Welcome to Blue America, Speaker Norelli and thanks for taking the time. Let me start the ball rolling by asking you how the Stimulus Bill is thought of among your constituents in Portsmouth and among the legislators on both sides of the aisle. Have you had a chance to look at the cuts the Senate is proposing and thought about how that would impact New Hampsshire?

Hey right back to you! I’m very excited to be participating in my first-ever blog.

Welcome, Speaker Norelli! Howie has some really great things to say about you – that means a lot around these parts!

You join a great and long list of progressives from every part of the country who have had their first blog experience here at Firedoglake.

Welcome to Firedoglake! Glad you could join us today.

Welcome to FireDogLake Speaker Norelli!

For most of us living outside of New England, we see New Hampshire as being a purple state, trending blue. Yet from reading and such, it seems that the Republicans see it as fairly easy to turn back red. How do you deal with the idea that the Democrats will overreach (Republican theme of course), and balance Progressive moves against the “Live Free or Die” mentality? (Especially when the state-wide newspaper is reflexively anti-Democratic Party)

Thanks for being here today, Speaker Norelli. Can you tell us what you did to help flip the state from red to blue?

Welcome! I wish Arizona had a Deomcratic legislature. All we have are crazies!

The stimulus package is a nationwide effort to create jobs, jumpstart growth and transform our economy for the 21st century. Across the country this plan will help businesses create jobs and families afford to pay their bills while laying a foundation for future economic growth in key areas like healthcare, clean energy, education and a 21st century infrastructure.

Right now the people of New Hampshire, like everyone else, are waiting to see what the final package will look like. That said, we all agree that something dramatic needs to be done to turn around this economic crisis.

I believe the people of New Hampshire will think that creating over 16,000 new jobs in just over two years and putting more money into our families’ pockets is good public policy. I havent had time to review the Senate version in depth, but there are a few changes that disappoint me, including what appears to be a $40B cut from the “fiscal stabilization fund for state governments.”

In bad economic times states are between a rock and a hard place as revenues decrease while demand for services increase. Like most states, New Hampshire will struggle to balance the budget this year and next, especially because we are constitutionally mandated to do so.

Over the past few years, we have made great strides here in NH under Democratic leadership – be it raising the minimum wage, passing civil unions, expanding access to health care, investing in education or protecting our environment – Democrats have passed landmark legislation that will have a positive and profound impact on our quality of life for years to come. I am very proud of our record and look forward to continuing a progressive agenda – even during these tough economic times.

After the election results of 2006, Republicans said that our sweeping victories were just a fluke, but the people of NH disagreed and sent Democrats back to find real solutions to the serious issues that are facing our state. It is the Republican party that is out of touch with the citizens of the Granite State. Democrats are focused on moving NH forward and not engaging in petty politics.

Speaker Norelli,
With a ratio of roughly one legislator per 3,700 constituents, it seems like you would have to almost know personally all your local constituents. Does that make your job easier or more difficult?

And what is it like trying to shepherd 399 other people to reach a consensus?

Since the late 1990’s NH has been trending blue. As you can imagine it can be a challenge to recruit 400 candidates who are willing to serve on a basically volunteer basis. But in the 2006 election, our goal was not to leave any Republicans uncontested – and we came close! We also put significant effort into raising money to assist in all of these races. With so many candidates for the House, it can be difficult to get attention and to raise campaign funds. We worked hard to do that and to help our candidates with training, campaign strategies and fundraising — and it worked!!

The political climate, coupled with our hard work and superior candidates, served as a perfect storm and allowed us to take the NH House for the first time in 84 years.

We have been discussing the economy a lot around here. The states are a key player. How big is your deficit in New Hampshire? How much money could you spend on infrastructure, Medicaid, and other programs over and above that deficit?

Keep the faith. It wasn’t so long ago that I was running for minority leader, and not speaker of the house.

Welcome Madame Speaker! Thanks for joining us today to chat.

What’s your reaction to the deal your Senator, Judd Gregg, made with Governor Lynch not to accept President Obama’s appointment as Commerce Secretary unless he’s replaced by another GOP? What do your fellow New Hampshire Democrats think?

Speaker Norelli, a great honor to have you here.

DIGG is open, here. (it’s Howie’s blog’s digg but can you please DIGG it?) Thanks

While each legislator represents, on average, 3700 people, not all districts are the same size. My district is a 7-seat district, that is it has seven state reps and so have seven times the number of constituents. That said, small districts are wonderful. I don’t think we could have a volunteer legislature with the large districts of many other states.

