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New Hampshire Union Leader

Sept 12, 2008
GOP nominee blasts retirement chief's payout

CONCORD -- The unexpected departure of the New Hampshire Retirement System's executive director has become an issue in the race for governor. Republican Sen. Joseph Kenney said yesterday Gov. John Lynch should step in and force Constance Donovan to leave her post immediately, rather than in 90 days, and to find a way to block her $90,000 severance package. Donovan has been on the job less than five months.

Keene Sentinel

September 20, 2008

A return to old New Hampshire

Republican candidate for governor Joseph Kenney, a state senator from Wakefield, gestures as he walks the campus of Keene State College Friday.
At Keene State, Kenney talks about what Republicans used to be
By Sarah Palermo
Sentinel Staff
Published: Saturday, September 20, 2008

Joseph D. Kenney, the Republican candidate for governor, has a simple campaign message, and it begins with an indictment of his own Grand Old Party: Republicans need to act like Republicans again, in order to keep New Hampshire New Hampshire.

"We need to reconnect with our constituents, and talk about issues that are principal Republican values of yesteryear and today," he said while walking around Keene State College Friday night with members of the College Republicans club.

Those timeless Republican values include cutting spending, increasing individual responsibility and relying on the Granite State's unique participatory government of local control, he said.

"I think we got off the beaten track ... and I don't think we managed some situations well in the state government and in the national government. But it's time to get back in the saddle, start acting like Republicans," Kenney said, and he wants the constituents to tell him where to ride from there.

Forgoing what he called a "multi-media campaign based on a face that you never meet in person," Kenney is running a grassroots campaign, going to communities like Peterborough and Keene, where he stopped Friday.

"I want to go back into the communities and say, 'What is it that you don't like about us? What are the ideas you want us to bring forward?' "

One of the issues brought up during his campaign stops was how to promote energy efficiency, which he said spawned the idea of tax credits for businesses that pursue green forms of energy.

Energy reform is one of the five pillars of Kenney's platform, he said. The other four: streamlining the state's budget, promoting job growth in the state, opening a full-service veterans' hospital in Manchester, and continuing the so-called "New Hampshire Advantage" - the state's lack of an income or sales tax.

To cut spending, Kenney would like to put the Land Conservation Heritage Initiative Program on a diet, making it self-sufficient instead of taxpayer funded, he said.

"That is something that is always competing against Health and Human Services or say, red-line bridges, and there are over 80 in the state that need to be repaired," he said.

"We need to cut back on special interest projects, and we need to go after additional revenues," one of which would be allowing advertising at turnpike-system toll plazas, he said.

Kenney said in addition to fiscal reform, the state government needs some social reform.

"I don't believe in social engineering. I'm a traditionalist: I believe marriage is between a man and a woman," said Kenney, who also believes the state should reinstate a law requiring parental consent for abortions for girls under age 18.

He said he would like to see education funding remain mostly in the hands of local communities.

A bottom-up government, where the people decide the issues of the day, is how New Hampshire was founded, and where it should return, Kenney said.

As a selectman in Wakefield before heading to Concord, where he has served in the state Senate for 14 years, he was often part of the initiation rite for new Granite Staters who had moved to the rural town from other states.

"These people would come to town hall looking for services, and we'd have to tell them, you're not getting a paved road ... and oh, by the way, you're not gonna get garbage pick-up. They'd have this deer-in-the-headlights look, asking why," he said laughing. "Well, this is New Hampshire, and we want to keep taxes low."

"And on their way out the door, we would say, 'Oh, by the way, can you sign up for a volunteer board?' They got it, suddenly, that it wasn't government or someone else that was gonna rule their lives. As long as they participated in the community, they were going to be a part of the community and make it strong. That, to me, is New Hampshire.

"If we change that, we're changing into just another New England state, and we don't want that. We want to be the 'Live Free of Die' state."