Deciding New Hampshire’s future
In
the August 9th special election for Strafford House District 3,
Democrat Bob Perry is running against Republican Honey Puterbaugh.
Honey
Puterbaugh is not a traditional Republican. She is a member of the
“Free State Project” – a worldwide effort to move 20,000 people into New
Hampshire and remake the Granite State into their image of a no-government "utopia".
The movement's founder, Professor Jason Sorens, ran statistical regressions to predict the outcome at various stages of his Project:
It
could be that these [first] 2,000 activists will have a much bigger or
much smaller effect... right-to-work, … abolishing cigarette taxes,
legalizing prostitution, abolishing all campaign finance regulations… By
that point, New Hampshire starts to look like a mix of Amsterdam and
Alaska on personal freedoms and Hong Kong on economic freedom.
What
about if 10,000 activists move to NH? At that point, we’re talking
about cutting government to the bone, including tax and spending
reductions of 50% or more and abolishing all of the remaining petty,
paternalistic restrictions on freedom, from gambling laws to sobriety
checkpoints, legalizing assisted suicide, and completely deregulating
education…
Read more of his predictions here.
Sorens'
followers talk a lot about “liberty”, “freedom” and reducing – or
eliminating – government. They are united by their desire to not pay
taxes, even for services like police and fire protection. But their
definitions of “freedom” run the full spectrum of ideology: from
legalizing drug use and public nudity to completely eliminating law
enforcement and public education.
According to the French publication “Liberation”, fourteen members of the Free State Project were elected to the Legislature last year, “all under the banner ‘Republican’.” Some of them have moved into Leadership roles, including Daniel Itsa, chairman of the House Committee on Constitutional Review and Statutory Recodification, and Republican Whip Jennifer Coffey.
Read more about this election and the Free State Project on SEA's website here.
The
Democratic candidate, Bob Perry, was a Judicial Branch employee for 30
years and believes in the value of New Hampshire’s public services. He
will strongly defend the right to collectively bargain, and will work to
preserve the middle class. In his previous service as State
Representative, he supported stronger rights for employees in the
workplace and sponsored legislation to keep jobs here in New Hampshire.