As far as having 400 members, that IS a challenge, AND a benefit. As a volunteer legislature, we have an extremely varied membership. Our reps have a wide array of professional, life and personal life experiences that they bring to the table — from teachers, lawyers, nurses, and realtors to small business owners, stay-at-home parents, college students and retirees, we have it all! This makes for a very rich interaction. Of course, with 400 members, it’s not an easy task to reach consensus — in fact, its not always so easy even to get them all in their seats!! Having been a former high school teacher helps.

NH is not only the largest legislature – Pennsylvania is the second largest with ONLY 203 members. When I meet speakers from other states and they first hear the size of our legislature, their first question is also “how do you manage them all?”

Thanks! Hope is all we have right now.

The Republicans here just took $1.6 billion out of the budget in a mid-year recission. They are talking about $3 billion next year. $600 million out of education, $140 out of the three state universities, the rest out of K-12.

The impending resignation of Judd Gregg from the US Senate is good news for NH Democrats. The Democratic bench is wide and deep, and we look forward to a healthy competition for an OPEN Senate seat in 2010. Party registration in NH has changed significantly in recent years to favor Democrats (we are actually now the majority party, barely, for the first time ever) and we are confident in our ability to elect a strong Democratic candidate.

Speaker Norelli,

Just wanted to point out that your legislature makes less than the members of Universities Student Council ;-)
That said, how does this impact the electoral politics in your State at the higher level. In other States the argument has always been that salaries assist those without adequate wealth to serve, yet at the same time most of those that do serve end up being independently wealthy or Upper Middle Class with strong corporate or union financial support. When it comes to legislators running for higher office (either State, Congress, or the Senate) in New Hampshire do you think that there is a greater levelling than other other States?

Speaker Norelli, it appears that nationally the Republicans have gotten crazier and more extreme in the last decade or so. New Hampshire is well-known as a place where even many Republicans have supported women’s choice and other sane policy. But over the last 10 years or so have you noticed that there are fewer and fewer mainstream Republicans and more and more extremist loons? It appears that this new senator Lynch appointed, Bonnie Newman, is an old fashioned kind of mainstream Republican rather than an extremist. Do you have to cope with many extremists in the House?

In such touch economic times, it is unfortunate that your Republicans have decided to cut education aid so dramatically. An educated workforce is key to our long term economic viability at both the state and national level. These are the types of issues that highlight the differences between Democrats an Republicans, and hopefully the voters will recognize this.

Because of the small state rep districts here in NH, it allows anyone who is willing to run. It doesn’t take exceptional resources to win a state legislative race. While it is challenging to draw attention to our campaigns, given the large number of races, it also doesn’t take a lot of money to run a quality campaign. NH is the home of retail politics at its best – the most important thing for us to do is to knock on every door.

This is true even at the statewide level. A great example is the election of my congresswoman, Carol Shea Porter. As many of you know, she was a relatively unknown activist who ran for Congress and won against great odds and without a lot of resources.

Speaker Norelli,
I believe the President of the NH State Senate is also a woman. How do the two of you get along with Governor Lynch and with the Congressional and Senate delegations in Washington?

Is there something about NH that allows for the Senate President, the Speaker of the House, the two US Senators and one of two Representatives to be female? Or is it just luck and hard work?

I imagine your state revenues are down like most other states. How are you balancing your budget? Cuts, new taxes?

Over the past several years, New Hampshire’s demographics have changed significantly. Democrats’ values are more in line with the people of our state, which is evidenced by the election results of the past two cycles.

Speaker Norelli, if any of this is helpful, great, if not sorry for wasting your time.

A lot of us here are committed Democrats who believe “too big to fail is to big.” We also believe that applies to decentralizing the food supply. In the unlikely event that you are not aware of Vertical Farming aka indoor farming. From the link.

