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increasing threats against u.s. lawmakers that may call for more security. then we will discuss the election in the battleground state of wisconsin, with scott bauer. also, university of wisconsin political science member and director of the election research center, watch washington journal, live at seven :00 eastern, wednesday morning on c's and, or on c-span now. join to discuss with your phone calls, facebook comments, text, and tweets. >> republican governor and tom sherman, his democratic challenger participated in a debate ahead of this year's midterm election read they were questioned on a range of issues, including housing affordability, abortion policy energy cost, and election integrity.

overgrow good evening and welcome. for tonight's important debate between chris sununu and tom sherman. i am the host of new hampshire today on iheartradio. before we begin, i would like to think our sponsor for tonight, a nonpartisan organization across the country and here in new hampshire. our host, the union leader, --our listeners, and of course, c-span viewers joining us across the nation. a special welcome to the candidates, a special evening and beautiful new hampshire. the leaves are falling and politics is in full gear as we get set for this election. here are the ground rules. each candidate will have 60 seconds to respond to each question, and a 32nd rebuttal will be issued at my discretion. the goal is to have the candidates engage with each other. and discuss their solutions to problems facing us in new

hampshire. in doing so, they will respond to each panelist question when prompted by the moderator. ahead of the election, we encourage folks to be quiet throughout the course of tonight . if there are any issues, we will have to remove individuals if there is anything that happens. we hope that is not the case. please refrain from clapping or any reactions of any sort, except for right now when we welcome the candidates first. the governor of new hampshire, chris sununu. [applause] and the democratic nominee, dr. tom sherman. [applause] i am also very excited to be joined by three panelists this evening. mike cody.

veteran political reporter, kevin. student journalists, coal. let's begin. the first question goes to senator sherman. typically, before undecided voters will consider a challenger, why should crispy fire? sen. sherman: the major reason comes down to trust. he said he would not put in place an abortion ban and within a year, he did that. he has repeatedly said what he is going to do and then not done it, or has not taken responsibility for things that he should have taken them four. for example, eight hundred thousand dollars of federal money was sent back because chris sununu said we didn't have enough hungry children here.

another 18 million dollars, right in the middle of people with rental assistance. again, said we didn't need it here, or at least he didn't spend it all. that puts us at risk. when we think about somebody in charge, they have to be on the ball, they have to be somebody we can trust. he is not listening, he has taken us off course with the abortion ban, off course with the energy policy. we need to get back on course and focus on the things that matter, cost and choice. >> first, you made it clear that dr. sherman would take the state in the wrong direction. what would happen in new hampshire if he is elected? sen. sherman: we can focus all day on my opponent. i want to focus on what we are going to do. the school responsibility in a time of muscle and inflation, we all know a recession is coming, regardless of what they want to tell you, inflation israel.

you need to have somebody at the top that is fiscally responsible. my opponent voted for an income tax twice. i will veto it again. it is time to's not take money out of people's pockets. my philosophy with government, for the past six years, we will wrap our services around your individual needs. your business, your kids, and that is the responsibility. it takes more work to do that, but the system get so much more efficient. at the end of the day, it is about fiscal responsibility and making sure the individual comes first. gov. sununu: i have never voted for an income tax, i would veto it if it came across my desk. i pointed out about the mismanagement tax. property tax has gone up 15%. energy costs have doubled.

the federal money that i just talked about has gone back. we need a governor who is paying attention, and putting money back in the pocket. >> tom made this accusation before. i asked the department of revenue administration. in 2017, the average property rates have gone down, 10 point 8%. i think 80 2% of cities and counties have lowered their property tax rate in new hampshire. you can go on the website, the data is there. go see what your is. it lists it by town. this idea that we are not being responsible --we are returning that cost to people. >> we have tony with a question for both candidates on the economy. new hampshire unemployment right now is lower than it was before the pandemic. it is a great market for workers, not so much for

employers struggling to find employees. what can the state do to increase the size of its labor pool. >> the number one barrier to work --we are the fastest growing population in the northeast. first time in decades that has been the case. folks want to be here. businesses want to be here, too. four thousand new businesses since right before the pandemic are registered. we are the place people want to be. housing is still the number one barrier we have. we don't just talk about it, i invested the one million dollar housing fund. the state had never done anything like that before. the grants are being -- shovel snow in the ground and we start building. we have to go 10, 20 thousand dollars units. it shows that record of success. it is a plan that incentivizes cities and towns to say yes.

