Budget Watch Nevada

My weeklong trip to New Hampshire to investigate the Free State Project has been eye-opening and inspirational. Activists here are motivated, organized, and – best of all – effective.

In under 4 short years, a diversified band of liberty-loving citizens from New Hampshire and a couple hundred more who recently moved to the state have changed the political landscape for the better.

This group of “Free Staters” is a loose-knit bunch of anarchists, minarchists, libertarians, Ron Paul Republicans, small government Democrats, housewives, and students. Some of them look like hippies, some like recluses, some like runway models, and some like Wall Street bankers. Their motivations and their pet issues are personal and varied, but they come together on any issue that pits the state against individual rights (the right to life, liberty, property, and self determination are still sacrosanct here). The New Hampshire Liberty Alliance provides a virtual community of fellow activists that provides campaign training, lobbying education and training, recruiting, research, and volunteer resources for organizations and candidates who fall under the pro-liberty umbrella.

Compared to Nevada, this group is well organized and well manned. They typically have 30-50 activists show up for any meeting. There are 20 researchers that follow legislation each year and alert the membership if there is an anti-liberty bill in committee. Then they send people to speak out against the bill at the legislature and start a telephone campaign to committee members.

It’s the same for LP and gun owners meetings or homeschoolers meetings. With 400 state assemblymen and 26 senators, the legislators are very accessible and responsive to voters.

New Hampshire politics provides one of the best venues for grassroots democracy and representative government in the country. And their constitutionally weak governor and legislature keep it that way.

If we in the Silver State, with 50% higher population, could replicate the Granite State’s activist base, we would have a real counterweight to the heavy-handed special interest influence of the teachers unions, public employees unions, and the NV Resort Association lobbyists. Even though New Hampshire currently suffers under Democrat majorities in both houses and the governorship, they still are far more conservative and taxpayer-friendly than Nevada’s “Republican” caucus. We should be so lucky to have such Democrats in our capitol.

If you are tired of being on the losing end of all pro-liberty, smaller-government battles, there is an alternative: move to New Hampshire and join the winning team for “liberty in our lifetime.”