O P I N I O N

THE SOAPBOX

Stand Up. Speak Up. It’s Your Turn.

My background

I’m a 4th-generation union member born and raised in Manchester. The story of my family is a story of immigrant asbestos miners who came to America in the early 1900s. They achieved the American Dream by becoming union railroad workers. From a young age, my father told me, “Democrats back unions, we back Democrats because they’re the party of labor.” I was also raised with concepts of radical love and empathy, thanks largely to my devout Catholic Memere (French-Canadian for grandmother).

The Democrats are the party of the New Deal, Civil Rights Act, and the Affordable Care Act. While not perfect, these are milestone policies that are committed to racial and economic justice. Given that marriage of ideals, I should be the perfect contender for a proud Democrat– but I’m not.

How I lost faith in the NHDP

In 2014 I was a political science major at Plymouth State who decided to drop out for a semester to work on the NH Democratic Coordinated Campaign. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. My salary was about $2500 a month, which to a college student was the most I’ve ever made at that point. My work days started at 9am and usually went past 9pm. I had zero days off and I was “lucky” if my work week was fewer than 80 hours. I was told that if I hit my metrics, I’d be entitled to 1 day off a month. I’d later find out that my metrics were mathematically impossible to hit. At one point, my office had attempted to contact every voter in the Plymouth Area that the campaign directed us to. I was still under my outreach goals and I got zero days off that election cycle. At best, my pay worked out to about $7.21 an hour, which is less than minimum wage while the campaign argued that we were all overtime exempt. I tried to unionize the other campaign workers, but the campaign manager found out and threatened me with being fired. They eventually gave me some gas cards so I’d stop and they’d “let” me keep working. I joined the party because I thought they supported unions. And my fledgling political career nearly ended there because I wanted to form a workplace union on a Democratic Campaign.

How my faith failed to be restored

In 2015, I was a supporter of Bernie Sanders in the NH Democratic Primary. He always stood on the picket lines with the IBEW (my Dad and grandfather’s union) when they went on strike. I owe a lot of the middle class privilege I had growing up to Sanders and people like him. Going to local Democratic Committee meetings around the state, I felt ostracized by other party members for supporting Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton. Party members would come up to me begging me to switch my endorsement, but like 60% of all NH Democratic primary voters, I sided with Sanders.

Despite the largest NH primary victory since JKF, Bernie got roughly the same number of NH delegates as Clinton. This is because the DNC has something called “Superdelegates”, a group of party insiders who can tip the scales of primaries at the convention, an undemocratic function in my opinion (pun intended). It never sat right with me.

In 2018, I was disappointed to find out that many of the problems with the NH Democratic Coordinated Campaign still existed. I had connected with another Plymouth State student who was working on that campaign. My memory is a little faulty, but I believe that by that time they had earned one day off a week! Relatively progressive compared to 2014, but draconian compared to all other types of work. Alcoholism, self harm ideation, and bullying were still common factors among campaign workers. Two of those factors are a result of the stress of being told that you’re not hitting your mathematically impossible goals. The last factor is from the toxic work culture that is common in the party in my opinion. As recently as 2024, Democratic Party volunteers were crying in the Manchester office because of bullying.

In my opinion, The NHDP is an incredibly toxic environment if you’re not part of the inner club.

In 2020 I was proud that the NH Democratic Coordinated Campaign voluntarily recognized the campaign organizers’ union under IBEW 2320, the same union my retired father was a member of.

In August of 2024, I talked with a few organizers working on the campaign here in NH. I was confused by the fact they told me they weren’t working under a union contract. In my eyes, the Democratic Coordinated campaign became a “union shop” in 2020. It’s possible I misunderstood the campaign workers. Maybe there was a problem in negotiations, maybe they were working under the contract signed in 2020. I wanted clarification in private conversations with party officials before I got mad and wrote something incorrect.

I messaged my city party chair with my concerns. Here is the email I wrote:

In my efforts to “call in” rather than “call out” it’s come to my attention that the NH Democratic coordinated campaign isn’t currently unionized despite the fact they were unionized in previous years. I’m a little worried as a Democrat, former NHDP campaign staffer, and as a proud union member.

The conditions I faced as a non-union NHDP Field Organizer in 2014 remind me of the importance of workers uniting together. If NH campaign workers have to do a union drive every election season, I see this as distracting from the important work of removing Republicans from power here in NH.

The NHDP campaign staff should be a union shop each election year. I hope for the sake of building a more blue NH, we can avoid the possibility of looking like the party is union busting and distracting our campaign workers from the important jobs they are doing.

I know you aren’t responsible for current circumstances, but I wanted to reach out to somebody in our party. If there is somebody better to be reaching out to, I’d love to contact them too.

I want a strong labor movement and a strong NHDP.

In solidarity,

Lemay

I never got a reply, so I forwarded this email to an NHDP staffer. No reply. I brought this up in conversation with multiple state reps. No reply. I don’t want to fault those state reps, as they were actively running campaigns and were just trying to reach out for me. I have a lot of respect for those reps who are also victims of poor party leadership.

Note: For the sake of fairness, I reached out to some more former party/party related officials prior to sending this. One responded and they thought it was an internal problem in the union, not the fault of the campaign or party.

Who is responsible?

Nobody knows! When I bring up any good faith critique to party officials and elected Democrats, the response is usually, “It’s not really [person in charge]’s fault, they don’t really have a lot of power”. I cannot for the life of me figure out who is actually in charge at the NHDP. Here is a summary of most of my conversations with them:

My Critique: Dems raise a lot of money only to lose the state house and senate most years

Defense: The party chair doesn’t really control that, it’s the independent House and Senate Democratic committees

My Critique: Working conditions for Democratic Coordinated campaign workers are unfair

Defense: It’s the campaign’s fault, the party has no control over that

My Critique: I don’t see effective messaging that appeals to voters in NH from the party

Defense: Party leadership doesn’t impact that at all

My Critique: It came to my attention that 2024 campaign workers don’t have a union contract

Defense: No response

My Critique: Why have Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassn supported more Trump nominees than any other Senate Democrats?

Defense: No response

If nobody specifically can be held accountable for repeating failure, who can I talk with to address valid concerns? If a problem exists over a long period of time and in similar circles, I have to believe there is a systemic problem.

What I’m doing next

A community organizer that I really respect once told me, “If you can’t change the outcome of a meeting or an organization, you need to leave.” I don’t believe that the party wants me included in their spaces. My critiques are never seriously considered while blame is deflected. I feel shut out while Republicans have won control of Manchester, the state, and our Federal government. The Manchester Dems wonder why more young people don’t show up to committee meetings, but I think it’s because young people don’t feel like the party stands up for their values.

Like many of the current registered voters in NH, I’m switching my party affiliation from Democrat to “undeclared”. NH Republicans have more registered voters than Democrats and I now understand why. Maybe people don’t feel loyal enough to the Democrats to declare for them, maybe they just like the ability to declare for any primary they want to. I’m certainly the former option.

I’ll vote for good local candidates who happen to be Democrats, but I will not vote for anybody just because they’re a Democrat. Values matter more to me than party.

I’ve decided to join the Socialist Party of the United States who have been doing great work around tenant education and have expressed a desire to build a tenant union in NH.

Our General Meeting for members is open to the public and happens every last Friday of the month at 6:30 p.m. (Next meeting: February 28th at 6:30 p.m.). We hold our meetings in Manchester at the Unitarian Universalist Church (669 Union St) and get food and drinks after!

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