Year-round crop production; 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor acres or more, depending upon the crop (e.g., strawberries: 1 indoor acre = 30 outdoor acres)
No weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods, pests
All VF food is grown organically: no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers
VF virtually eliminates agricultural runoff by recycling black water
VF returns farmland to nature, restoring ecosystem functions and services
VF greatly reduces the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface
VF converts black and gray water into potable water by collecting the water of
evapotranspiration
VF adds energy back to the grid via methane generation from composting non-edible
parts of plants and animals
VF dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping.)
VF converts abandoned urban properties into food production centers
VF creates sustainable environments for urban centers
VF creates new employment opportunities
We cannot go to the moon, Mars, or beyond without first learning to farm indoors on
earth
VF may prove to be useful for integrating into refugee camps
VF offers the promise of measurable economic improvement for tropical and subtropical
LDCs. If this should prove to be the case, then VF may be a catalyst in helping to reduce or even reverse the population growth of LDCs as they adopt urban agriculture as a strategy for sustainable food production.
VF could reduce the incidence of armed conflict over natural resources, such as water
and land for agriculture

The father of Vertical Farming is a Columbia microbiology professor, Dickson Despommier. Here’s a link to his appearance on the Colbert Report

In the near term I think Dr. Despommier and others understand we have to start small and then move onto farming in sky scrapers. Here’s an example of a very low tech approach in Wisconsin.

“Perched on the edge of a comeback
Project aims to establish indoor habitat for tasty fish” With Perch selling for around $13/pound, this approach has some traction.

Only if you care to respond, I am interested if New Hampshire has any plan to harvest energy from the wind or tidal energy along your Atlantic coast?

Thanks again for being here.

As a New Hampshire resident, I would like to say how wonderful it is to be reading Speaker Norelli’s first blog, and just how proud we are of her. She IS indeed a breath of fresh air, and so many good pieces of legislation have passed here under her leadership. Go Terie!

In NH we have really talented women who run for office, and the voters have placed their trust in us. In fact, 62% of the Democratic women who ran for the state legislature won. As a matter of fact, the NH Senate is the first legislative body in American history to have a majority female membership!! The message is that women need to run – at every level in every state. If women don’t run, women can’t win.

We are committed to passing a responsible and balanced budget that meets the needs of the people of NH. We understand that we are going to have to make some tough decisions, but we are committed to being compassionate throughout the budget process. We are going to have to be creative in our approach, which means we will have to look at places to make strategic cuts without sacrificing services. We will also have to look for ways to increase our revenues. Like most states, we will also be counting on federal assistance with Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment insurance to provide a safety net for our most vulnerable citizens. In addition, we hope to receive federal funds that will allow us to stimulate economic growth in both the short term, by creating jobs, and the long term, through building infrastructure.

So glad New Hampshire’s online with me!!! Thanks so much for your continued support. We still have a lot of work to do.

politicalspeak

all sounds the same these days

My wife is from NH, wayyyy up in northern Coos County. She swears her area would be the last part of NH to trend blue. How does the state breakdown regionally by party?

Beautifully stated, thanks.

I am interested if New Hampshire has a state version of the Federal False Claims Act.

When budgets are slashed, one of the first things to go is quality control and fraud prevention. I could easily be wrong, but I think a state version of the Federal False Claims Act is a relatively low cost way to fight fraud and abuse.

Glad to hear you will be contributing to liberal progressive candidates.

NH has been trending blue, but it is still a very independent state. In fact, unaffiliated voters still represent the largest constituency in our state. That said, the last GOP stronghold in NH is what we like to call the triangle in the southern tier. This includes towns such as Bedford, Derry and Merrimack in Hillsborough and Rockingham Counties. Even so, we have made significant progress over the last few cycles, and will continue to mount serious campaigns with quality candidates in the future.

Interesting. Wouldn’t those towns have a heavy influx of folks from MA and the Hi-tech corridor along 128 who moved to NH to “escape MA taxes” (while still demanding MA level of services?)

It is refreshing to know that your state values your people. There used to be more moderate Republicans in Arizona however them seem to have been pushed out by the more doctrinnaire Republicans. You hear the same old tired talking points about cutting taxes and putting more money in the taxpayers’ pockets. Now what you have are major state layoffs, or work furloughs, that are taking money out of peoples’ pockets so the legislature can say they don’t raise taxes. The clowns just use the old feeding at the public trough routine as a way of justifying this. IF aren’t below Mississippi in education funding after this then we are just barely above them.

It is truly amazing that New Hampshire has so many women as elected officials. They are very lucky to have leadership like yours, Speaker Norelli.
How can all of us from everywhere else help to put that final nail in the Republican coffin up there? I imagine that having to find and fund 400 candidates can become expensive, not to mention that there are always competitive congressional and senatorial races to worry about. How can we make a difference?

