possibly do so without raising taxes. This once again demonstrates the peril to Republicans who follow the Grover Norquist brand of no-new-taxes-under-any-circumstances, vis-à vis proposing ANYTHING that would be a boon to the citizens they’re trying to convince. Lamontagne never answered the question, following the well-worn Mitt Romney lead of giving no specifics when confronted with a query about his own fuzzy math.

  One of Hassan’s initiatives that the NH Senate ultimately approved unanimously in 2010 was her proposal to form a state cost review commission  that would regulate and make more transparent hospital and sick care charges. This was attacked by Lamontagne (“Maggie sponsored legislation, government run health care. She believes we should have government setting prices in New Hampshire. That is not the way it should be”), despite the bipartisan passing of the bill and its obvious boon to our state’s citizens.

  But the most important healthcare gulf between the two candidates as well as their parties is Lamontagne’s proposal for the state takeover of Medicare, which would not only force the elderly to shop around for the lowest healthcare providers they could find, but would increase their annual bills due to both the yearly lowering of the state contribution and the fact that healthcare costs annually rise faster than inflation. This is an initiative that has been misrepresented by Republicans both at the state and national (by Paul Ryan) levels as somehow being a boon to Medicare users, when in reality if implemented would cost Americans 65 or older in 2021 far more annually.

   Finally, probably the most basic difference between not just Hassan and Lamontagne but the Granite State’s two major political parties themselves is the Republicans’  oft-stated charges that the Democrat Party here led by governor Lynch is somehow a bunch of oblivious tax-and-spenders, when in reality our state tax bite taken in toto is the LOWEST OF ALL 50 STATES. Lamontagne and the GOP favor a cut-cut-cut mentality that has only served over the past two years to devastate our formerly nationally-admired state on many levels, while simultaneously denigrating the other side’s desire to further and broaden New Hampshire’s  mandates including healthcare, education, and equal rights for all citizens. This is the essential question voters must decide on November 6 : how much New Hampshire funding to our hospitals, colleges, children and the elderly can we afford to have the Lamontagne/O’Brien team cut and still remain solvent