Stu Green for NH Senate

<h2>About Stu!</h2>Stuart Green is a retired U.S. Navy Commander and native of New Hampshire.&nbsp;In his naval career, Stuart served as an accredited diplomat in Norway, an intelligence officer attached to multiple carrier aviation units, a director of a maritime intelligence operations center in Norfolk, and an executive officer in a unit serving senior NATO leadership in Italy.&nbsp; He was stationed at the Defense Intelligence Agency where he conducted counterinsurgency analysis for senior elected and uniformed policymakers, and through multiple deployments he participated in Operations Southern Watch, Iraqi Freedom, New Dawn, Enduring Freedom, Noble Eagle, as well as the Iraq Survey Group and counter-drug operations.&nbsp; After retiring from the Navy and returning to New Hampshire, Stuart continued to serve by volunteering as the Andover Town Moderator.Stuart earned a BA in history from Boston University, an MS in Strategic Intelligence from the National Intelligence University, he completed Joint Professional Military Education through the National Defense University, and more recently, he graduated with an MA in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.&nbsp; He is now working toward a PhD in international relations.&nbsp;For his diplomatic skills in service to the US-Norwegian relationship, Stuart was the first non-native to be awarded both the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit by the King and the Royal Norwegian Navy Medal of Merit by the Chief of their naval service.&nbsp; He was additionally awarded a U.S. Meritorious Service Medal, three Defense Meritorious Service Medals, a Joint Service Commendation, and various other personal, unit, and campaign citations.&nbsp;Stuart is a proud husband and father of two.&nbsp; He is a motorcyclist and an amateur photographer, but he mostly enjoys being in the woods with a tractor and chainsaw, felling, bucking, splitting, and stacking firewood for NH’s long winters.&nbsp;&nbsp;<img src="https://run.imgix.net/8eaff364-e00e-4572-bbdf-9d4e62027e11/68829e9d-0cd6-40f7-9d34-8ee90cd52997/68829e9d-0cd6-40f7-9d34-8ee90cd52997.jpeg?ixlib=js-3.8.0&amp;bri=0&amp;con=0&amp;sat=0&amp;high=0&amp;shad=0&amp;usm=0&amp;rect=0%2C0%2C3024%2C4032&amp;w=1500" alt="" caption="" align="left" alignwidth="40" tiltdirection="left" variant="framed">[Stuart Green was a member of the United States Navy. Use of military rank, job titles, and photographs in uniform does not imply endorsement by the Department of Defense or the Department of the Navy.]

This State Senate seat is not just a winnable one--Stu could have the&nbsp;deciding&nbsp;vote on a number of key New Hampshire issues. Put him in that seat to restore civility and rational thinking in politics. It will take all of us to reject extremism and bring about a freer, fairer, more prosperous, and well-educated state.

<h3>Fighting for Our Community</h3>These are some of the top issues our campaign is focused on. Learn more about our issues <a href="/issues" target="" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">here</a>.

Our Campaign’s Top Priorities

Many of our elected officials have gone astray in their most basic duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of New Hampshire, bending it to fit their political will or narrative.

As a retired Navy Commander, Stu is a sworn defender of the US Constitution. He spent 20 years doing just that. Now more than ever, our foundational principles are under siege, including our very identity as a democracy. This is Stu's most urgent mission: keeping us free and civil, and reminding us that we are all American. Whatever our political stripes, we have an obligation to one another.

Write a short blurb about an issue your campaign is highlighting. Try to keep the text a similar size between the various issue blurbs.

Defending the Constitution

Stu understands that we need to make life more affordable for Granite Staters, and one way to do that is by keeping taxes low for those who can least afford them. He will never support a sales or income tax.

Making New Hampshire More Affordable

On most issues, I am willing to compromise and work across the aisle — but not this one. Terminating a pregnancy is one of the most personal decisions a woman could ever be faced with, and any effort by the government to regulate or interfere with that decision is enormous government overreach. As a State Senator, I will protect access to abortion and contraceptive care. I will vote to repeal New Hampshire's 24-week abortion ban. While anti-abortion laws in New Hampshire are not as draconian as in other states, I believe that the government has no business making any such restrictions. This is especially true of laws that do not allow exceptions for rape or incest — which New Hampshire's ban does not include.I will vote to repeal parental notification laws. [FILL THIS IN]

Stu believes that a woman's choice to terminate a pregnancy is a deeply personal medical decision that the government should stay out of. As a State Senator, Stu will support legal protections for abortion, block extreme abortion bans, and defend access to contraceptives and IVF.