As I mentioned, it is difficult for individual House candidates to get attention and raise funds because there are so many of us. At the same time, a little money goes a long way. That’s why we have the Committee to Elect House Democrats which not only trains our candidates and provides other services, but also raises the resources necessary to get out our message and contribute to individual campaigns.

While we are in tough economic times, we still need to do everything we can to raise the money we need to win in 2010. It is especially important now because the House and Senate will take up redistricting after the next election. For so many years, the Republicans have had control over this process. If we can hold on to our majority, I believe we will be able to devise a fair redistricting plan for the next biennium.

We can’t do this without financial support. If you really want to help “put the nail in the coffin” you can make a contribution to the Committee to Elect House Democrats (CEHD) by going to

actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/19471

Thanks for your willingness to help NH stay blue !!!!!

that’s

http://www.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/19471

I can bet you are watching the Senate debates on the Stimulus. Any thoughts as to whether the Democrats are playing this right or should they be far more aggressive?

Democrats are working hard to find a solution to the current economic crisis. Unfortunately, Washington Republicans continue to play politics. The Bush Administration and Republican leadership in Washington proved that massive tax cuts for the wealthy do not stimulate the economy. As a matter of fact, they’re one of the biggest reasons for the crisis we are currently facing.

In order to get the economy going again, we need to support President Obama’s stimulus package as it is the best way to invest in our infrastructure, create new jobs, and get us out of this financial mess. I am confident that, under Democratic leadership, we will be able to get this done.

Okay but would you cut the Republicans off at the knees if you were in Pelosi’s or Reid’s shoes? There really doesn’t seem to much bipartisanship going on from the Republican side.

I think the Democratic leadership is approaching this correctly. They are doing what the American people want them to do — work in a bipartisan manner to solve the problems we are facing. If Republicans want to continue to play partisan politics, that is their decision, but the American people will see through this and have the final say in 2010.

I hope you’re right about the American people seeing through this and figuring out who their enemies are. I’m afraid many of the really extreme Republicans– the DeMints and Vitters and Coburns– really do represent what their brainwashed constituents actually want!

You are very polite in your reply, can’t blame you however. This is what the compromise might cost in terms of jobs. This is from the next FDL post:

The bottom line on the changes demanded by “centrist” gang of four Senators Collins, Specter, Lieberman and Nelson is that the compromise Senate bill will create about 728,143 fewer jobs less than the House bill. This is a back on the envelope figure and very rough, but if anything it should be a slight underestimate. If you compare the compromised Senate Bill to the pre-gang Senate bill, it comes out to 1,271,000 fewer jobs.

I hope we survive this bipartisanship.

I would agree with that.

Let’s remember that there is still a conference committee since the House and Senate versions differ. The final legislation is still to be determined.

That is true. I am crossing my fingers that it goes well.

Yes, another Madame Speaker may yet save us from a Depression!

There’s one thing I can say for sure about serving as Speaker of the NH House — every day brings a new experience. Thanks everyone for taking the time to share your views and learn more about politics state-size. I’ve enjoyed my first online blogging experience.

The ball seems to be heading back to Pelosi’s court. I hope she is pissed enough at Rahm to kick some butt.

Thank you for joining us this afternoon Speaker Norelli.

And please feel free to stop in again and join the conversation. It stays interesting around the Lake most every day.

I have enjoyed this opportunity too. I hope someday you run for congress as we need more common sense there.

Thanks again for spending the afternoon with us, Speaker Norelli. I hope you’ll come back whenever you wnat to. And we’ll get in touch with Cissy in your office about coming by when we endorse the next U.S. Senator from New Hampshire.

As mentioned by someone upthread, Ian upstairs on the so-called moderates slicing jobs from the Stimulus bill.

Thank you Terie – really appreciate your joining us today.

A bit late to the party – but how can a working person run for the “House of Reps”?

$100 a year….

Hope NH is not embroiled in MA like theft. No dispersions against anyone, I just pray its not influence peddling and fraud. I live in NH and work in MA, every day in MA its a new pol getting busted by the FBI or resigning.

Thank you for apparently serving our interests for such a low wage.

Wish I were hear earlier I would have asked:
Please take a look at how NH residents are paying an extra 1k or 2k or 4k (20 to 50+%) in property taxes in a 8 year period but getting the same or less services.

Roads don’t even get plowed and the school system is being degraded.