East of the Merrimack (Gameplay Thread)

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Francis McGuinty - The Representative you deserve

Starting February 1st, Francis McGuinty together with the activists of the Initiative for a Smaller Government and other allied conservative organizations will start a bus tour throughout the district named the Cut the Pork Express, which will plans to get to all towns by the beginning of May. During it McGuinty will host town halls, gather proposals from the citizens about necessary spending cuts and other budgetary issues and pass them over to the local authorities or even state government. McGuinty will use this tour to boost his fiscal conservative credentials and visibility as well as form a network of supporters and activists in the entire district. Fundraising activities will also be included, as McGuinty hopes to compensate the lack of personal or outside wealth by convincing as many small donors as possible. It will start in the North of the District in Chatham and end in Manchester during the last few days of April. Special attention will be paid during the tour to Manchester, Dover and towns bordering Massachusetts.

On May 1st, Francis will return to Dover where he will announce the formation of an exploratory committee. Its job will be to, using the resources of the Initiative, form an actual campaign, start building the ground game, recruit volunteers, get in touch with outside groups and analyze opponents. It will also try to boost fundraising even further than what McGuinty accomplished during the tour, but the campaign believes it can win with fewer money than its opponents. The actual race will begin on June 1st, when McGuinty will give his announcement speech from his home town of Barrington.

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The announcement speech of Francis McGuinty in Barrington on June 1st 2005

Hello, Barrington! Today, I, Francis McGuinty, am officially announcing that I am running for the Republican Nomination in the 1st District of New Hampshire.

Folks from my beautiful home town may know me as a small business owner who had to fight to make his dreams come true. Others may know me as an activist who has fought for fiscal responsibility and the involvement of the citizens in local governments. Big-spending liberals from New Hampshire may know me as their worst nightmare. And these are all things that I think the House of Representatives need in order to govern adequately. It needs members who were not born with a silver spoon in their mouth and know the challenges of hard working people. It needs members who are not a part of the political establishment, members who are interested in shaking up the system and bring actual change. And it needs members who are going to be the worst nightmares of careless Democrats and Republicans alike who spend the hard-worked money of the taxpayers on pork, endless government agencies and bureaucracies and weird projects that no one has ever heard of or ever will. I will be all of those things.

I know, I know, I am running against a lot of opponents who have the backing and money of the establishment. But I am not afraid at all. We will knock on all doors in this district by the end of 2006 and truly listen to people rather than having bright ads all over the place. The proud citizens of the Granite State are going to send to Washington a Representative who will do exactly that, represent them. And I am the one who can do it. Thank you!

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Francis McGuinty - June 2005

June 2nd-9th - Rallies, town halls, fundraising activities, door knocking in McGuintys home area (Dover, Sommersworth, Rochester, Lee, Durham, Newmarket)

June 9th-17th - Rallies, town halls, fundraising activities, door knocking on the MA border (Portsmouth, Rye, Hampton, North Hampton, Plaistow, Atkinson, Salem)

Fragment from a speech in Hampton on June 15th -

And I am proud to announce that today I am signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which basically says this - no extra dime should be paid in taxes by the citizens of this country. I pledge in front of you to respect that principle. Yes, this country has a budgetary problem. But we should take away the jar from the porkers in Washington rather than from the people who already pay too much in taxes and see the money wasted! It is time for Congress to tighten the belt not the people of this District, and I am your guarantee that this will happen!

June 18th-June 30th - Rallies, town halls, fundraising activities and door knocking in the Manchester area (Most of the time will be spent in Manchester with a few stops in neighboring towns)

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Francis McGuinty - July 2005

July 1st - Town Hall, Door Knocking, Meet and Greet in Barlett
July 2nd - Town Hall, Door Knocking, Meet and Greet in Conway
July 3rd - Town Hall, Door Knocking, Meet and Greet in Meredith
July 4th - Town Hall, Door Knocking, Meet and Greet in Moultonborough, attend celebrations there
July 5th - Town Hall, Door Knocking, Meet and Greet in Tuftonboro
July 6th - Town Hall, Door Knocking, Meet and Greet in Ossippe
July 7th-8th - Town Halls, Door Knocking, Meet and Greet in Laconia

Fragment of what McGuinty said in Laconia -

The other candidates, Democrats and Republicans, go to Washington all the time and hang out with the establishment there. We already know what they would do if elected. They would join them and continue the pattern of corruption in Congress. They can not solve the problems because they are the problems! I chose to spend all of my time here, in New Hampshire, meeting the communities that I seek to represent faithfully in Congress! I am the only choice to drain the swamp and stop wasting taxpayer money.

