Last week some Democrat stooge was on the radio badmouthing Governor Sununu on the economy and workers and families and wages (insert dancing donkey in a top hat), but she did it without actually saying anything. It was all empty rhetoric. Palm card pablum.
Yes, I have plenty of issues with Chris Sununu’s “priorities.” I have problems with State Republican Leadership’s priorities. But for all the goofy things they focused on this past Session they managed to not get in the way of the State’s economy.
An economy that has entered record-setting territory.
The latest data from the State Department of Employment Security pegs Labor Force Participation at 781,031. It has never been that high, ever.
The number of employed persons is 730,630. It has never been that high. Ever.
The incremental reduction in state business taxes, combined with Republican tax reform at the national level continues to bring in surpluses (that the Republican’s spent like drunken sailors, but the Democrats would have spent them before we ever earned them.)
Unemployment, the lowest in New England, hovers at 2.6%.
Average hourly wages, which have always been good in the Granite State, continue to climb without any help from virtue-signaling progressive policy prescriptions.
Compare that to NHDES data from 2014.
Average “Foodservice” wages, the lowest of the lot, rose 14% and given the current labor shortage, that average will have risen close to or beyond the left’s mythical $15.00/hour “living wage” narrative with employers offering higher pay and sign-on bonuses to fill positions.
It’s a great place to be unless you are a Democrats with nothing but negative narratives to ply your trade. But New Hampshire Democrat’s don’t have a lot to run on.
Some say they won’t need it. The Republican’s goofy priorities have pissed off the base so much that turnout for Republican candidates will do the work for Democrats. And that might be true.
What we’re not talking about is why.
The why is party leadership, and more specifically the speaker of the House. Shawn Jasper got the job thanks to Democrats. His Replacement is historically friendly to progressive Republicans. The Speaker’s office was RINO-ready and soft on almost everything. But if you can get a more fiscally conservative speaker, you can take control of economic policy priorities. A more conservative speaker gets you into an entirely different legislature. A Conservative speaker can force a squishy governor to find a spine or keep a left-leaning one from finding success.
Without the NH House, the NH Senate can push all the moderate garbage it typically does to no end.
But you have to win the House with enough (of the right sort of) candidates to get a speaker who will use that power to protect the New Hampshire advantage. Is that going to happen? The activists don’t see it.
But a lot of them didn’t see Trump winning either. And there is still a lot of time left between now and November. The Trump voters might turn out to protect their guy and help State Republicans.
My advice to Democrats? Spend as much time as possible on your inequality and diversity narratives, badmouthing wages, jobs, the state economy, and the universal promise to support more regulations and to harpoon tax reforms.
Those are winning issues. For your opponents.
