Politics & Government

Concord Seniors Get Time with Cilley [VIDEO]

Former Democratic state senator promotes jobs and economic development, attacks Legislature.

brought her grassroots campaign for governor to Concord on April 17, talking to about 30 seniors at .

Cilley gave a 10-minute stump speech and then answered questions for about a half an hour. She focused the bulk of her comments on her personal and professional background, improving the jobs front and economic development, and having a conversation with voters about revenue streams and the future of the state.

Cilley, who grew up in Berlin, said she was never focused on her future as a child, beyond finishing high school and working in a mill, not unlike many others in her family.

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“Growing up, that’s what I thought I would do,” she said. “It wasn’t anything I felt badly about … It was good, honorable work, back when we respected workers.”

While in high school, a teacher approached her about going to college and Cilley politely explained to the teacher that it wasn’t her life’s destiny.

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But years later, the teacher’s words stuck with her and at the age of 29, she attended the University of New Hampshire and received an undergraduate degree in psychology while remarrying and raising a child.

After receiving her degree though, Cilley realized that she really wasn't more marketable than she was when she didn't have the degree. So she went on to get her graduate degree at the Whittemore School of Business where she stayed and worked for two decades, and still does, teaching a course this semester. She also ran her own market research firm and worked to help her husband’s company.

Cilley said that one of the things that differentiates her from the other candidates is that she could “talk about the bridge between working men and women, working families, property owners, and Main Street business.” As she has been campaigning around the state, Cilley said that business owners do talk about taxes and regulations but even they realize those conversations are irrelevant if there aren’t customers coming through the door.

“The policies that drive working families further and further into debt, are not policies that sustain a healthy economy going forward, and that is part of what’s going on at our Statehouse,” she said.   

According to Cilley, businesses thinking about moving to New Hampshire aren’t because the state refuses to invest in quality education, and communication and transportation infrastructure. Very high property taxes are another reason businesses aren’t moving to New Hampshire, she said.

“And by the way, we’d prefer to live in a state that doesn’t have our elected officials on ‘The Colbert Report’ and ‘The Daily Show’ everyday,” she said, to giggles from the seniors.  

High property taxes pits seniors against funding public schools and public safety, Cilley said. She added that the state needed to work to find ways to keep young people in the state.

Cilley, who has focused on not taking pledges during the campaign, said it was like hiring a carpenter to work on your house but after you hire the carpenter, he says he isn’t going to use a hammer or a screwdriver to work on your house because he took a pledge not to.

“Would you want that carpenter to work on that building?” she asked. “We deserve in this state at least a conversation on what we want our state to look like.”  

Cilley also pledged to fight to preserve education and fund infrastructure projects, like rail and road construction.

During the question and answer time period, the seniors asked about whether a sales tax would actually lower property taxes, civility, privatized prisons, funding refugees, and whether or not Cilley supported the construction of roundabouts.

On taxes, Cilley said she would create a blue ribbon commission to look at the issue and then have a discussion about the results, with all of the options put on the table. She said cutting spending, which is what the Legislature was currently doing, was not the answer. Cilley was critical of the Legislature, noting that there were “more lawsuits than you can count.”

Cilley said that in order to bring back civility, there needed to be “factually-based discussions about the range of problems we face.” She served in both the House and the Senate previously and noted that she was able to work with both political sides. Cilley said it was a different climate then. People who don’t believe in public education now control the Legislature, she noted.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my entire life,” she said.

On privatized prisons, Cilley is against them, saying that studies have shown that it doesn’t save money and the prisons are not as run well as prisons that are not private.

When she was asked to make a pledge to fund and assist refugees in being resettled properly, Cilley wouldn’t. But she said that she believed the country was a melting pot and if the economy could be improved, there wouldn’t be as many problems with funding the refugees.

With roundabouts, she said she didn’t have a problem with them but noted that some states allow the entering car to have the right-of-way and there should be uniformity with entering and exiting.


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