The following is the letter I have submitted to the Laconia Daily Sun and the Citizen of Laconia.

To the Editor:

I read the article (Laconia Daily Sun, Tuesday, February 16^th) about the local impact of the budget cuts being pursued by the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) with quite some interest and feel compelled to share my thoughts of this story. 

I agree with Senator Sgambati calling these reductions in payments to health care providers as “unacceptable”. I don’t know why DHHS is always looked at to compensate the lion’s share of expenditure cuts for the ridiculous spending our state legislators put into the state budget. This policy only shifts costs from the state to private institutions, which then have to pass that loss onto higher costs for services which we all pay through higher health insurance premiums. This helps to create the call for completely changing our health care system into what will ultimately be a single payer system. I have a feeling that this cost shift is what we are to expect with the current federal plan being negotiated behind closed doors in Washington, until there comes a point when no private health care provider or insurance company exists to pass the costs onto. Then the rationing will start.

I made my announcement on the air this morning. First stop was at the radio show “Meet The New Press” on WEMJ 1490 AM with Skip Murphy, Doug Lambert and Pat Hynes.

Now Skip and Doug also run the blog site GraniteGrok while Pat has the Now Hampshire site. It was interesting during the interview that Doug and Pat were posting to their sites while we were talking.

View the GraniteGrok Post       View the Now Hampshire Post

Check out the audio from the show.

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Afterwards I headed over to the WEZS studio (1350 AM) to the radio show “The Advocates” with Niel Young.

Niel had Commissioner John Stephen on during the final hour and there was no time set aside for me (which is understandable since this was a surprise announcement) but I helped with some of the discussion there and I was able to make the announcement before the show closed.

I have since received many calls of support for my candidacy, which is greatly appreciated. I plan to devote a lot of time on this site to keep you updated to the happenings with the campaign and the issues that concern each of us.

To all of you that have already provided your support and blessing I say THANK YOU. I will be planning some campaign events in the near future and hope to see you there.

Tonight was the Belknap County Lincoln Day Cruise on the Mount Washington. There were just shy of 200 people in attendance and we were able to hear from several of the candidates running for office.

Unfortunately the Sullivan County Lincoln Day Cook-out in Claremont was also scheduled for tonight so, while we were still docked we heard from U.S. Senator Sununu, who is running for re-election, and State Senator Joe Kenney, who is running for Governor. They both had to leave right away in order to make it over to Claremont for that event. We also weren’t able to hear from any of the 2^nd Congressional District candidates because it is more important for them to be at a function in that district.

The cruise was nice and I was able to speak to several people about how the Republican’s lost the majority in 2006 because to many Republicans in Congress gave up on their Conservative Principles, especially in the spending and earmarks areas. I started outlining what I see as a strong campaign to regain control. As I spoke it was mentioned by several individuals that we need a strong Conservative to win the 4^th District Senate seat.

As we discussed the issues I began to see clearly that I should run for that seat. The more I thought about it and how I can affect a positive change to stop the practice of the state passing costs down through the counties to the property tax payers I realized that I would not only be protecting the residents of Laconia but some of our surrounding neighbors that don’t have the Spending-Tax-Cap to protect them.

I plan on making an announcement on “Meet The New Press” (on WEMJ 1490 AM between 9 and 11 AM on Saturdays) and on “The Advocates” (on WEZS 1350 AM between 8 and Noon on Saturdays). I also plan on contacting the newspapers for an interview sometime during Sunday so you should be able to read about it in Monday’s Edition of both the Laconia Daily Sun and the Citizen of Laconia.

I look forward to signing the candidate forms on Wednesday and getting on the campaign trail to meet all of you, my future constituents.