New hampshire democrats, please welcome to the stage chairman ray fosly. We have a message for christopher sununu. 2018 is coming. Yesterday, we launched a project to keep sununu accountable for his out of touch policies that are favoring his family, his friends, and corporate special interests. Instead of average staters. Were tired of his phony double speak and his aw schucks act, so were calling him out. Our focus is five key issues. Where his policies are hurting New Hampshire. Education, the economy, health care, the environment, and ethics. And we cant hold him accountable alone. We need your help. So follow sununureality, on twitter. Like sununu reality check on facebook. Go to our website, www. Sununurealitycheck. Com to learn more about sununus record and share it to hold him accountable. Folks, chris sununu won by 2 in 2016. So lets get to work and make sure he loses by far more than 2 in 2018. So is everyone clear . Everyone clear what our focus is . For the next 11 months. All right then. So good evening, democrats. Im pleased that we are joined by congressman and president ial candidate john delaney. Congressman jim ryan. My good friend congresswoman and dnc vice chair grace meng. Congresswoman annie kuster. Congresswoman carol jay porter. And our extraordinary senator, maggie hassan. So tonights dinner is a chance to pause and reflect on the year weve had. While we have plenty of work to do, New Hampshire democrats have a lot to celebrate. This year, we celebrated and sworn in the first ever alldemocratic, allfemale congressional delegation in american history. They fight for us in washington every day. And theyre winning. Incredibly important battles to protect all the progress that we have made. This year, we sent donald trump a message on his very first day in office by showing up in concord, across the state, and around the country, and throughout the world with the womens march. This year, weve won eight out of ten special elections. Five in republican districts. And our First State Senate special election victory since 1984. We have won house special elections across the state. In carol county, merrimack county, sullivan county, hillsborough county, and rockingham county. Simply put, there is no district that a democratic candidate who works hard cant win in 2018. That would be enough to celebrate, but its not all we did. This november, we broke records across the state with our incredible municipal victories. Joyce craig became the first woman elected mayor in manchesters 151year history. [ applause ] her victory flipped a larger city from red to blue for the First Time Since 2003. And in nashua, sweet nashua, we pulled off a clean sweep of nashuas alllarge seat thanks to dave tenza, donna kelly, and brandon law. So shauna kelly and linda harriet became the first ever woman of color elected to the National Board of aldermen. Now, think about this. Two years ago today, nashua had a republican mayor and had had one for over 25 years. With republican majorities of aldermen and school board members. Today, we have mayor jim daunchs with an overwhelming majority. Lets hear it for the nashua city democrats. And jerry cannon became the first ever Transgender School board member in all of New Hampshire. Congratulations. [ applause ] its been a long time coming. And Jeremy Hutchison became the first ever lgbtq city councillor in rochester history. And openly gay mayor Dana Hilliard was reelected to his third term. Paul was elected to a fifth consecutive term, and concords mayor was reelected to a sixth consecutive term. Election night was a historic night of record, of 110 women, Young Democrats, persons of color, the lgbtq community, and a great night for democrats all across. But folks, we have a lot to accomplish. We need to make chris sununu a oneterm governor. We need to hold on to the first and second congressional districts. We need to win majorities on the council and the senate and the house. Democrats, with our success of 2017, we have the team, the energy, and the attitude to win in 2018. So lets go do it. [ applause ] so theres another line here that they added in since i last saw it. So i was reading it as because i was thinking theres another line. So the line is, and for all of you wonderful yankees, this is going to be the best line of the night. And please dont forget to take the pumpkins in the conclusion of the program. The centerpieces are yours. Weve got a full program tonight, but i want to start and take a moment to acknowledge our fantastic staff. Our executive director amy kennedy. Communications director wyatt roden. The political director erin durmel. Finance director dallas thompson. Operations director peter kramer. Communications assistant sarah guggenheimer. Deputy political director donald stokes. Organizer erin cotton. Sue ford, deputy Operations Director ethan morehouse, and lets also acknowledge our house and Senate Caucus director nick taylor. The house and Senate Caucus finance director, and the New HampshireYoung Democrats executive director, representative amelia keen. We are so lucky and so proud to have the best damn party staff in the country. Lets also take a moment to acknowledge our officers, our first vice chair martha fuller clark. Our second vice chair mo backly. Our secretary, our treasurer brian wrap, legal counsel, bill christy. Finance chair, katie wheeler. Dnc woman, cathy sullivan. Dnc man bill shaheen. And at large member glen dodo. Thank you, everyone. Lets have a great night. New hampshire democrats, to lead us in the pledge of allegiance, please welcome to the stage the newly elected atlarge member of the National Board of aldermen, shoshauna kelly, dave kensa, and brandon log. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america. And to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all. New hampshire democrats, please welcome to the stage manchesters mayor elect, joyce craig. Good evening, New Hampshire democrats. Im honored to welcome you here tonight as a mayor elect of manchester. And as the first woman elected to lead the queen city. Its so wonderful to be here with all of you. So many of you joined the hundreds of manchester residents in knocking thousands of doors, making phone calls, sharing our campaigns message with your friends, your neighbors, your colleagues, your work over the many months really made the difference. And i will forever be grateful for your support. I want to offer a special thank you to Senators Hassan and shaheen and Congress Woman custer and sheaporter for their support and encouragement through this process. You know, New Hampshire has led the way in demonstrating that we all do well when women serve in leadership roles. And i am thankful [ applause ] im so thankful to have four outstanding role models. And thank you, too, to chairman buckley and the staff of nhdp for your support of our campaign and for organizing tonights festivities. I would also like to thank congressman delaney and ryan for their support during our campaign and also congressman meng for being with us tonight. While im extremely proud of our efforts to bring change to city hall, i know that the real work begins now. As mayor, ill focus on improving our schools, making our streets safer, bringing businesses to our city, and making real and lasting progress against the opioid crisis. Manchester [ applause ] thank you. Manchesters best days are still ahead of us. And i hope you all will join me in building a Better Future for the people of manchester. Because we all know that when manchester prospers, so does the rest of our great state. So thank you all, and i look forward to this wonderful evening. [ applause ] New Hampshire democrats, please welcome to the stage congresswoman carol sheaporter. Its i who really have to thank all of you. Im so grateful for the gift that you gave me to serve the First District of New Hampshire and all the help that came from across the state over and over again. So i want to thank all of you and say that were not done yet. We are not done. We have a lot of work to do. You heard what the chairman had to say. Im sitting here with some wonderful colleagues, and i know that we are going to turn this around in 2018. A full reckoning is coming. And its soon. Very soon. So when i started to run in 2006, i said i was running for the rest of us. Throughout the time, we have always had different slogans we used, keeping it for the 99 , youre familiar with the phrases we had. And then it started to get kind of serious, i mean really serious, since donald trump came. So i started running through some slogans in my head that would help me every single day. And one of them was from Winston Churchill who has been very helpful. He said when youre going through hell, just keep going. Which i found very helpful to get us through. And he said a number of things like that. But then i started thinking of my own slogans, because we have to stick together. You all know that, and we have shown what we do when we stick together. We have done great things and we will continue to do great things. But sometimes there are things that we dont like, somebody said this or somebody thinks that or something out of washington. Now when i look at myself in the mirror every morning when i wake up, i say to myself, shut up and row. And so thats our message, at least my message right now. We are definitely in turbulent waters. We know that. Were confronted with a president that we never could have imagined even in our worst nightmares. Nobody would have written a story about it because nobody would have believed it. If there would have been a screenplay, people would have laughed and said not possible in this country, but were with a president and a administration that challenges us. The wonderful thing is that we are a very good people. And we know what we need to do. And were working on it, every day. On wednesday night, i had the great privilege of hearing tony bennett, and he received an award for american music. It was absolutely beautiful. 91 years old. He came running out faster than joyce and i did. He came bounding out on stage. When it was time to come out, when he came time to give his speech, he just stood there. And he said, i wasnt really prepared, america is the greatest country in the world. It was the best speech i ever heard. Because thats who we are. Thats what we are. And we will overcome this. So yes, were in turbulent seas. If we row together, and then when we get to shore and we will, when we get to shore, we can pull out our maps and say, should we go left or right . I myself prefer to go to the left, but some might want to go to the right, but we will get ourselves out of this. We are the people we have been waiting for. Were here. You can see the energy, feel the excitement, and joyce, i cant tell you, if i didnt have a wonderful mayor in rochester, i would be looking to move to manchester. So we know that we have everything we need. We have the New HampshireYoung Democrats, which has just done tremendous work. We see this now, i love the candidates who are running in my seat, i think its awesome. I really do. I think its going to help amplify our message and the rest of our state will be able to hear what we stand for. Because we know what we stand against. We stand against tyranny, we stand against the deconstruction of the administrative state. We stand against the violation of Human Dignity and right and all that, but we also stand for economic security. We stand for advantage for everybody. We stand for fairness. We stand for supporting business and supporting families and individuals. So we have something we can be very proud of. We have a marquee that has all of our good stuff on it, now we just need to stand together and put this message out across our state. We will win. We will win, and we will win