Governor of New Hampshire, chris sununu. [applause] and the democratic nominee, dr. Tom sherman. [applause] im also very excited to be joined by three panelists this evening, Senior Editor of the union leader, mike cody. [applause] veteran political reporter kevin landrigan, also from the union leader. Student journalist cole tears guard from the Student College paper the new englander. [applause] lets begin. The first question goes to senator sherman. Typically, before undecided voters will consider a challenger, they have to make a decision on whether they will fire the incumbent. Why should chris sununu be fired . Dr. Sherman the major reason comes to trust. He said he would not put in place an abortion band, and with any year, he put in place an abortion ban. He has repeatedly said he would not do something, or he has not taken responsibility for things he shouldve taken responsibility for. Money we sent back because chris sununu said we do not have hungry children here. Another 18 million right in the middle for people with rental assistance, again, said we did not need it here, or at least he did not spend it all, and that with the second batch at risk. When we think about somebody in charge, they have to be on the ball, they have to be somebody we can trust, somebody was listening to granite staters, and he is not. He has taken us off was with the abortion ban. He has taken us off course with his energy policy. We need to get back on course and really focus on things that matter, cost and choice, thank you. Chris we will let you respond to claims in a second, but first, you made it clear dr. Sherman will take the state in the wrong direction could what will happen in a mentor if he is elected . Gov. Sununu we could focus all day on my opponent that i want to focus on what we are going to do, right . Fiscal responsibility at a time of massive inflation, and a time of what we all know a recession is coming about. A recession is coming, inflation is rear real and here to stay. You need somebody at the top that is physically fiscally responsible. My opponent voted for a tax cannot be toted twice. This is not the time to be taking more money out of peoples pockets. Not to safe and welcome of the government might have enough, youve got to give it to us first, right . We are going to wrap our services around your individual needs, your business, your kids, you as an individual, and that is the responsibility. Takes work to do that, but the system is so much more efficient, with better results. So making the individual come first. Chris 30 seconds to respond to an income tax. Dr. Sherman i have never voted for income tax. I would veto an income tax if it came across my desperate i want to talk about mismanagement of chris sununu. Property tax has gone up 1. 7 billion since he has taken office. Energy costs have doubled. The federal money i just talked about has gone back to it we need a governor who is paying attention, who is on the ball commend putting money back in the pockets of granite staters. Gov. Sununu if i may, this accusation before about property taxes, i asked the department of revenue administration, since 2017, when i became governor, the average property rates have gone down 10. 8 in New Hampshire. I think 82 of cities and towns have actually lowered their property tax rate in New Hampshire. You can go into the website, you can go to my website, governor. Nh. Gov, the data is there. It lists by town. It is factual, it is jerry data, and we are returning that cash to people. Chris lets go to mike cody now with a question for both candidates on the economy. Mike New Hampshire is hovering around 2. 8 , great for workers, not for employers, trying to find workers. What can the state do . Gov. Sununu a set of talking about it, doing something about it. We are the Fastest Growing comp population in the northeast right here in New Hampshire. First time in a decade that has been the case. Folks want to be here. Businesses want to be here, too, right . About 4000 new businesses since right before the pandemic. We are the place to be, no doubt. Housing is still the number one barrier we have to we dont just talk about it. I created the investing age 100 Million Dollar housing fund. It is phenomenal. The state had never done anything like it before. The grants are awarded as we speak. Shovels go in the ground, and we start building. We have to build 10, 20,000 units, one 100 million shot in the arm is not going to get us there, but it shows a record of success, it incentivizes cities and towns to say yes, it creates opportunities at the localized level. It takes the different pieces that tend to be the barriers, and, again, moves forward on the with the shard in the arm from the state that offset the inflationary costs that have held a lot of these projects back. Chris dr. Sherman. Dr. Sherman im glad to hear the governors listening to me about a plan, because all he has done on this is watch of the housing crunch becomes a housing crisis. Childcare is the other driver of this. Education, we dont have all the education pieces in place to develop that workforce. My plan for housing is a plan that builds off of the federal money that the governor has used in his onetime bandaid for housing. But it builds off a bit over the next several years at 35 million a year on childcare, we can do better by giving businesses tax credits to create that. For our schools, building out a running start, the pathways programs with our Community Colleges, with our university, to really make sure we are fully supporting businesses, because businesses tell me when they are fully supported, they could be so much more productive than they are currently. Chris the issue of housing and rent is when i hear consistently about from listeners we are going to stick with that topic, and more from mike. Mike i will change slightly, because both of you have