Monday, May 8, 2017
7:00 p.m. – 8:51 p.m.
Nashua Public Library – NPL Theater
Our May meeting was called to order at 7:05 p.m., by Chairman Skip Cleaver. This was our first regular meeting since the April 17th Caucus and Election Meeting.
Chairman Cleaver’s opening remarks included comments that it is very important to have good Democratic candidates run for office in our upcoming local elections. Nashua’s Mayor, Jim Donchess was our guest speaker, and he emphasized how important the City elections are, and how important it is to recruit and support people running for elected office, who support our Democratic values. Mayor Donchess spoke about the various elected positions that people could run for, including Ward Aldermen and Alderman At-Large positions, seats on the Board of Education, the Board of Public Works, etc. People need to get out and vote, and vote all the way down the ballot. All in attendance were encouraged to speak with neighbors and others, whom they thought would be great candidates for the various City positions, recruit them to run, support them as candidates, and then, most importantly, get out and vote for them.
Skip thanked the Mayor for coming to our meeting, and briefly talked about the challenges the Democrats face at the Statehouse. The Republicans currently control of the NH House, Senate, Executive Council and the Governor’s office.
Skip proudly announced that Nashua’s Ward 3 State Representative, Cindy Rosenwald, had received the Dunfey-Kanteres Award, recently at the Democratic McIntyre- Shaheen 100 Dinner, that was held in Manchester. It’s an honor for all of us to be associated with Cindy!
Sue Newman (Secretary) – summarized the minutes from the April caucus/election Meeting and the two small get-togethers that Skip Cleaver held, where he had an opportunity to speak with a few of our Democratic team members and get to know them better, and share his vision about how he sees our organization moving forward. The groundwork for establishing a Communications Committee was set up, with Mike Pedersen as Chair, and Will Bateson as the Committee’s Communications Director.
Deidre Reynolds (Treasurer) gave a brief report on the Committee’s financial situation, and reported on our current fund balance. Final figures on receipts and expenses associated with the May 6th Spaghetti Cook-Off, will be coming.
Under New Business, there was information about the about additional working committees that Skip wants to get established. These would include: Communications (see above), Candidate Recruitment, Fundraising, Activities and Community Outreach. The Communications Committee, is in the process of being organized right now.
Chairman Cleaver briefly discussed the situation that the Nashua Delegation to Concord finds itself in currently. Democrats make up the majority in our City Delegation. Past precedent has been that the Delegation Chair is a member of the majority party. The Nashua Delegation Chair, who was a Democrat when we elected her as Delegation Chair, changed political party affiliation recently to Republican. She chose not to relinquish the Chair position. As a result, we Democrats subsequently elected Representative Jan Schmidt to be the Chair of the Nashua Delegation, and the City Republicans were notified.
There was some discussion about the responsibilities of the newly elected officers to the NDCC. Brief discussion about future NDCC Meeting location took place, and the majority of attendees at the meeting, with a show of hands, overwhelmingly wanted to keep the monthly meetings at the Nashua Public Library. An announcement was made that the Executive Board of the NDCC would be holding its first meeting, on Monday, May 15th, 7 p.m. at the Library, in the Chandler Wing section, in the Large Meeting Room.
We discussed our ultimate goal: Recruit, support and ELECT (and Re-Elect!) Democrats to office at the City, State and National levels, and greatly increase and refine our communication with each other and the public through various platforms.
Our meeting sign-in sheets indicated 52 names, and I thank Joanne St.John for getting the sign-in clipboard moving among all those who came to our Meeting.
Motion to adjourn at approximately 8:51 p.m.