Today is Primary Election Day.....the day when political parties pick who's going to be their candidates in November.
By most accounts, this has been a quiet season.....especially for Democratic candidates who on the whole face very few primary races.
As a result The Secretary of State is predicting some of the lowest voter turnout in recent history.
And the Chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, Kathy Sullivan, tells NHPR's Mark Bevis, she fears the Secretary of State will be right.
"I hope that we are all proven wrong, and that a lot of people get out to vote, especially it being September 12th, five years after the tragic events of September 11th, I think it really would speak volumes about our support for our democracy if a lot of people got out and voted."
Bevis: "Is there any area that you think will be particularly high turnout?"
Sullivan: "I think there are going to be some pockets of higher turnout in the first congressional district, because the Democrats are having a primary for that nomination for the first district. I anticipate we'll see a pretty higher than average turnout compared to the rest of the district in Manchester. I think we'll probably see a higher turnout in Portsmouth, probably Dover and Durham, and I think because of that contested primary that we will see more people getting out in those areas."
Bevis: "Why do you think there's going to be such a low turnout?"
Sullivan: "I think because in half the state there is no Democratic primary for Congress, in the second district, so you're not going to see a lot of Democrats going out to vote for that reason in the second district. Governor Lynch is unopposed, so you won't see people coming out who are primarily interested in the gubernatorial race. We really just don't have a lot of Democratic primaries, other than in the first congressional district. So I expect we'll see more people voting in the first district, and within the first district I think you'll see some pockets that have a bigger turnout than the rest of the district, because the candidates may be from those areas."
Bevis: "Was that the strategy within the party, not to have a primary coming up this year?"
Sullivan: "No, you know, people overemphasize the roles of the party in encouraging or discouraging primaries. I didn't talk to anybody this year about whether they should run or not run. Frankly, if I did that, they probably wouldn't listen to me anyway. We certainly encouraged people to get out and run, and we made a big effort to go out and try to find people to fill our ballot all over the state. And if that resulted in primaries, that was ok with us, because I think it's a healthy sign for a party when you have a lot of people who want to get out there and run. It's hard to find 400 people to run for the state legislature. It's almost a full time job, on a one hundred dollar a year salary, so that's always difficult to do, but we came pretty close. But because of that, it's difficult to find a lot of people to run, and so primaries for the House are very rare, because it is a full time job on a hundred dollar a year salary.
"In the State Senate races, it's difficult to find people because - you know, the cost of a Senate election has now started to exceed a hundred thousand, and in some cases, getting close to two hundred thousand dollars, again, for a job that pays a hundred dollars a year. So it's no wonder we don't have a lot of primaries. And so when you don't have a lot of primary action taking place, the press doesn't cover the primary, and because people aren't reading about it in the newspaper, then they forget there's an election, and they don't go out and vote."
Kathy Sullivan is the Chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic Pary.
She was speaking with NHPR's Mark Bevis.