it creates more opportunities, it takes all those pieces that tend to be the barriers and moves forward on the with that shot in the arm from the state that offsets the inflationary cost. >> i am glad to hear the governor is listening to me about a plan, all he has done on this is watch as the housing crunch because the housing crisis. childcare is the other driver of this. education, we don't have all the education pieces in place to develop network wars. my plan for housing is clearly a plan, it is something that builds off of the federal money that the governor has used in his one-time band-aid for housing. over the next several years at 30 $5 million a year. on childcare, we can do better on childcare by giving businesses tax credits to create that. for our schools, the pathways programs with our community colleges. and with our universities, to

make sure we are fully supporting businesses. businesses tell me that they can be so much more productive when they are fully supported. >> the issue of housing and rent is when i hear consistently. we will stick with that topic and more from mike. >> i will change the question slightly. i will go back to 2019, and governor sununu, when you referred to a town that rhymes with redford, we were talking about the resistance to multifamily howdy. is there a proposal before them to change the headquarters into multifamily housing, they are getting some resistance. what can the state do to encourage communities to allow these projects to happen? one of the biggest problems we have in new hampshire. >> we did something that the state has never done before, we have a reading million dollar opportunity, those grants that

incentivize and reward towns for saying yes to new planning project. like rochester, salem, these towns do housing really well. usually, it is cost. young families come in. i came up with the idea, we will give every town $10,000 per unit . that is a massive amount of money. it far outweighs the potential cost burdens. the first time to say yes, they get the money. it is almost a race to see who can permit fastest. it has never been tried before, but the response has been overwhelming. incentivizing with the caret. we want these towns to say yes. smaller towns in rural new hampshire, they will all participate in this. you will see smaller housing projects go up everywhere. >> same topic different question for senator sherman.

>> inventory is down, mortgage interest rates are going up, price of raw material, labor, everything is skyrocketing, what do you do to fix it? >> we have a three-part plan on my website which we pulled together rather than just coming up with an idea, we brought in to stakeholders, and talk to them about how to move forward. the first part is looking at towns and recognizing each town has its own personality. we need to let the town fell from the inside out. a lot of the zoning laws are outdated. we helped them with grants and loans to make sure they can do that. second part is incentivizing construction by working with the commercial and nonprofit elders -- builders to do that. building out that workforce that will allow that construction to occur. one of the things we have learned is that we have to bring more of our supply chain back to new hampshire. that is part of why i put in place or sponsored the bill that

would promote new hampshire manufacturing with steel fabrication. that is how we need to be thinking about bringing our supply chain home so we don't have to outsource. >> i have kevin here with a question on state budget priorities. we will start with governor sununu. >> let's assume for a moment you are right, we head into a recession in 2023 that will last well into 2024. this would come as the state is phasing out the 5% interest and dividends tax. give people an idea of budget cuts and efficiency that you would pursue even if future revenues decline. >> you don't have to go after massive budget cuts. we have a massive surplus already. our surplus, being traditionally 60 million dollars, it is well across four hundred million right now. the state government has too

much money. it is yours. we are returning it to the property taxpayers. last budget had a 20 million dollar return. state government can't cut your taxes, but we can send that cash back. the point here is, we have a lot of these funds already. we don't need to do math, we need to get our taxes back in line with the loan and efficient spending. >> sucker question for dr. sherman. >> if we do had into a recession, and revenues do begin to decline, can you support higher spending promises you have made in the selection? tuition free community college, more state spending for childcare and health care, just to name a few. would you consider raising existing taxes or suspending packs tax cuts to pay for your initiatives. >> i -- first of all, no income

tax, no sales tax, lower property taxes, that is where some of this investment we are talking about --also, we increase revenue to the state. that is exactly what i'm talking about. the other part that i also believe is a great source of revenue, which we are currently outsourcing, is to legalize adult use cannabis. that is something that the people of new hampshire want, that is something that actually will make what is being sold in new hampshire safer. we know that if it is done properly, opioid abuse rates actually may drop. states like massachusetts and illinois. we know that we can raise effective revenue by doing it well. we have good templates to build out on. that would allow us to move forward even in a recession. >> do you agree with him in regard to legalizing cannabis? >> if the answer is we are going

to solve our budget problem by selling drugs, no. i think ultimately, this could become legalize. i think we have been very smart saying, now is not the time. when you have an opioid crisis that is increasing, we have new doorway system, i broke down and rebuilt the entire system. recovery friendly workplaces. we are not doing it just in manchester. in all the rural parts of the state, as well. that system has to be in place and successful before we start legalizing more drugs. >> 30 seconds on his statement of legalizing drugs being problematic. >> we are not legalizing drugs, we are legalizing adult use cannabis. other states have done it successfully. look at what has happened in new hampshire on drugs since the governor has been in office. 2500 people have died of

overdoses. the rates of overdoses are higher than they were when he took office. his doorways program, one of those things where chris sununu decides to go do something, it is a failure. people are getting sick and dying because of it. >> i couldn't be more proud of the doorway system. it is rural access to care, and a fully wraparound system. in 2020 and 20 one, new hampshire was the only state in the country where we didn't see a massive rise in overdose deaths? it was basically even. the rest of the state has gone up 60%. while we were at the tip of the spear, the overdose deaths in the state have come down. it is just incredible. when i took office, remember that sky walking -- skyrocketing number? we rebuilt the system. --we will get back -->> senator