Defending Reproductive Freedoms

We have been at war for decades and many of our vets have paid a steep, silent price for it. Stu will work hard to improve veteran access to mental health resources, especially seasoned practitioners that understand military life. He will press insurers to cover more, and work to protect vets from professional stigmatization.

Helping Fellow Veterans

Property taxes are on the rise in New Hampshire for several reasons. First, housing inventory is insufficient, inflating the valuation of the home even if there is no change in the owner's income. Additionally, the wealthiest Granite Staters have seen tax cuts that are paid for by "downshifting" the burden to lower-income property owners.Then comes the issue of funding education through property taxes. As wealthier towns have been allowed to withhold tax revenue intended for schools in poorer towns, districts like ours (with typically lower property tax bases) are often forced to disproportionately increase local property tax rates to keep the lights on in schools.&nbsp;If townspeople with low incomes cannot afford higher property taxes, the schools suffer, and a feedback loop begins.&nbsp; When the schools deteriorate, real estate values drop even more, which reduces tax revenue further and makes it even harder for schools to make ends meet.To compound this problem, New Hampshire's school voucher program essentially forces taxpayers to pay twice for students: once for the voucher, and once to keep the public school open.&nbsp; The vast majority of parents who benefit from vouchers were already sending their children to private schools. That is, most voucher-takers do not need the subsidy, which--ironically--is paid for by lower income families. Where it concerns religious education, by the way, this practice is also a violation of NH's constitution, which expressly forbids using taxpayer money for that purpose. Let’s make the existing tax system simpler and fairer. Because education claims the lion’s share of our state budget, we should consider a comprehensive overhaul on school funding, and it can be done without an income or a sales tax.&nbsp; The simplest solution would be to wipe out the patchwork funding system that relies on a variety of municipal and state taxes, state aid, and grants.&nbsp;Then, we can set a uniform and truly adequate, simplified education property tax rate. I would like to ensure that education property taxes collected for poorer schools actually get redistributed to those schools, as originally intended.We must also restore the recently lost revenues that forced an increase in our property taxes and made our system even more regressive.&nbsp;It is imperative that we halt the repeal of the dividends and interest tax, for instance, and consider a modest increase for those above a particular income threshold.&nbsp; We can easily do this while protecting retirees and low-income earners.&nbsp;I will seek to restore the business profits taxes (cut just last year by a percentage point) and will include exemptions for small “Mom and Pop” and vulnerable enterprises.&nbsp;If businesses owned and headquartered out-of-state are profiting from NH, let them contribute more to our economy. To further reduce housing pressure, we will need to further incentivize the construction and expansion of affordable units, particularly for the workforce we need.&nbsp;Concord can help with this by loosening “NIMBY” zoning restrictions, such as those that prevent property owners from adding rental units on their existing structures. It is conducive to the demographic we most need to attract: young working families and professionals starting out in their careers.&nbsp;&nbsp;Next, we must eliminate the school voucher system.&nbsp; Entirely.&nbsp;Its expenditures are unfair, unconstitutional, always exceed projections, and—as extremist libertarians intend—it will be the downfall of public education writ large. Finally, we can find alternative revenue streams, rather than raising property taxes for the bulk of us.&nbsp; For out-of-staters buying up real estate in NH for second homes, or for homes used solely for Airbnb rentals, we may consider a tailored property tax.&nbsp;This would not only reduce the tax burden on regular Granite Staters, it would alleviate some housing market pressure.&nbsp; When we find the right path for legalizing (and controlling) marijuana, we can do better than simply taxing it.&nbsp; Through public/private partnerships, we can establish New Hampshire as an innovative agricultural exporter, assuming federal conditions eventually permit. Public/private partnerships in electrical power production may also provide long-term revenue for the state; joint ventures may be possible with solar farms, small modular nuclear reactors, wind, and new, more efficient approaches to biomass facilities, among others.&nbsp; Well-applied, public funds can "seed" good investments with meaningful returns for the taxpayers.

At a time when low- and middle- income families face rising costs, increasing property taxes makes it even harder. Stu will fight hard to lower your property taxes and turn back the policies that unfairly "downshifted" the tax burden onto those of us least able to pay it.

