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NH needs Hassan in Senate

By Staff | Nov 5, 2016

I’ve known Gov. Maggie Hassan for almost 20 years and have watched her rise to every challenge she’s taken on.

In 1999, when I was governor, I appointed a citizens panel to help ensure equal educational opportunities in the state. I knew Maggie would be perfect for the job. As a mother of a son who experiences severe disabilities, she knows how hard it is for so many families to find the right classroom for their children.

Despite the best efforts of communities and school districts, too often, children like her son Ben miss out on an education that makes the most of their potential. Throughout her career as an advocate and a public servant, she’s worked tirelessly to improve education for all children in New Hampshire.

Maggie’s exactly who you want in your corner: She’s smart, resourceful, compassionate and tough as nails. In New Hampshire, we’ve seen these qualities on full display as she’s led our state over the last four years. Unemployment is at a historic low, and New Hampshire is the most business-friendly state in the nation.

Thanks to Maggie’s bipartisan leadership, over 50,000 more Granite Staters have health coverage through Medicaid expansion – a watershed moment for access to health care in New Hampshire. She’s been prudent with state resources, which has helped double the state’s rainy day fund. And she froze in-state college tuition for the first time in 25 years and lowered the cost of community college.

For Maggie, words like "inclusiveness" and "opportunity" are not abstract terms – they’re deeply personal, rooted in her experience raising her family. She sees the bigger picture, understanding that when you expand opportunity and equality, that opens doors for everybody.

She led the effort in the New Hampshire Senate to legalize same-sex marriage, helping to set an example that the nation would eventually follow. Since then, she’s taken numerous steps to further strengthen rights and protections for LGBTQ Granite Staters.

She’s been an unwavering defender of a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions and control her own destiny. Women’s reproductive rights are under relentless partisan attack, but Governor Hassan has successfully fought back, restoring state funding to Planned Parenthood.

She understands how important Planned Parenthood is for women all across New Hampshire, providing preventive care and the freedom to choose when to start a family. She understands how much work needs to be done to provide economic security to women and their families and will continue to fight for paid family leave and equal pay for equal work.

Republican control of Congress has been an era of extreme gridlock, leaving a long and urgent to-do list for the next Congress. Addressing climate change, stagnant wages, student debt relief, and rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure have all been held hostage to partisan blockades and foot-dragging. We need Maggie’s values and pragmatic approach in the United States Senate to finally tackle these challenges head-on.

New Hampshire desperately needs emergency funding to respond to the opioid epidemic. It’s estimated that we’ll lose 500 Granite Staters to opioid overdoses before this year is over. We need much more than token gestures from Congress to turn the tide of this epidemic. Maggie’s ability to reach across the aisle is unquestionable. As our governor, she’s been in the trenches fighting this epidemic day in and day out, and there’s nobody better prepared to fight for the resources our first responders and treatment providers need.

The Senate must also finally "advise and consent" on the next Supreme Court justice, as the Constitution directs, and end this unprecedented partisan obstruction. As Republicans now debate among themselves as to whether they’ll ever fill the ninth seat on the Supreme Court, we need Maggie Hassan in the Senate to help end this gridlock that is so corrosive to our governing institutions.

Maggie has won our trust as governor, and I know she will do so again as a U.S. senator. I can’t think of a better partner to have in the Senate fighting for New Hampshire every single day. On Nov. 8, I urge you to vote Maggie Hassan for the U.S. Senate.

Jeanne Shaheen is a two-term senator and former governor of New Hampshire.

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