answered a little bit. You referred to a town that rhymes with redford, governor sununu, we are talking about the resistance to multifamily housing. Bedford is not alone. Hooksett has a plan, a proposal before them to change this old headquarters into multifamily some kind of housing, and they are getting some resistance to what can a state do to encourage communities to allow these projects that happen . This is one of the biggest problems we have in New Hampshire. Gov. Sununu again, we did something that the state has never done before. We have a 30 million opportunity that incentivize towns, reward towns for saying yes to new planning projects. Sounds like rochester, these are doing really well, actually. And usually this cost. Family coming in across the town, so my plan, we are going to give every town that says yes to a new project, 10,000 per unit. That is a massive amount of money and far outweighs the potential costs over the next few years. The first towns to say yes get the money. So it is almost a race to see who can permit fastest. It has never been tried before, but already the response has been overwhelming from a lot of cities and towns across the state. In incentivizes with a caring, rewarding those towns to say yes that traditionally may not happy at not just natural, smaller towns and rural New Hampshire will all participate in this you will see smaller Housing Project everywhere. Chris same topic, dr. Sherman. Dr. Sherman mortgage rates, Interest Rates are going up, price of raw material are skyrocketing, what do we do to fix it . Dr. Sherman we have a threepart plan on my website. We actually brought it all the stakeholders and really talk to them about how to move forward. The first part is looking at towns and recognizing that each town has its own personality. We need to let the town built from the inside out. A lot of fear zoning laws are otherwise outdated. So we have helped them with grants and loans to make sure they can do that. The second part is incentivizing construction by working with the commercial and nonprofit builders to actually do that. The third part is what you just said, building out that workforce that will allow that construction to occur. What we have learned is we have to bring more of our supply chain back to New Hampshire. That is part of why i put in place, i sponsored the bill that would promote New Hampshire manufacturing with steel fabrication. That is how we need to be thinking about reading our supply chain home, so we dont have to outsource that. Chris political reporter kevin lanagan, and we will start with governor sununu. Kevin governor sununu, lets assume you are right and we start. This is 5 dividends task you champion. Given budget cuts in deficiencies you would pursue, which would balance the state budget. Gov. Sununu here is the beauty of New Hampshire. You dont have to go after budget cuts, right . Our surplus traditionally was, like, 60 Million Dollars could either that was really big when i first became governor. It is well across 400 million right now. Effectively, the State Government has too much money, because it is not ours, it is yours, right . We are returning it to the property taxpayers. Less budget had a 100 million return and property tax. The State Government cannot cut your taxes, but we can send that cash back. We have a lot of these funds already we do not need to do math effectively, we just have to get our taxes back in line with the locum inefficient spending that we set is already in place. Chris separate question for dr. Sherman. Kevin dr. Sherman, if we do heading into recession and revenues do begin to decline, even with a surplus, can you support the higher spending promises you made in this election, a large increase in education, tuition Free Community college, more state spending for childcare and health care, just to name a few. Would you consider raising existing taxes or suspending past tax cuts to pay for your initiative, if necessary . Dr. Sherman first of all, no income tax, no sales tax, lower property taxes, that is where some of what we are talking about, investing in our businesses come our schools, and that is exactly what im talking about doing. The other part that i also believes a great source of revenue, which we are currently outsourcing to all the states around us, is to legalize adult use cannabis. That is something that the people of New Hampshire want. That is something that would actually make what is being sold in New Hampshire safer. We know that if it isnt done properly, opioid abuse rates actually make drop in the state, some states like massachusetts and illinois. We know that we can raise effective revenue by doing it well. We have good templates to build that on, and that would allow us to move forward, even in a recession. Chris 30 seconds a night, do you agree with him in regard to legalizing cannabis . Gov. Sununu if the answer is, we are going to solve our budget problem by selling drugs, no. That is not the reason to do it. I think ultimately, this would become legalized here in New Hampshire, but we have been smart about saying, now is not the time. When you have a massive Opioid Crisis that is, you know, increasing all across the country, right . We have our new doorway system. I broke down and rebuilt the entire system, recoveryfriendly work races, i created in the private sector, we brought to the state sector. We are not just doing it in manchester and nashua but in rural parts of the state as well. That system has to be in place and successful before we start is legalizing more drugs. Chris 30 seconds on his statement regarding legalizing drugs being problematic. Dr. Sherman [laughs] we are not legalizing drugs. We are legalizing adultuse cannabis. Other states have done it successfully. Look at what has happened in New Hampshire on drugs since the governor has been in office. 