because we have something they dont have. We are right. We are on the right side of history. [ applause ] no question about it. And people are realizing that around the country. Theyre realizing that this agenda is the agenda that will help lift them and their families. So i just want to say thank you for your confidence in me and the hard work you have done. And say that im not going away. I plan to be very, very involved, and well get through 2018 and then we all have a really big lift, which is called 2020s president ial election. Well get it done. Right here in New Hampshire. Thank you, everybody. I love all of you, and im so grateful. Thank you. [ applause ] New Hampshire democrats, please welcome to the stage former nhdp chair cathy sullivan. I know, i came onstage before they did my walkon music. So anxious. So i want to say a few things about carol sheaporter because she was my congressman, and i was always so proud to have csp as my congresswoman. Every vote she took was always the right vote. And she was always there, as she said, fighting for the rest of us. I remember the first time i really met carol, she came to my office to talk about running for congress. I was quite impressed. And at that point, she had stood up and protested the policies of george w. Bush. [ applause ] she went to jeb browlys town hall, she knew his record better than he did and was able to avlg him the pointed questions that drove him crazy. One thing i will always remember about carol sheaporter is she made me cry once. She may not know the story but a lot of you do because some of you were here when it happened. It was the night of the election 2006. When she was running for congress the first time. And i was in manchester at the coordinating campaign headquarters. And people say, well, you must have known you were going to have a good night. No, i always think were going to lose. I had a good feeling about john lynch, okay. But other than thament, and judy and i had been driving around all day going to different polls in manchester. At one point, i called into headquarters and said how is it looking. And mike and nick were like, you know, the turnout is not the way it should be, and some of the districts. I was like, i knew it. I knew it. And then, of course, it was really the best night of my political life, because we had came from losing badly in 2002 to coming back in 2004. And then 2006, the results are coming in, and were all standing there. The numbers are coming up. This town, that town. And yeah, john lynch was winning. Things were looking good here. Some senate races. Were all feeling really good. But things in the First District were close, and then epiing came in, and carol won epping. And i started crying. And i remember bob was there, and he said im going to take a picture of you crying. I said get that camera away from me. Im crying because when carol won epping, i knew she was now going to be our congresswoman, and i knew we were winning everything that night. And thats the night that carol sheaporter made me cry, because she took epping. And she has been through her career, her political career, one of the most courageous people you could ask for. When she [ applause ] i mean, this is someone who, no secret when she ran for congress, a lot of people were like, i dont know. We have to think about this. And people in washington were not necessarily supportive. But she came out, and she surprised the heck out of everybody. And she won that primary. And then, you know, won the general election. Was reelected, and then lost a race in a republican wave year. But she came back. She came back. She didnt give up. She came back, and she ran again. And then, when we had another republican wave year and her opponent lied about her and ran a tv ad lying about her and unfortunately defeated her, she came back again. She didnt she never said im done in the light of events where some people might have said i have done enough. Ive done enough, but she always came back and picked herself up. And so, its not just because of the work she did in congress for veterans and for the middle class and working people. But also because she just always came back and she fought back. And thats why i am so proud to give you and im going to cry again because im going to miss you, the Kathy Sullivan courage award, because you deserve it, congresswoman. [ applause ] thank you. I wondered why you kept talking about me. Thank you very much. Im so honored. And what Kathy Sullivan doesnt say about herself is there might be a tougher irish woman around, but i dont think so. So thank you, kathy. Thank you, everybody. Im so honored. New hampshire democrats, please welcome to the stage congresswoman grace mang. Thanks, ray. Good evening, everyone. Its great to be in the granite state. Thank you for dialing the temperature up ten degrees for me. Thank you, chairman buckley, for your wonderful welcome to this great state, and for your friendship. It truly means the world to me. Ray is one of the reasons that i was elected to be a vice chair of the dnc, so on a good dnc news day, im so thankful to him. Which means on most days of the year, im not. But in all seriousness, it means the world to me to share the stage this evening with three of the four great women who represent the great state of New Hampshire. Youve heard lots already tonight about congresswoman carol sheaporter, who was my classmate as well going to congress, and she gives new meaning, as you know more than anyone else, to the phrase never give up and always keep getting up. So thank you, carol, for your service. To senator maggie hassan, who has broken so many barriers, not just for women but for all americans, and no big deal, she only saved health care for the whole country. [ applause ] and to my good friend, one of my closest friends in congress, also my classmate, congresswoman annie kuster. Who really has no ego in the fights tha