Granite Staters will have a new governor come 2025. Gov. Chris Sununu is not running for reelection after eight years in office.
Leading up to the state primary on Sept. 10, we’re speaking with top candidates from both major parties in the gubernatorial race to hear where they stand on some of the biggest concerns on voters’ minds.
Read on for NHPR Morning Edition host Rick Ganley’s interview with Democrat Jon Kiper. Kiper is a business owner and former town council member in Newmarket.
What questions do you have for the candidates running for Congress and governor in the 2024 election? What issues do you want them to address while seeking your vote? Share your thoughts here.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Transcript
Many voters that we've talked to are concerned about the high cost and low availability of housing here in New Hampshire. What would you propose to make housing more affordable for people renting or buying?
So there's a couple of ideas I've got. One would be to legalize cannabis, sell it the same way that we sell liquor and put the profit into affordable housing, and do that through the New Hampshire Housing Authority, as well as creating a loan fund that we could loan money out to developers that want to build the type of housing that we need.
I want to expand a little bit on that. We've talked about legalizing marijuana in the state for many, many years now. It has not happened yet. How do you work across the aisle with both parties to get that done and get that over the finish line?
So I've been talking to a lot of the folks that have been involved with these discussions, and it sounds like the Republicans want two things. One is they want to limit the number of shops. Frankly, one of the guys that was on one of the committees told me that literally the Republicans just go to Maine and they see like a bunch of pot shops and they think it's tacky. Literally, this is one of the hurdles.
The other hurdle is that the Republicans want state control of it. They want the state to be making the money. So assuming that the Senate is probably going to be, maybe not majority Republican, but close, we're going to have to deal with their demands. So I came up with a plan that I think satisfies them and satisfies the Democrats at the same time, which would be to allow the current medicinal shops to transition to a recreational for-profit model and then have basically what would be an authority, a quasi-public-private partnership that would sell cannabis similarly to the way that the Liquor Commission sells liquor but not affiliated with Liquor Commission.
It would have to be completely separate because it's still federally illegal. But the benefit of it being separate is that we could create this entity, for instance, the New Hampshire Cannabis and Housing Authority, which would have the authority to sell cannabis, and also to then invest the money into housing.
Do you feel that there's a political will, though, to take that money and have it invested into housing?
So when I've been talking to people about cannabis, the housing part is crucial because that's the part where people that are on the sidelines, or maybe aren't in favor of cannabis, when you say, 'Hey, what if we focus the money towards a problem that is affecting all of us, getting homeless people off the street and creating more affordable housing,' then when they're anti-cannabis, they go, 'Okay, that's where the money is going to go, let's do it.' Because the only other options are some kind of a tax.
The fact of the matter is, we are not going to get out of the housing market issues that we have without some sort of funding. And the trick with the money that's going to be coming from cannabis, it's not going to be billions. It's going to be maybe $100 million. And you could invest that in lowering property taxes, and it would not have any effect. You could invest it in education and it would have almost no effect because it's just not enough money.
There's a lot to talk about there, but I do want to move on here to some other issues that we've heard from voters. New Hampshire outlaws abortion after 24 weeks, with some exceptions, and reproductive rights or restrictions are a concern for many voters that we've talked to. Is there a specific policy on abortion that you would support as governor?
You know, I think the government has no role in anyone's medical decisions really at all, including abortion. I just think that it's such a complicated issue in terms of all the things that can go wrong.
Would you like to see less restriction on abortions in the state?
I would like to see it completely up to doctors and patients. I don't think that our legislature is really equipped to deal with all the nuances that happen with this type of medical care or really any type of medical care. It's a live, free or die state. It's on the license plates, and I think it's time we started living up to that motto.
How would you accomplish that, though, especially if there is a Republican control with the legislature?
It's true. This is one thing that people really need to understand that we in New Hampshire have what's called a weak governor. They do not have a lot of control. The governor cannot unilaterally legalize abortion or legalize cannabis or do any of these things.
And that's why it's so important for the people of New Hampshire to understand that to enact these changes, we need to have majorities in the Senate, in the House and in the Executive Council. And the only way to do that is, look at the numbers, to get unaffiliated voters to vote. And those are young people. And I think I can – I know I can get them out in November because they're going to believe in my leadership.
Now, we've seen increasingly dangerous flooding events in recent years that are straining New Hampshire towns and cities infrastructure. Community leaders say the state government can be slow to respond to local needs. What role would your office play in planning for a warmer, wetter future here in New Hampshire, where you'd be governor?
Step one, we got to sue Exxon Mobil and the other petroleum companies for knowingly causing global climate change. I mean, the fact of the matter is, they knew this was going to happen. They hired their own climate scientists in the 70s, and we need to hold them accountable. You know, we as taxpayers should not be on the hook for what's going to be tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure repair, and we need to have these corporations pay. They're making billions in profits, subsidized profits, there's no reason that they can't help us pay for this and sue them the same way that we sued the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma.
Each two years, the governor has to craft that state budget that indicates their priorities. What new big ideas would you bring to the budget as governor?
I brought up that idea of legalizing cannabis and using that money for housing, that's a really big one to me. Another one I'd like to look into is taxing second homes. We have one of the highest rates of second homes in the country, vacation homes. The majority of those are owned by people that live out of state. I'd like to figure out a way that we could tax those homes and put the money towards wastewater treatment plants in the North Country and in the Lakes Region, so that they could then build more affordable housing because wastewater treatment plants is a huge hurdle.
(Editor’s note: We followed up with Kiper’s campaign. He said he’s citing an article from VT Digger that reported New Hampshire had the third-most vacation homes per capita in the country in 2019. New Hampshire Housing does not have data on how many second homes are owned by people out of state. However it can confirm that of all homes bought in 2024 up to July, 28% of them were purchased by out-of-state residents. You can read more here.)
We've seen tax cuts in the budget under Gov. Sununu's term, which Democrats are mostly opposed to. Are you comfortable with the current tax rates, or would you consider raising them to fund some of your initiatives you're talking about here?
So what happens with the Republicans in Concord is they cut taxes for corporations and the rich. And what happens is our property taxes all over the state just keep going up and up and up. So there really [are] not tax cuts happening. It's just property tax increases. They're just pushing the costs from the state to the towns and municipalities. And frankly, I think that's wrong. And people need to wake up to the fact that it's not your local budget committee that's screwing up. It's the state government that is cutting taxes without removing any services. And we are suffering at the local level every single day.
Click here for interviews with all the top candidates running in New Hampshire’s gubernatorial race.