Lowering Property Taxes

The current system used to fund our public schools — underfunding from the state coupled with high local property taxes — is categorically unfair. Not only does it result in significant wealth inequality between school districts, it forces families in poorer towns to pay a larger share of their income just to keep their schools open. In its 2020 report, the Commission to Study School Funding found that "...communities with higher poverty rates and lower property wealth are doubly penalized under New Hampshire’s current system. Students in these communities, on average, receive fewer resources in the form of funding than students in wealthier communities. Taxpayers in these communities do their best to provide for their children, often levying higher local education property taxes than residents of wealthier communities."1 There is only one way to describe this situation: completely broken.I believe that every public school student in New Hampshire should have access equal opportunities regardless of where they live. As a State Senator, I will fight to overhaul how the system is funded without placing additional burdens on families who can't afford them.First, we must end the practice of allowing wealthier towns to withhold tax tax revenue originally meant for schools in poorer towns. In districts like ours, that means poorer towns often have to raise their local property taxes just to keep the school running. This strains working families and the quality of their children's education, while families in wealthier towns pay less. For this reason, we must mandate that education property taxes collected for poorer schools actually get redistributed to those schools, as originally intended.Next, we must set a uniform and truly adequate, simplified education property tax rate. Let’s make the existing tax system simpler and fairer while introducing new revenue streams that ease the burden on New Hampshire’s low- and middle-income earners.&nbsp; Because education claims the lion’s share of our state budget, we should consider a comprehensive overhaul on school funding, and it can be done without an income or a sales tax.&nbsp; The simplest solution would be to wipe out the patchwork funding system that relies on a variety of municipal and state taxes, state aid, and grants. We must also create new revenue streams for education, such as through the legalization of cannabis.Finally, I will fight tooth-and-nail to repeal New Hampshire's school voucher program. While those on the right side of the aisle calls these vouchers "Education Freedom Accounts," let's be honest about what they really are. They essentially force taxpayers to pay twice for students: once for the voucher, and once to keep the lights on in the public school in their town. There is no valid reason why taxpayers who are already struggling to make ends meet should have to foot the bill for another student to attend a private school — especially where many of the families taking the vouchers were already sending their children to private schools to begin with. When such vouchers are used to fund religious private education, this practice is also unconstitutional.&nbsp;1 The Commission to Study School Funding. Our Schools, Our Kids: Achieving Greater Equity for New Hampshire Students and Taxpayers. New Hampshire General Court, 1 December 2020, <a href="https://carsey.unh.edu/sites/default/files/media/2021/04/final_report_forcommission_v6_12012020_withcover.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">https://carsey.unh.edu/sites/default/files/media/2021/04/final_report_forcommission_v6_12012020_withcover.pdf</a>.

Stu believes that for future generations to succeed, we must equip all children with the tools and opportunities they need, regardless of zip code. Stu will fight to make public school funding fairer, especially for our district, and he will push to bring accountability, transparency, and fiscal responsibility to the costly school voucher program.

Supporting Public Education

The New Hampshire Constitution is clear about the right to bear arms: "All persons have the right to keep and bear arms in defense of themselves, their families, their property and the state." [Footnote Citation?] As a gun owner, I absolutely understand the need to teach proper safety and keep guns out of the hands of criminals. However, I fear that

Stu is a gun owner and knows the importance of education, demystification, and safety. He will consider limited regulation (as 2A calls for), but not measures affecting the law-abiding more than criminals. Gun control has often been used to oppress political and racial minorities. Stu will defend your right to defend yourself.

Upholding the Second Amendment

There is a reason why New Hampshire's natural wonders attract visitors from all over the world. Between our mountains, lakes, and coastlines, flora, and fauna, the beauty of the Granite State is second to none. But in the modern industrial age, we must actively work to protect our natural resources from pollution, climate change, and development — without disrupting our critically important forestry industry.I will oppose the creation of any new landfills in New Hampshire, and prohibit out-of-state enterprises from dumping their waste here. The last thing this state needs is for our waters to be polluted. It's bad for our health, bad for aquatic life, and unsafe to drink. It's time that we crack down on pollution.I will support the implementation of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard as a means not only of reducing pollution, but to also reduce gas costs. Because CAFE would require vehicles to be able to travel 50.4 miles per gallon of gas "for passenger cars and light trucks" by 2031,1 an adoption of its framework in New Hampshire would save money for families and significantly reduce the amount of carbon emissions that threaten to accelerate climate change and damage our ecosystems. I would also be in favor of a push toward electric vehicles to further reduce emissions.I will support efforts to bring green energy to New Hampshire. The global threat posed by climate change must be addressed, and we have prime opportunities in New Hampshire to lead a clean energy transition. I will support the development of new solar and wind initiatives, as well as incentives to entice homeowners and businesses to adopt solar infrastructure. However, the development of this infrastructure cannot come at the expense of cutting down our forests, and we must find inventive ways to install this technology — be it over parking lots and landfills or on top of buildings.Finally, I will work to ensure that such green energy initiatives will not put constraints on our robust logging and forestry industry. [TALK TO STU AND FINISH LATER]1 "Corporate Average Fuel Economy." National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, 7 June 2024, <a href="https://library.unr.edu/help/quick-how-tos/citing/citing-sources-in-mla-style/citing-a-website-in-mla#:~:text=Author%20Last%20Name%2C%20First%20Name,%2C%20Day%20Month%20Year%2C%20URL" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">https://library.unr.edu/help/quick-how-tos/citing/citing-sources-in-mla-style/citing-a-website-in-mla#:~:text=Author%20Last%20Name%2C%20First%20Name,%2C%20Day%20Month%20Year%2C%20URL</a>.

