Granite Staters will elect a new governor this year, and NHPR is speaking with the top candidates ahead of Election Day on Nov. 5.
Democrat Joyce Craig, the former mayor of Manchester, is running against Republican Kelly Ayotte in the governor’s race. Read on for NHPR Morning Edition host Rick Ganley’s interview with Craig.
What questions do you have for the candidates running for Congress and governor in the 2024 election? What issues do you want them to address while seeking your vote? Share your thoughts here.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Transcript
New Hampshire schools spend roughly $20,000 per student per year. The state contributes nearly a quarter of that, but a Superior Court judge has ruled that the state should be paying far more. You said you support increasing the state's funding as well. How much do you think the state should be paying and how do you go about funding it?
So it's a really good question. As mayor, I signed on to the ConVal lawsuit because I do believe that children, no matter where they live in our state, should have access to quality public education and the state is not adequately funding public education. And those costs then are being put down into the local communities and affecting our local property taxes. And I feel strongly that the state does need to pick up and pay for public schools.
I am adamantly opposed to this voucher scheme that exists in New Hampshire right now, taking millions of dollars away from our public schools and putting it toward private and religious schools. And I would work to make sure that we are putting our public tax dollars toward our public schools and doing everything we can to fund those.
(Editor’s note: The EFA program allows eligible families to pay for non-public education with a portion of the state education money. During the 2023 - 2024 school year 4,500 students participated, costing nearly $24 million. Read more here and here.)
You want to do away with that program?
I do.
You've said you'd like to keep the state's Interest and Dividends Tax, which is currently slated to be phased out, but that you would veto a broad-based sales or income tax. Are there other changes to state revenues that you're open to?
So I think it's important to talk about this [what] you just talked about. Kelly Ayotte wants to give tax breaks to millionaires like herself in the state of New Hampshire. I am focused on making sure we are cutting costs for hardworking families in our state. I will veto a sales or income tax if it were to come across my desk. I am looking at legalization of cannabis that would bring additional revenues into our state. It's something that residents across our state want to see happen, and I'll work with the legislation to make that happen.
(Editor’s note: Craig is referring to Ayotte's support of the Interest and Dividends Tax being phased out. Ayotte supports the end of the I&D Tax, saying it impacts retired seniors who rely on investment income. Read more here.)
And you want to use those revenues, supposedly for [what]?
Affordable housing and public education.
Now the state is in the process of paying out settlements to hundreds of alleged victims of abuse at the state's youth detention center, and the state is facing legal action over other alleged failures in child protection services. I want to ask you, how would you address those issues as governor?
Listen, we need to take a proactive approach to this and make sure that we are doing everything we can to protect young people in our state. I think we should be taking child services out of DHHS [Department of Health and Human Services] and making it its own entity, reporting directly to the governor and making sure that they have the resources they need, the training they need, make sure we're hiring the professionals that we need to support our young children in our state. That is not happening right now. And what we're seeing play out is just terrible. We have to do everything we can to prevent that from happening in the future.
Overdose deaths [are] always a big concern here in New Hampshire. Hundreds of people in the state are still losing their lives to drugs each year. I want to know, as governor, what new ideas would you bring to address the effects of substance use?
So as Mayor of Manchester, this is something that I worked on, and we made progress. We saw a 20% decrease in opioid overdoses in the city of Manchester. And being on the front lines of this, I understand what's working and what's not.
One of the first things that I would do is address the state's Doorway program and ensure that that is working effectively to meet the most vulnerable in our state. I can tell you in Manchester it is not. It's located next door to Probation and Parole and people refuse to go. We have been telling the state this for years, but they continue to just sign the same contract. That's wrong.
The other component of that is that [it] only pays for one month in a sober home. Evidence shows that's not enough. It needs to be four to five months. And so we need to address that, because what we're seeing right now is someone going into a sober home doing well, not being able to afford it, going back on the street, using again, it's just this revolving door. And I'm pretty confident that we could utilize the same funds going toward this, but help people get better.
(Editor’s note: Opioid overdoses are on the decline in Manchester from 2023 to 2024. However the data is incomplete until the 2024 year is over. See data on opioid overdoses in Manchester here.
The Department of Health and Human Services told NHPR that Doorway does fund temporary recovery housing for more than four weeks if the care team and client decides a longer stay is needed.)
I want to talk about that model in other parts of the state outside of more urban areas like Manchester. More rural parts of the state and the North Country often lack the services available in places like Manchester or Nashua. How would you, as governor, make sure that those rural residents can access treatment and recovery?
You are so right. As I travel to the North Country many times, I hear residents and businesses say, 'We feel like we have been left behind,' and that's unacceptable. We need to address the needs of people all across our state.
How do you do that?
Well, we need to make sure that they have the services that are available to them, make sure that they have services available to them to meet their needs. That is not happening right now, whether it's telehealth or whether it's individuals that are going to their home and helping them. From a medical perspective, we need to look at all of the different ways to meet the needs of people in our state.
How do you bring people together to do that?
It's again working across the aisle. We're running for office to help lift people up in our state, and I would hope that anyone who's running for public office in New Hampshire has the same goal in mind, making sure that we are meeting the needs of residents in our state and creating opportunities for them to succeed.
Now we hear a lot about the need for prevention. How specifically would you work to prevent youth from turning to substance misuse?
It's critically important. There are programs, evidence based programs that we could be implementing to prevent youth from using substances. Makin' It Happen is a great example that empowers youth to work with other youth. So it's an educational process. Their peers are working with them. That is really working well.
And there are other programs as well, but this is critical. We need to make sure that youth are not stepping into this. One of the programs that we put in place in Manchester was when a woman has a baby, she gets a visit from a nurse in the hospital on day one, and then can have a visit from a nurse when she's at home. So it's connecting the parents to services that are available in our state starting from day one to make sure that we are raising healthy children in New Hampshire.
Of course, this is all contingent on getting the staffing for it and the budget for it.
Absolutely, and those are things that we are encountering in New Hampshire, and we need to make sure we have a governor who understands these challenges and has a track record of getting these things done.
I'm the only candidate who has actually put forward a budget and understands the difficulty in doing that. I've gone after hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds for the city of Manchester and intend to do that again for our entire state.
We have worked with hospitals in the city of Manchester and have feeder programs in our high schools so that students are provided with internships and know the opportunities in our communities. And the biomanufacturing industry is another example where we got a $44 million very competitive federal grant into the city of Manchester. It's providing access to quality child care, it's providing workforce development, and it's creating 7,000 new family-sustaining jobs. I know how to get this done, and we need to be doing it in every corner of the state.
(Editor’s note: Kelly Ayotte said in a recent debate held by the Mount Washington Valley Economic Council that she crafted budgets as New Hampshire’s Attorney General.)
