He’s done it again. For the second time in a row, Frank Guinta –that would be Republican Frank Guinta—has been elected Manchester’s mayor. And, once again, he defeated a well-financed, articulate Democrat who was backed by the fearsome John Lynch.
But wait. How can this have happened when just one year ago Republicans in New Hampshire got their butts kicked worse than the Colorado Rockies? Everyone knows that New Hampshire has been turned into Blue Hampshire by immigrating hordes of quiche-slurping, latte-chugging, hybrid-driving, tree-hugging, all-we-are-saying-is-give-peace-a-chance liberals. And it is also common knowledge that the Lynch political machine doesn’t lose.
Undeniably, there are some significant differences between the 2007 and 2006 elections. Issues that drove voters to punish Republicans in 2006 no longer resonate as strongly. The surge has produced some positive results, while the Democrat Congress has been a grave disappointment. Also, there was no John Lynch at the top of the ticket.
But if the 2006 state elections were only about Iraq, the Republican Congress and Lynch’s coattails, that’s because Republicans running for state offices didn’t give the voters anything else to think about. And that is why they were big losers. Guinta, on the other hand, has seized an issue that resonates with the voters, which is why he is a winner.
The centerpiece of both of Guinta’s mayoral campaigns has been cutting taxes. He is a two-time winner because the voters want tax relief and he has provided it. But hey don’t just take my word for it, take the words of the Manchester Democrats. The same Democrat aldermen who opposed Guinta’s tax cut were taking credit for it at election time. And while former Mayor Baines liked to crow that the voters wanted higher taxes because they recognized that he could spend their money more wisely than they could, the city Democrats were singing a completely different tune this election.
When, on the other hand, was the last time that you heard Republicans even talk about cutting state taxes? Guinta is a winner because he gave the voters a reason to vote for the Republican. Republican state office-seekers in 2006 were big losers because they didn’t.
The sad truth of the matter is that Republican legislators have their fingerprints all over the incredible tax-and-spend spree we have been on since the state supreme court gave the Legislature the political cover to raise taxes with its Claremont II education funding decision in 1997. In 1999, the Legislature increased spending on public education by around $800 million dollars, instituted a state property tax and increased other taxes. Average per pupil spending grew from $5,781.00 in 1998 to $9,710.00 in 2006, an average annual increase of 8.5 percent per year at a time that inflation was increasing at only 2.5 percent. And now the Legislature is talking about increasing state education spending by another $500 million dollars in response to the court’s latest decision.
Not all Republicans have been complicit in this fiscal irresponsibility, but in the eyes of the voters there has been nothing to differentiate the parties on state fiscal matters since the Democrats swore off an income tax after the Fernald fiasco in 2002. Indeed, in the last two gubernatorial elections Lynch actually ran to the right of the Republican on taxes. In 2004, he proposed repealing the state property tax. While in 2006 he disingenuously suggested that the Republican candidate wanted to raise gasoline taxes.
Republicans in the state legislature have spent the last decade talking, not about cutting taxes, but about passing a constitutional amendment in response to the state supreme court’s education funding decisions. Indeed, they are so over-the-top about passing an amendment that, if Republican legislative leader Mike Whalley is correct, 90 percent of Republican state representatives would vote for an amendment that actually writes much of what is wrongheaded about these decisions into the state constitution.
What these Republicans don’t get is that the voters don’t care all that much about constitutional amendments. If they did, they wouldn’t have kept reelecting Democrats who reflexively opposed constitutional amendments proposed by Republicans.
What Guinta’s success shows is that what matters most to the voters is lower taxes. Unless Republicans want New Hampshire to remain Blue Hampshire, they would be well advised to borrow Guinta’s playbook for 2008. Stop droning on about constitutional amendments and make cutting taxes the focus of the 2008 state elections.
