June 1, 2008
Union Leader
CRAIG BENSON may have had a tin ear and a shortage of PR skills, but considering what has happened to New Hampshire’s fiscal fortunes since he left the Corner Office, we wonder whether voters are having second thoughts about turning him out after a single term.
Incumbent Gov. John Lynch edged out Benson in 2004 in part due to the unpopularity of President Bush and a profligate Republican Congress that was as shameless in its spending as were the Democrats. Lynch also boasted of his own private-sector business skills. They couldn’t match those of Benson, who founded and built a hugely successful high-tech firm. But Lynch’s pleasant personality, coupled with his savvy in taking the Pledge against broadbased taxes, were enough to beat out Benson, who became the first governor in modern memory to be denied a second consecutive term.
Lynch was relatively harmless in his own first term, but that has proven deceptive. Once in office, he campaigned successfully for liberal fellow Democrats who have turned the Legislature, in their own first term of control, into a big-spending, big-government operation that would put even Massachusetts to shame.
Lynch has not so much led them as followed them meekly. Siding with them on all manner of social issues (gay civil unions, ultra-liberal pro-abortion laws), he has gladly turned over the keys to spending restraint.
The big-increase budget he crafted was enlarged even further by his Legislature.
It was soon in serious deficit trouble, despite Lynch’s denials, and even with the tax hikes he is now desperately trying to enact, it looks to put New Hampshire into real fiscal peril for this biennium.
All this after Gov. Benson, seeing the need for fiscal restraint, had cut spending and left Lynch and crew with a sizeable surplus.
And we haven’t even mentioned Lynch’s abysmal leadership failure on the crucial issue of allowing the people a vote on restoring the state constitution to keep courts and lawyers out of school funding.
This month brings the filing period for state offices. Republicans, independents, indeed all voters who care about the New Hampshire Advantage, had better hope that someone with some proven budgetary skills and discipline steps forward to challenge the Lynch regime before it is too late.