sherman, you have said that governor sununu has signed an abortion been created the definition of a ban is to officially or illegally prohibit something. abortions are still obtainable in new hampshire. are you lying >> >> he put it in a band that wasn't there before. he didn't have a ban on 20 four weeks, which is what he put in place. i go back to what he said yesterday, which is he couldn't veto the budget because there was a continuing resolution. in 2019, when he decided to veto the budget, we had a continuing resolution for him in 24 hours. on june third, 2021, he said he would sign a budget that had an abortion been in it before the budget even past. three weeks later, he signed it. he had three weeks and did nothing to protect the women of new hampshire.

he signed into law an abortion ban. i have to know, when you signed god, did you have the courage to stand up to your own party or the convictions or lives of the women? >> we have to sign budgets with things in them all the time that they don't want. everybody knows i didn't want the provision put in there. they tend to put those things in there. we didn't have a continuing resolution. this is 2021. we are not going to risk shutting on government over that provision. it didn't even have the flexibilities i wanted. we got rid of the older son provision. i think it should have flexibilities to provide exceptions for rape and incest. i agree with tom sherman that we shouldn't be criminalizing doctors, we should make provisions for the health of the mother.

we agree on this, vastly more than we disagree. --they don't have criminal penalties. i completely agree. let's get rid of those. >> i never would have signed it. i would not put the people of new hampshire at risk. >> you did sign a budget that included a late term abortion ban without exceptions and mandatory ultrasounds for women seeking abortion. why should new hampshire's trust that you wouldn't sign a budget moving forward signing this? >> i'm the one who worked with those swing vote republicans. i have been very clear about the additional flexibilities. if our lot looked exactly like massachusetts, i think we would be spot on. those are the flexibilities i want. we have had planned parenthood coming for me, i think 13 contracts or something like that.

i went all for one of them. this is just about women's health. we take that very seriously here. i always knew we could go back and create more flexibilities, i think we can yet again. that is a huge opportunity that both sides of the aisle have. >> lindsey graham has discussed a national abortion ban --eight 15 week threshold. the legislator comes back with something of that nature, where you draw the line? >> that is outrageous. i have been very public about codifying roe v. wade. i have been very public about that. we want more flexibility with those provisions. >> it is great i have had this influence on you. the part that is troubling to me

is that this bill that he signed into law had no exceptions for rape incest, or fetal anomaly. lisa had reached out to him for help, she had a twin that was put at risk by chris sununu's abortion ban. he never responded. she had to testify from her hospital bed to get that reverse. actually, she is here. do you want to apologize to her? >> this isn't about a single individual, we want more flexibility. >> you signed it. here is the amazing thing. this whole campaign, every tv, is a negative attack ad from tom sherman about abortion. at the end of the day, we agree on this issue, vastly more than we disagree. if we can get more flexibility,

we both agree we should codify roe v. wade, the fact they try to make this some extreme issue when it massachusetts is exactly where i think we should be. that is that moderation, that independent looking at both sides of the issue, finds an agreement. that is the opportunity we have. >> we don't put politics before people. the governor said yesterday, he didn't sign -- he couldn't veto the legislation because there was no continuing resolution. now he is saying, he couldn't veto the legislation because of the pandemic. his argument just keeps changing. just like the trust issue. that is critical for me, as a doctor. i will always put the health and lives of people of new hampshire first. the governor has made it clear -->> let's move on to student

reporter, cold. question for both candidates on young people living in new hampshire. >> new hampshire is competing with nearby cities like boston, that offer more job opportunities, more public transportation, and more diversity. these are important issues to young people. what can you do to help recruit younger workers to stay here? >> we have more younger families moving into new hampshire than ever before. it is a record number. the percentage of young people moving in our awesome. i have to give credit to our new business department of economic affairs, not just on tourism but on economic opportunities. there's a reason our unemployment is at record low, like two percentage we have 40,000 high-paying jobs, because we focus on business and the economy. i don't apologize for that. i'm proud of the business tax cuts. tom sherman tried to raise

business tax. when you lower business taxes, you did the regulatory reform. businesses want to be here and grow here. 4000 new businesses since right before the pandemic. that is opportunity not for chris sununu and the government, that is opportunities for all the young people, for all the workers want to be here. and look at the real estate. you can't even find a place, which is why we have to invest in affordable housing. that affordable housing pieces mostly for younger workers and younger families i get to come in and compete for not just one sector of business but all across the state. it is awesome. chris: dr. sherman, same question. dr. sherman: trust starts with saying the truth. i've never voted for income tax. i've never voted down his taxes. i've never increased business taxes. right now, the kids moving into new hampshire, the housing crunch has become a housing crisis. if you look at the first version of the sununu housing plan, it