2500, more than 2500 granite staters have died of overdoses. The rates are higher in nashua and manchester than they were when he took office. His doorway program, which is one of those things where chris sununu just decides to go do something, it is a failure, and people are getting sick and dying because of it. Chris 30 seconds. Gov. Sununu i cannot be more proud of the doorway system. It is awesome. It is rule access to care. It is a fully wraparound system. In 2020 and 2021, new mentor was the only state in the country where we did not see a massive rise in Overdose Deaths. It was basically even. Others have gone up 60 in Overdose Deaths. We were at the tip of the spear of the overdose crisis, the Overdose Deaths in the state have come down. It is just incredible. When i took office, we had the skyrocketing number come out of control, no plan, and we rebuilt the system. Chris time. Dr. Sherman look at the data gov. Sununu real data chris we will get to that in a second. Gov. Sununu very private. Chris senator sherman, you said governor sununu signed an abortion banded the definition of a ban officially or legally prohibit something, but abortions are obviously still attainable in New Hampshire are you lie and when you said he put in an abortion ban . Dr. Sherman absolutely not. He put in a band that we did not have before. We did not have a van at 24 weeks, which is what he put in place. What he said yesterday, he said he could not veto a budget containing the ban, because there was a continuing resolution. In 2019, when he decided he was going to veto that budget, we had a continuing resolution in 24 hours per on june 3, 2021, he went on the radio and said he would sign a budget that had an abortion ban in it before the budget even passed the legislature. Three weeks later, he signed it. He had three weeks, and he did nothing to protect the women of New Hampshire. He signed into law an abortion ban. Governor, i have to know, when you signed that, did you have the courage to stand up to your own party or the conviction to stand up for the lives of the women . Gov. Sununu yeah. Look, governors have to sign budgets with things in them all the time they dont want. In ever but he knows i did not put that in there. Dr. Sherman but you bragged about it. Gov. Sununu Everybody Knows i did not want that put in there. In the middle of the pandemic come over member this is 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, we are not going to risk the government. We are going to find and create flexibility for that, we got rid of it. I think its and have the flexibility to provide exceptions for rape and incest. I agree with tom sherman that we should not be criminalizing doctors over this kind of stuff could we should make provisions for the health of the mother. We agree on is vastly more than we disagree. Look at massachusetts. They have a 24week ban. Dr. Sherman they dont have criminal penalties. Chris dr. Sherman, 30 seconds. Dr. Sherman i never would have signed it. I would not have put the people of New Hampshire at risk. Gov. Sununu and i would not have shut down government, and i did it. Chris you did sign a late term abortion ban without exceptions and mandatory ultrasounds for women seeking abortions for why should granite staters trust that you would not sign a budget Going Forward that includes enhanced abortion . Gov. Sununu because i am the ones who worked with the swing vote republicans to make sure we governor of the altar sounds good i have been very clear about the additional flexibility that we want put in there. If our law was exactly like massachusetts, i think we would be spot on. Those of the flexibility i walk it weve had planned parenthood come before me, i think 13 contractors, maybe 12 or 11, i went all for one of them. This is not just about planned parenthood, it is about womens health, and we take that very seriously here. I always know we can go back and create more flexibilities. We can create more flexibilities yet again, and that is an opportunity both sides of the aisle have to create that opportunity. Chris 30 seconds, and i will bring dr. Sherman entered Lindsey Graham has discussed a National Abortion ban with a 15week threshold. Lets say the legislature comes back with something of that nature. Where do you draw the line . Gov. Sununu that is outrageous. Look, i think the legislature should codify roe v. Wade p i have been very public about that. I think tom agrees with that. Dont you think we should codify roe v. Wade . Dr. Sherman yes p dive never heard you say that. Chris dr. Sherman, 30 seconds. Dr. Sherman it is great i have had influence on you, governor. [applause] this bill that he signed into law had no exceptions for rape, incest, or fetal anomaly. Lisa achy had to reach out for help because she had a twin that was put at risk by Chris Sununus abortion ban. When she reached out to him, she never responded. She had to testify from her hospital bed to get that reversed. Actually, she is here. Governor, do you want to apologize to her . Gov. Sununu this is not about a single individual. Dr. Sherman it is about life. It is about health. Here is the imposing thing, the whole campaign, every ad you see is a negative attack ad on abortion from tom sherman. You never hear what he is going to duke it at the end of the day, we agree on this issue vastly more than we disagree, but that is all he is going to talk about. If we can get more flexibility come up we both agree we should be codified roe v. Wade, the fact that they try to make this some extreme issue when massachusetts is exactly where we should be, that is that moderation, the independent, looking at both sides of the issue, making sure both sides come together, find some sort of agreement, that is the opportunity we have a New Hampshire. Chris close out the section with dr. Sherman, 30 seconds. Dr. Sherman we dont put politics before people. The governo