Stu understands that New Hampshire's natural beauty is essential to both our identity and our economy. He will work to preserve our logging industry for future generations. He will fight to keep our lakes clean, our air pure, and our wildlife thriving. We can do this without crushing working men and women, like truckers, farmers, and plow drivers.

Protecting New Hampshire's Environment

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<h3>Contribute now to support our campaign!</h3>

<h2>To donate via Act Blue, please click <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/donate/a-return-to-common-sense" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow">here...</a></h2><h2>To donate via a check, please mail to:</h2>Elect Stu GreenPO Box 441Andover, NH 03216<h2></h2>

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<h2>Patriotism is our bond as Americans, our flag is a symbol of that unity.</h2>By Stu GreenOriginally published in The New Hampshire Union Leader on November 26, 2023, then subsequently published in The Concord Monitor on November 27, 2023 under the title, "Let's claim the flag together."I WAS PRIVILEGED to serve as a career officer in the U.S. Navy, where men and women of all ethnic backgrounds and political persuasions worked together in defense of our nation. Before any other identity, we were Americans and we had each other’s backs. We formed lifelong bonds that cared little for partisan, religious, or ethnic differences, and we were proud to be part of a storied tradition.But in the years since I have been distressed to see great division emerge. Perhaps I was too busy or sheltered to notice the changes as they unfolded. What I see now is that we stand at a precipice, a crisis of national conscience, possibly on the verge of something terrible. But Winston Churchill once said, perhaps apocryphally, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” We must pull back. Reconsidering the importance of patriotism, our common story, and love for our fellow citizens may help.Though critics inevitably — and not incorrectly — point out how we have fallen short of or betrayed our own ideals at times, it cannot be denied that the American Revolution was one of the first and most powerful incarnations of the Enlightenment, which we take for granted today. The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that gave birth to — or greatly expanded — concepts like reason, constitutional government, liberty, and equality, to name a few. These are the ideas that gave life to the United States, and they are the reason for our extraordinary advancements in science, human rights, material wealth, and our spirited, generally peaceful public discourse.Our flag is meant to embody these ideals. It is an aspirational, unifying symbol that suggests if we can agree on anything, it is our foundational principles and that we have one another’s backs in difficult times.Yet extremists on both sides have lost this moral bearing. If I may generalize, the sin of today’s far right is the mistaken belief that “there are Americans and there are Democrats,” and only Republicans have the moral authority to wave the flag. It is a ridiculous notion that no doubt sits poorly with my politically diverse brothers and sisters in arms. It is a mentality linked to weaponized or performative patriotism, seen in confrontational, garish displays, an angry desire to “own” or gleefully “rip” those insufficiently like-minded, and it is exclusive rather than inclusive. It abandons one of the chief qualities that made the United States so extraordinary — our ability to look inward, reflect on, and address our problems. Worst of all, it unilaterally claims “truth” while making enemies of neighbors.The far left’s sin is no less destructive. It is the willingness to forfeit the flag entirely in a misguided belief that patriotism itself is little more than an expression of imperialist oppression, jingoism, or systemic racism. In these quarters, Enlightenment ideals like equality are not just elusive, they are part of the problem. The proposed remedy is essentially to abandon the American experiment, put discrimination under new management, and frame every problem in terms of identity, perennially dividing us as “oppressors” and “oppressed.” It is an equally exclusive mentality masquerading as tolerance, and like its far-right counterpart, it has made enemies of neighbors.All of this is wrong.The flag belongs to every one of us. Every American can and should claim it, be they Texan, Hawaiian, Alaskan, or Granite Stater, but there are no individuals or movements of any kind that may claim it for themselves alone. It is apolitical — no more emblematic of the Republican Party than the Democratic Party, the Libertarian Party, the Whig Party, the Know Nothing Party, the Bull Moose Party, or the Federalist Party. The flag is about attachment to our collective home, our freedom, and the responsibility to our neighbors that comes with that freedom. It is about the value set that has brought us so far.Our Churchillian opportunity may be that the middle majority is ready to break its silence, push extremists to the corners, and come together as patriots, pluralist and inclusive. So let us make what was once old new again — let us claim the flag together. Whatever our differences, let us appreciate one another as political competitors and love one another as neighboring Americans working under good, common principles. After all, the United States cannot be unmade except by our own hands.