has no affordable housing requirement in it. now it is only five years, so after five years, it becomes commercial. that is not a solution. that is not even a band-aid. what we need to be focusing on his transportation, housing, childcare, and educational opportunities. unless there is a place for people to live, they are not going to come here, but we have great promise, because the jobs are here. so one, we need to bring in high-speed rail. is that something that helps? that will bring people up from boston. that will help build that workforce that the business is no. -- businesses know. we need to invoke that housing plan and make sure childcare is affordable. chris: we are going to move on to one of our lessons from our sponsors, arp new hampshire. how do you work to expand resources for the 50 plus living independently so more greatest daters can

continue to live independently at home? 60 seconds, dr. sherman. dr. sherman: this is really important here we have seen people just desperate to stay in their homes. we've also had a problem with having enough nursing home beds. it starts with workforce, and workforce means recruiting, training, and we have been working really hard we were on a chancellor search for the community colleges to make sure there's programming in our high schools and cte schools for young people who want to go on to a career. that has to have an increased wage, and that is one of the other parts of workforce, making sure -- there's a woman in portsmouth right now who is taking care of of an elderly woman all day long, and then she is sleeping in her car at night. that is not appropriate. we need to make sure she has housing. we need to make sure she is paid a living wage. and when we do that, seniors will have more opportunities. and the final part is the housing that is created for

seniors and their own community has to be accessible. chris: governor sununu, same question -- gov. sununu: tom hit a lot of points there. so, you know, when you look at the rate increases that really have to come, those are specifically for nurses who might be working in a home setting, people who get better, longer quality care in a home setting. 2019, this is the democrat legislature. they did a good job. we would get a raise at a certain rate, they put it in a budget. even though i vetoed the first budget, we got it done. there's definitely opportunity to do that. we have enough nursing home beds. it's not about the events, it is about the workforce commit by may. some folks need to be in a nursing home, and that is critical and goes back to the question about how to drive that younger workforce in here and making sure they have opportunities with housing to it i think, and i agree, eighth or

ninth grade, get those programs available early on, in terms of health care, nursing, whatever it might be we did not even have an lcn program in the state when i became governor appeared i created three of them at the committee college. chris: that's time, and we go to kevin landrigan, a question for us for governor sununu on opioids. kevin: governor, you reference to this, but i wanted to drill down a little bit more. in 2021, we saw drug overdose deaths in the state proceed to largest cities spike backup. while many blame this on the flood of fentanyl coming into the region, do you need to create a more robust doorways program than the one you design? gov. sununu: look, the program is only two or three years old. there's always an opportunity to make a more robust and farther reaching for you don't want folks to go more than, you know, 10, 20, 30 miles from the home when you are asking them to go to a recovery program or leave work in the afternoon i go to a

peer-to-peer program. getting those spokes more aggressive is real. the fictional crisis has fundamentally -- the fentanyl crisis has fundamentally changed. i called a cartel-driven. you have people doing cocaine or meth. they don't expect to be doing fentanyl, but it is all mixed in there. marijuana is getting make with fentanyl. there are now vaped cartridges that have sentinel in them. admiral feels have fentanyl in them. so the cartels have created a market for people who do not even know it. opening the southern border has been an absolute disaster, not just for new hampshire. understanding the new aspects of how it is getting here. chris: 30 seconds, governor sununu, what more needs to be done? gov. sununu: we have transitional housing, which is not used very often, which is surprising. we have transitional housing in

manchester. they are having trouble filling those beds. making sure folks know where the opportunities are paid you can't have somebody in colebrook to come to manchester. it will not work for the rest of the state. allowing those two back investments, not just inflationary costs, getting them in the rural areas where they are smaller, that is important. chris: kevin has a question for dr. sherman, along the same lines. kevin: last february, you cannot against governor sununu's decision to block school district from going back to remote learning, even if there was a resurgence in the pandemic. given the current course of covid, president biden's statements that the worst of it is behind us, and evidence that students have suffered serious learning loss, would you still repeal the policy to let school district go back to all remote learning? dr. sherman: i would make sure

that school districts could make their own decisions, but that is really something that we have always encouraged, is that school district's know what is best, whether it is masking or going back to remote learning. i would make sure that they have whatever decisions they want to make at the school level, that they are reinforced. but what i would like to mention, that the governor's doorways program, it is a fundamental flaw, that it does not recognize that people with mental illness have drug addiction, and that people with drug addiction need services the minute they ask for them, because if they don't get them immediately, they are going to go into withdrawal. those are two fundamental problems. we know that treating, whether it is addiction or mental illness, it needs to be in your community, in your neighborhood, where you can get that service, the integrated delivery network is a great example of an effort that was that way, and the doorways spent an awful lot of

federal money creating a system that was bound to fail because of siloing. chris: time. governor sununu? gov. sununu: let's talk about the question at hand. we were one of the first states to announce students were back in the classroom. the day that i announced, tom sherman was on television, saying it was a bad idea. the only folks who thought it was a bad idea was the teachers union and tom sherman. parents knew it, teachers themselves knew it, kids knew it, everybody was begging, enough of the remote learning, get us back in there, and i said yes. thank god i did. if you have someone who is tom sherman as governor, you don't know what you are going to get. you will have someone letting the teachers union dictate the policy, where things are going instead of understanding that it is all about the kids. it is all about the outcome, and we did a great job getting those kids back in, and thank god we did. if anyone had listened to tom sherman the day after, who knows where we would be?