July 9th -  Town Halls, Door Knocking, Meet and Greet in Gilford
July 10th - Alton
July 11th - Wolfeboro
July 12th - Wakefield
July 13th - New Durham
July 14th - Farmington
July 15th - Rochester
July 16th - Strafford
July 17th - Rally in Barrington

Hello, Barrington! Thank you for your impressive welcoming! I am so happy to be back here at home and I want to tell you that our movement is becoming stronger and stronger! The people of New Hampshire are sick of the old establishment and want to change how they are governed! During this campaign, I will not have fancy lunches in Washington with the porkers! Instead, I will try the delicious food prepared in every town of New Hampshire! Because as a candidate and Representative, I will always put my constituents first and I will never lie to them about what I am going to do! I will not promise to end pork-barrel spending while eating pork with the porkers!

July 18th - Nottingham
July 19th - Brentwood
July 20th - Epping
July 21st - Newmarket
July 22nd - Greenland
July 23rd - Rye
July 24th - Portsmouth

It feels so good to be back in Portsmouth together with so many great people! Let me introduce myself to those of you who do not know me - I am Francis McGuinty, a small business owner just like many of you who, tired of the bureaucracy and needless government involvement in our affairs, have entered grassroots politics and formed the Initiative for a Smaller Government, responsible for many waste being cut from local budgets. I am running because I want to do the same on a national level. With your support, we can finally bring the change the Washington that everyone is promising but no one is acting upon!

July 25th - Seabrook
July 26th - Newton
July 27th - Plaistow
July 28th - Atkinson
July 29th - Hampstead
July 30th - Kingston
July 31st - Danville

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Francis McGuinty - August 2005

August 1st - Sandown
August 2nd - Fremont
August 3rd - Raymond
August 4th - Candia
August 5th - Auburn
August 6th-10th - Derry

My pledge to you is that I will never, ever, let the old ways of Washington take away my principles like thay have done to so many promising Representatives! I will always stand for what I believe in, for what I fight for and for what I want you to support me - rooting out fraud, waste and abuse from every single agency and make them focus their activities on actually getting results benefitting us all!

August 11th-12th - Hooksett
August 13th-14th - Bow
August 15th - Dunbarton
August 16th - 25th - Manchester

If the government had been using all of that deficit spending effectively in order to help people and had a plan so that the future generations would not have to pay for so many billions of dollars when they grow up, I would have been all for it. The problem is that those hundreds of billions are used for needless programs sometimes made just to please egos. For example, the B.J. Stupak Olympic Scholarship - which is basically a hand out worth a million per year to the Northern Michigan University with a fancy name! Is that how you want your money spent? I do not either!

August 26th-30th - Bedford

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Francis McGuinty - September 2005

September 1st-7th - Manchester

What those people in Washington do not understand is that they are not spending their own money from an infinite inheritance. No, they are spending our money without asking us how to do it and putting it on us to pay back their fiscal mayhem once they get bored with Congress and become lobbyists or whatever these people do. That great institution has gone completely awry, with our Representatives only listening to special interests which pay them instead of their constituents. Next year, this is our chance to say no more, and send in someone different, not just another future lobbyist!

September 8th-11th - Derry
September 12th-15th - Dover
September 16th-18th - Rochester
September 19th-20th - Salem
September 21st-22nd - Londonderry
September 23rd-30th - Return to Barrington to improve the online campaign, reach out to current field operations and expand them, fundraise  

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Francis McGuinty debate answers -

Opening Statement -

Good evening, New Hampshire. For those of you who do not know me, my name is Francis McGuinty. I was born in the great city of Barrington, where I founded a successful small business, just like so many of you. For over 5 years now, I have been an activist for a smaller, more effective and less wasteful government, a government which fights for people like you instead of oppressing people like you. I have done so because I know what it is like for bureaucrats in Washington to ruin your hard work with dangerous regulations and useless interventions, and I do not want that to happen to anyone again. And I am running because Congress, a glorious institution and great symbol of democracy, is no longer representing the people. It has become out of touch, and through their careless decisions they are undermining America instead of helping it. I want to change that, and you can trust me that I will keep my promises, for I have always been one of you. I am not going there as another insider, I am going there as an outsider who will shake the rigged system up and fight to make the lives of my constituents better through every proposal I submit and vote I make.