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<h2>Finding our way back to our core American principles</h2>By Stu GreenOriginally published in The Concord Monitor on March 29th, 2024, and published the same day in The New Hampshire Union Leader, under the title, "Don't repeat excesses of our opponents."Will our nation peacefully ride out the oppressive, majoritarian impulses of dueling political adversaries locked in an existential struggle? To use a couple of timeworn clichés, we have veered off our path and are now staring into an abyss. Too many of us have forgotten our American selves, believing that, when the fate of the nation is in the balance, it is expedient to forgo some of our most foundational principles. This is dangerous folly.Time was, Americans considered freedom of speech, however imperfectly applied, as sacrosanct. Most of us old enough to remember the Cold War will recall the horrors perpetrated in unfree societies where all speech served the ruling classes; it conformed to “politically correct” narratives on pain of personal and professional devastation, or even death. It severely stunted the cultural and economic growth of those societies for generations. Yet our own First Amendment is now under fire from both ends of the spectrum.Hard-left thought leaders have dismissed it as an archaic principle that enables right-wing oppression, and they advocate for a “consequence culture” and compelled speech model that ensures fear-based conformity to pre-approved narratives. Right-wing “champions” of freedom, meanwhile, chafe against online censorship and campus cancel culture, but seek to control the content of classroom discussion with bans on divisive concepts and other disfavored forms of expression.But misery loves company, and the First Amendment, threatened and shivering, is not alone. The concepts of equality and meritocracy are now openly derided by the far left, where we find not only an ironic desire for racial resegregation, but also a redistribution of goods, services, and privileges, portioned on a hierarchy of group identities and a thinly veiled hope for historical retribution. Those of us horrified by this idea, however, should find no solace in the far right, which seems disturbingly at ease with dismantling democracy itself to prevent that outcome. As the 2020 stolen election lie and brazen gerrymandering gathered momentum, several Trump acolytes told me with eerie, chorus-like coherence, that “We’re not actually a democracy. We’re a republic.” (We are, in fact, both. We are a democratic republic.) This misguided attempt to diminish our democratic nature presumably justified voter disenfranchisement and paved the way for a not-so-secretly-aspiring dictator.So, we appear to have reached that point where any core principle may be sacrificed so long as it benefits our own tribe and stymies the other. Locked in a negative feedback loop, our two sides react to one another with increasing stridency and smug sanctimony, all the while losing sight of the very concepts that make us American — our anchors, our navigational fixes, our touchstones.This is not the way.I argued here last November for the virtues of patriotism, that the left foolishly eschews the flag while the right abuses and claims it for themselves. Today I argue that, after recognizing we are all American, we must find our way back to our core principles. Freedom of speech is not some artifact of a right-wing plot to oppress. It is sacrosanct, and it is for everyone, even those we abhor. The word “equality” is not a dog whistle invented by white supremacists, it is an Enlightenment-era value critical to the extraordinary progress we have made as a society so far. And the concept of democracy, of course, is so essential to our identity that the United States would effectively cease to exist without it.So, when staring into that abyss, step back. Check to make sure that, in the process of reacting to the scary excesses of our opponents, we don’t feed the problem and doom the Republic. Whatever the policy at stake, our guiding principles must be preserved, even if it means — oh, the horror — acknowledging the legitimacy of our opponents, compromising, or accepting a loss for the greater good. To preserve our values and to avoid potentially horrific strife, those who win the day must consciously preserve the rights of the minority, must exercise forbearance, and must not stifle or disenfranchise their opponents.This is the way.

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