we would be like states like california or illinois or new york, that lets remote learning to go on and on and on, and that negative mental illness affects of kids get exacerbated. chris: time. 30 seconds to dr. sherman. dr. sherman: we have to recognize that the decision whether or not to go back was really up to the local communities. it was not my decision. it should not have been chris sununu's decision. and that is something, it is all about the kids, just like chris said, but it is about letting the people who know those kids best make the decision. chris: i want to get back to the doorways program here. it seems like the challenges the doorway exists, but there's not the available infrastructure behind it. is that a fair statement? gov. sununu: no, that is not a fair statement at all could we created nine doorways across the state that are all attached to what? hospitals hospitals have amazing infrastructures. what we found out his people were overdosing.

they would dry out at 3:00 in the emergency room, there was a goodbye, good luck, and they let them go. now we have the warm handoff. having the hospital is part of the structure, capital medical doesn't in manchester, -- does it in manchester, it is a robust system with a backbone, which is what you need. the whole idea is wraparound service and not one organization, one service commit is a wraparound service because it is about that individual and what they need, not just what the state is offering in that moment. chris: 30 seconds. are people receiving timely treatment for mental health and drug addiction? gov. sununu: if you live north of concord, before the doorway was created, you never got treatment. you never got recovery. we were asking you to drive 200 miles. a young parent would risk losing their jobs, losing their family to drive 200 miles where the closest place was. that rural access to care is the secret sauce that we have that other states don't.

that is why addiction rates have plummeted. chris: dr. sherman, 30 seconds. dr. sherman: i don't know who the governor is listening to, but he is not listening to his own department or what is happening on the streets in manchester. in my district, in seabrook, if you wanted help, you would not go to the doorway, which was 45 in its way, one, because you have to wait two days to three days, which you could not wait, because you would go into withdrawal, and two, because you could not get seen. if you drove to manchester, and i'm glad mayor craig is here, if you drove to manchester, you got services immediately. but at the fire station, not at the hospital. the governor does not understand the problem. he does not understand how interconnected it is. he does not understand the barriers, which are transportation, childcare, all the same ones. and he needs that understanding to create the right program. gov. sununu: tom is exactly right. it was at the fire station for which is why i created the doorway. it was a stopgap to a more

robust system, which we created, it is working very well. dr. sherman: which is why overdoses are going up. chris: onto a different topic, and mike cote has this one first for senator sherman on power. mike: senator sherman, you have advocated for greater reliance on renewable sources, such as hydropower, winds, solar. what role would nuclear power play in that tradition over time? chris: 60 seconds. dr. sherman: thank you. we have seabrook, and our neighborhood, i've worked with next era since they have been there. the current problem with nuclear is only how to handle the spent rods, in other words, the waste product. they are a current part of our energy program, but i also know that nextera has been really buying into hydrogen power, other sources, partially because we do not have the solution

nationwide to spent fuel. when we think about how we expand our alternative energy, we need to give people the freedom to produce their own power, business is to produce their own power, with a one megawatt cap on net metering, that is not happening. what is exciting is community power. that is great. but we need to lift the cap, let the free market dictate this, and that also, really expedite what we're are doing offshore, because that balance of offshore and solar would be great for the state. chris: similar question on the same topic for the governor from mike cote. mike: governor sununu, back in august, people started opening up their power bills and seeing that electricity was double what they were paying a year ago, a few month ago. even before this big spike, power has been an issue for our manufacturing companies, the high price of power and getting companies to come here and stay here. what is the long-term solution for reliable power? gov. sununu: the answers, our

electric grid all across new england were tied together, so we got high rates in new hampshire, even higher rates of in massachusetts. you need natural gas to provide the resiliency of your system. if you go too hard, too fast with this green new deal type stuff can exactly what biden tried to do, and look at the results appeared we are paying twice as much for gas, electricity. have you gotten your fuel tank filled? it is to three times as much, because of the lack of materials going in. we closed down natural gas is because they are tied together. they have closed down natural gas prices all across new england. you need that base load generation to be there when it is really cold, when the wind isn't blowing, the sun is shining, renewables are great, but if you do all or nothing, too hard, too fast will break the system. my 10 year energy plan always talks about looking at these