2. Thank you for your great question. Look, I want to be a voice for my constituents, so on every major vote I will have to take on the war or any other important topic, I will first come back here to my district and act the people who I am supposed to represent how do they feel about it. That I can promise you. And while some of my opponents were busy dining in DC, I was on the trail listening to people. And I have to tell, I have heard folks who are very worried about our involvement and how the war is going. I believe therefore that it is time for a more compassionate approach to the conflict. We can not leave at once and leave behind a power vacuum which would be devastating to regional stability. What we can do is to help the Iraqi governmental forces to take over the defense of their country more and more. If we do that, we will no longer need to station so many troops in Iraq and we will be able to get some of our boys back home. With more long-term planning, I am confident that democracy and hope will prevail once again over fear and radicalism.

3. That is a great question. My first bill will be about reducing needless government spending through cutting both earmarks and pork barrel spending. I would do so by making any spending that fits the definition of pork by the terrific Citizens against Government Waste group illegal. What that basically means is that the government will not be able to toy around with our money any longer. They will have to follow certain rules like all of us do. My proposal would wipe out millions upon millions of dollars in waste by the DC establishment and will be a huge step towards ensuring that your tax dollars are being spent responsibly.

4. Look, what I want to do is this - I want to cut all waste in government spending. Every last dollar of it. Which is why I have to make the following thing clear - yes, I absolutely and wholeheartedly support eliminating earmarks, which have produced some of the most outrages examples of waste in spending. But this is not all I plan to accomplish. My bill would outlaw not only earmarks but every pork-barrel as defined by the CAGW, because there are a lot more ways in which our supposed representatives are misusing our hard worked money. By this point, they might as well shoot them into the sky and it would be basically the same thing. It is outrageous. And I also plan to fight for a balanced budget not only by holding the legislative branch accountable, but also the executive branch. Because the carelessness for public funds inside some of these agencies is outrageous, and as your Representative I will be in a position to stop them for good. There are hundreds of millions of clear waste examples and I intend to fight for every last penny to be protected.

Closing Statement -

Thank you for hosting this debate, it has been truly a terrific conversation. I would like to ask our viewers this - just how many times in the past decades has some well-known insider come to you, made you big promises that he will fight for you and be different, and then went to Washington or Concord and forgot it all, then came back when it was re-election time? Well, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. They are not different this time, they never are. They will go to DC, waste your money, dine all day with their friends, come back for re-election and so on and so on until they finally leave and become lobbyists. We can send yet another politician like this to Congress, or we can finally break that vicious cycle. And that is what my campaign is all about. I want, together with you, to make a difference, and start real change in this country. I am one of you, I am with you and I will fight for you. I do not come from a government office, but from the streets of NH from where I have been an activist for taxpayer interests. It is time for us to decide - do we want another future lobbyist to represent us, or do we want to send there an outsider who is not knee deep in the swamp and can fix its problems. Thank you, God Bless you, and good night.

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Francis McGuinty - October-December 2005

In these places, Francis McGuinty will hold town halls, knock on doors, host meet-and-greets as well as have dinner in local restaurants from every town he visits, in order to meet voters who may not be so interested in politics. All of his actions will be directed towards meeting as many voters as humanly possible with the purpose of raising his notoriety and appeal to the undecided and unfamiliar voters. He will focus more on population center, but most small towns will be visited for at least 10 hours. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, his campaign will try to form a community of donors in order to boost its fundraising for the latter stages of the campaign.

October 1st - October 7th - Portsmouth

What the people of Portsmouth and of the first district truly need in the House is a maverick, someone who will fully subscribe to party lines and ideological battles and instead consider every single piece of legislation, consider its impact upon his constituents and most importantly, consult his constituents before every single vote. That is my promise to you, the voters! I will be an independent person and an actual Representative, not in-name-only, for you!

October 8th-14th - Rye, North Hampton, Greenland, Stratham, Newmarket, Epping

October 15th-22nd - Durham, Lee, Barrington, Nottingham

October 23rd-31st - Dover, Somersworth, Rochester

November 1st-7th - Exeter, Hampton, Seabrook, Brentwood

November 8th-15th - Kingston, Newton, Plaistow, Atkinson, Salem

November 15th-22nd - Derry, Chester, Sandown, Danville

November 23rd-30th - Londonderry, Auburn, Candia, Hooksett, Deerfield, Northwood

December 1st-7th - Alton, New Durham, Milton, Wakefield, Tuftonboro, Wolfeboro

December 8th-15th - Moultonborough, Ossipee, Conway, Barlett

December 16th-23rd - Manchester

December 23rd-31st - Return to Barrington to spend the holidays with family and campaign strategists, attend as many public events and celebrations in the area as possible.