issues through the lens of the right pair. again, across doing one, that is where our success can happen. chris: in 30 seconds each, who is responsible for the current spike in electrical rates them and how does it get fixed? dr. sherman: every state is facing increased electrical rates, and that is not anybody's fault except perhaps the crisis in ukraine. we have seen the spike in natural gas since then. we will not be off natural gas, as the governor is saying. we need to have a blended source, alternative sources of energy to blunt the price hikes that come with natural gas. if we are completely dependent on fossil fuels, we are going to follow the fossil fuel market, and we are going to go up just like we did this time. we need to expand energy options, expand freedom to produce your own energy, and those prices will come down. gov. sununu: look, it is bad

democrat policy out of washington, affecting everybody in all 50 states. we see it with, again, tom wants to defend it, but there is a reason why your gas has doubled, while your electricity has doubled, while your oil is doubling. if you're on a fixed income, try filling up that fuel tank. it was not like that 18 months ago, right? but it is like that today. policy impacts economics. it is why people are voting, because they are frustrating, angry, and they should be. they should be furious. chris: time. 30 seconds. dr. sherman: yeah. i think the governor forgets about putin. this is not democrat or republican. this is about making sure we have an expanded portfolio where we can draw our power, especially at a time when there's pressure on natural gas. the governor actually vetoed one of our best tools for this, which is called procurement. he has vetoed or blocked every effort on energy efficiency weatherization.

that is the power we don't use. this isn't a democrat or a liberal -- this is common sense. this is what we need to be doing. chris: time. gov. sununu: sp clear. -- let's be clear. i know tom wants to write a strongly worded letter to vladimir putin to solve the energy crisis. it takes leadership, it takes the transition -- dr. sherman: you are going to invade russia? gov. sununu: [laughs] i'm not going to sit here and just blame putin, i'm going to talk about the policies that drove this 18 month ago. ukraine was invaded, but these gas prices were increasing far before the whole ukraine -- it has been exacerbated, to be true. but you can't tell everyone who has to fill up all the gas tanks, tom, that it is for the invasion of ukraine. chris: speaking from an individual who owns an insurance company, he says on the seacoast, in new hampshire, and other places across the country,

people cannot get their homes insured because of the threat that climate change poses peer this question to the governor first, 60 seconds, what impact do you see climate change, if any, having an amateur currently -- in new hampshire currently. gov. sununu: climate change has a long-term impact, and it is not just new hampshire commit is worldwide. we can make that transition. we talked about the opportunity to do that. hydro, i love hydro. brain come over noble hydro, right? cheapest --clean, renewable hydro, right? . cheapest is over the border. the democrats killed it. it is called the northern pass. i could bring clean, renewable energy down into new hampshire. that is the smart way to do renewables and make that transition without overloading. it has to be a smart transition.

i think we've done a pretty darn good job. we don't do this solar, renewable portfolio such as arizona appeared we do things like hydro, offshore wind, things that fit our makeup and geography. chris: when impact is climate change having in new hampshire currently, dr. sherman? dr. sherman: we get back to the trust. when the governor blames democrats for northern pass, there was no guarantee it was going to stop here. it was going down to massachusetts and connecticut. it was his own puc that vetoed. democrats did not say no. it was the fight evaluation committee. they said no, this is not good for new hampshire, for all the reasons they elucidated in their report. let's be clear -- we can do so much more. our renewable portfolio standards are at 28, massachusetts is at 20. germany is higher than us a letter to, and they are invoking all sorts of solar, and it is

going very well for them. the governor will tell you otherwise. we know that rhode island right now, because they have procurement, it has been able to drop the purchase of their power to 7.9 cents per kilowatt hour. the governor has blocked that. we can do so much better, unless you believe that the ratepayers are hurt, and they are not. there's no data for that. gov. sununu: the ratepayers are hurting. the site evaluation committee killed it, and if you remember, i inherited all of those members from now senator hassan, when she was governor hassan. absolutely, that is who killed the project. the 7.9 cents, the average wholesale rate in 2020 was 3.5. you are bragging about twice the wholesale. chris: we are talking right now, governor. gov. sununu: the average in 2020, your wholesale rate was

3.5 cents across new england, and he is bragging that 7.9 cents is a great solution, that we lock and almost into perpetuity. dr. sherman: it is a lot better than 2020 two, under your leadership. gov. sununu: it is all the taxes, subsidies. look your bills. it is all those other pieces, we call it the cheeseburger. he is talking about the cost of the cheese come on talking about the cheeseburger. we've got to pay all the different individual slices that are in there. the most important, he is right, is the wholesale price, it was half of 7.9 percent before joe biden took office. chris: on to a different topic -- gov. sununu: that is politics, and we don't want to do energy based on politics. dr. sherman: but we do want to do health care on politics, right? gov. sununu: no -- dr. sherman: now you're putting politics second on energy, so you are protecting ratepayers while you do not protect the women of new hampshire. that is great, governor. you've got your policies right in line. gov. sununu: i get a, tom

sherman is all about abortion, abortion, all the time. dr. sherman: no, no, no, i'm about people all the time, and i don't put politics over people, i put people first. chris: moving on, we don't want to cut your mics here. let's go to our student reporter, cole, who has a question no on divisiveness and politics, appropriately. [laughter] cole: young people are increasingly frustrated with politicians that are unable to get things done. can you provide an example of how you have worked across party lines, to solve an issue that matters, specifically to younger granite staters? chris: we will start with dr. sherman. dr. sherman: yeah. actually, medicaid expansion was one of the first things i had an opportunity to work on. it was a bipartisan commission that brought it together i was asked to be the house representative to the republican senate caucus, and then moving it through, so that it actually got past, it was completely

bipartisan, and when you listen, develop relationships with trust, you can then work across the aisle. in a prime beneficiary of that was young people who previously were not eligible for health care coverage. and it turned out to be the backbone of how we treated mental health and substance use disorder since it was first adopted. so that is one example. another great example that we have worked on is actually promoting new hampshire manufacturing. that is 250 jobs in new hampshire, four factories for it i was the prime sponsor of the bill, but sharon parsons and i worked across the aisle. chris: governor sununu, some question -- same question to you. gov. sununu: i had a fully democratic legislature. we had to find compromise. we found compromise picked some of the specific, things like the

cola increase for firefighters, had not happened in over 10 years. we found a way to get it done. i'm proud to have been endorsed by the new hampshire firefighters association. to make sure those provisions were in there, if a firefighter got cancer, protection for those families we talked about energy. tom talked about it. you bet i vetoed it. it was a disaster and gave all the money to the developers come on your backs and all the backs of all the ratepayers. what did we do? we went back and made a better, and we signed that bill that allowed the municipality to increase the size of their net metering, because that helps reduce property taxes. now they can use larger solar type projects to reduce the energy burden. chris: time. gov. sununu: it might hit a roadblock, but there is always an opportunity. chris: a recent nbc poll said

80% of democrats that if republicans were elected to office, the country would be destroyed pizza amount of republicans thought about democrats. that is indicative of the divisiveness. how do you go about addressing that issue? we will start with dr. sherman. dr. sherman: i've always been able to listen, build relationships. when you think about the initiative, i think anything that is sustainable and last in new hampshire through the legislature has to be bipartisan, otherwise it is going to get next time through. i would remind everybody that the governor said the state record for vetoes in 2018 -- i'm sorry, 2019, 2020, when he is being "oh bipartisan," but the rest of us always have been able to work together. there is a republican who said i want to repeal the state health assessment state health improvement plan. we worked together and actually made a better. that is the way we move forward. we move forward by reaching across party lines and find that little tiny thread of common

ground and make sure we get the job done. chris: governor sununu. gov. sununu: look, in many ways, this is the most important question that is facing us. if you can't come together and get stuff done, nothing is going to get done. one of the main reasons i did not want to go to washington, they are useless down there. they do nothing. here you can affect change in an independent state. you are never going to win anything with extremes. first and foremost, as politicians, as leaders, first, we have to understand this is not a career, and most importantly, this is not about us. the java so much bigger than us. it is about the 1.4 million people that we represented i get to be really selfish for the new hampshire people to it i want to represent new hampshire every time. we challenge each other to be the best state, which is why we have the lowest poverty rate, some of the highest wages, some of the best public schools, beijing statistics -- amazing statistics around us. why do so many folks want to move to new hampshire?

why do we have so many new businesses? because we don't put politics first, we understand we are an independent, purple state, and we don't do it like everyone else does. we are the unique ones. we are the place everybody wants to be. chris: we want to move onto to a question from arp new hampshire. what states will you take to ensure all granite staters have access to livable communities, and what does a livable community look like to governor sununu? 60 seconds. gov. sununu: a livable community is, again, making sure that you have access and appropriate means to whatever the services might be. do we have hospitals in our larue areas? are we asking people to drive hundreds of miles away to get recovery services or mental health services p are we talking about mental health services with just the hospital of manchester? i brought a hospital for children, to understand that that axis is going to be there. you've got to create the access and opportunities p i hear tom talk about raising the minimum wage.

look, you can walk into mcdonald's right now and make $16 an hour. it is not about the minimum wage. i think we are averaging 50 in the country for highest average hold sold wages. -- household wages. 30,000 high-paying jobs today, lowest unemployment rate, lowest poverty rate in the country. those are the opportunities you create to make sure people have the means and the access. chris: dr. sherman. dr. sherman: frankly, i find it appalling that the governor is so out of touch with what is happening in his own state. i mean, there's that woman in the car, taking care of the elderly woman, she is making $12 an hour. there are people making $7.25 in our state, and the governor does not know that. he does not know that people can't get care when they needed for substance use disorder. he doesn't know that there are still children and adults waiting in our emergency room

some even though he claims to have brought a mental health hospital. he doesn't have a plan for staffing that hospital. this is just the sort of one after another band-aid without understanding the wound that is underneath. we need to understand the root causes of a problem, and really attack the root causes of the problem, not just slap band-aids on it. that is the way we make sure that our seniors, or children, or adults, at our young adult actually have access to all the services that they need. chris: 30 seconds. gov. sununu: look, the results speak for themselves. going to surrounding states, go anywhere in america, and you can realize all the opportunities we created, it doesn't mean we don't have challenges. of course we do. we always got to take on those challenges. just because we have the lowest poverty rate in the country does not mean we don't have folks that don't have opportunity. we are going to challenge ourselves. school education, the education freedom accounts, making sure lower income families have the same opportunities as everybody

else, these are the kinds of things that work, that are successful, that put the individual first. thomas pessimistic, but i tell you, i could not be more proud to be in new hampshire. chris: 30 seconds dr. sherman: i am not dour or pessimistic, i am a realist, and i understand what people are going through. our education, our rating has dropped. we used to be number one, with massachusetts, now we are down to seven. frank edlebrugh has said he was to expand educational freedom to all children in public schools. that money was meant for taxpayers, they were putting that together for our public schools. not to get too religious and private schools without any oversight. that is not the way new hampshire operates. gov. sununu: we designed a system where if you are at 300% of the federal poverty level or below, you can take your money,

find the path, i get a, your government first, i'm individual first, you can divide a path -- define a path that is best for your child. don't we want everyone to have the same opportunities? isn't this the concept of equity? we actually made it happen good thousands of families get to have the opportunity that they never were offered before. chris: that is time. dr. sherman: no chemistry teacher in a public school -- chris: that is time. let's go to political reporter kevin landrigan, property taxes. kevin: governor, taxpayers of holderness pay a tax rate of $6.90, while plymouth residents pay twice that, $13.19. isn't it a failure of leadership that you have not offered a

comprehensive plan to try and equalize the disparity many communities face in paying for public schools? gov. sununu: only in the past years we have this massive education fund surplus. i'm not going to speak for tom, but i think we all agree, huge opportunity to redo that formula. the formula is not working. there's no doubt. let's get together, the governor, legislature, stakeholders, school district, and find a better formula. that money is just sitting there. if we don't do anything about it, that find surplus is going to keep growing. we have about 1.5 percent less kids per year. we have to change the formula and make sure that that the equity between towns is out lewdly there. chris: dr. sherman. dr. sherman: i'm glad to hear the governor for the first time saying let's also down at the table and solve the problem. the reality is we actually do have a blueprint. if we had a commission that looked at how to do this we have the capacity to do that. education freedom accounts are right now $10 million over

budget. they are projected to go much higher over budget, and that is going to threaten our ability to respond to the public education needs state wide without people having to pay increased property taxes. we have to look at this systematically, at the state level, and put our public schools first. chris: dr. sherman, thank you so much. governor sununu, thank you as well. we have reached the portion of the evening, we are going to go into closing statements. each individual has 90 seconds we start with dr. sherman. dr. sherman: thank you. thank you all for being here. thank you to our hosts. it is clear there are stark differences between me and governor sununu. one of the fundamental differences is that i am running for governor for people like lisa, where the governor's policies actually put her life at risk. i'm running for the people in portsmouth who have to sleep in their car. i'm running for the kids who are facing drug abuse, mental health, and not able to find any

help. we know these are solvable problems. we know that if there is a governor who puts people before politics and focuses on the people of new hampshire, we can do this. that is why i am running for governor, and i hope i have your vote on november 8. chris: governor sununu, 90 seconds. gov. sununu: this is great. thank you very much. look, i love this state. i could not be more proud of where we've come. if you know who else loves this state? everybody who is moving here. we are the only state really growing in population. or young families moving in the never before. those are facts, those are data, and that means we are doing something right. doesn't mean we are perfect, absolutely not. put the individual first. people want to be part of it. you look at the economic opportunities, the fact that we have some of the highest wages, the lowest poverty rates, we are the number one in the country for personal freedom, and we are able to create that

balance, work across the line, and understand we are an independent state. i go back to what i said before, it is not about the government. it is about individuals. we have great opportunities to do that and to highlight it. tom is very dour, i get it, he is angry, but this is awesome. this is the place to be. i have other governors call me, and they say, how are you doing this? how is that happening? how can you function like this? why are you rank so good in this area and that area? we have some of the best public school teachers in the country, and we are still creating opportunities for folks. it is about creating that next level of opportunity, and the rest of the nation is noticing. they

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