Change

Is everyone really for change?

Change.

It’s all the rage. One thing about elections is that candidates always claim they’re about change. This is true of the most centrist candidates who rely most heavily on their connections among well-situated establishment types who benefit most from the status quo. They all claim to be for change.

Two candidates in the race for Congress in NH’s CD-1 (the eastern part of the state and Manchester) are up on television with the first ads of the season. It’s early but they have money to burn and a need to distance themselves from each other.

Not unsurprisingly, both ads claim the candidate being touted is the key change agent in this race.

Maura Sullivan

Maura Sullivan’s ad doesn’t beat around the bush. She directly claims to be a “working class change agent.”

Maura moved to NH in 2018 explicitly to run for Congress. She’s from Evanston, Illinois and went to Northwestern and later earned an MBA at Harvard. After losing to Chris Pappas, she became the NH Democratic Party’s finance chair and hobnobbed with its biggest donors. She is now the Party’s elected first vice chair. She hasn’t stepped down from her party post even though she is in a contested Democratic Party primary.

Although her campaign website no longer reflects it, she is endorsed by the AIPAC-aligned Democratic Majority for Israel and, as Arnie Arnesen has pointed out, her financial filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) reflect a number of payments by Sullivan’s campaign to the Democracy Engine PAC which covertly processes campaign contributions organized by AIPAC. Democracy Engine is AIPAC’s ActBlue. Democracy Engine and ActBlue are PACs that charge 2 to 5 percent to process donations to campaigns. The political donations to Sullivan processed through Democracy Engine are likely in the range of $250,000.

AIPAC, whether you support their goals or not, clearly does not want US policy towards Israel to change. Maura Sullivan is also the beneficiary of Citizens United and current election finance laws. Do we expect Maura to advocate for change in US-Israel relations or to limit the corrosive role of money in politics?

Stefany Shaheen

Stefany Shaheen is from NH. She is the daughter of former governor and retiring Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Jeanne Shaheen has been in office for forty years. Her daughter Stefany is benefitting from her mother’s fundraising and organizing contacts and received money from her mother’s leadership PAC.

A leadership PAC allows members of Congress to collect money from lobbyists that the “leader” than doles out to build power or curry favor with other legislators. Leaders in key positions do well with leadership PACs.

The PACs cement power. They don’t bring change.

There are few rules that govern the operation of these leadership PACs and, when the “leaders” retire, they keep what’s left in the PAC to set them up in their retirement careers. Think of it like a bridal shower for a newly wed couple.

Jeanne Shaheen sits on the Appropriations Committee in the US Senate. More specifically, she sits on the Appropriations sub-committee related to Defense Department spending. Shaheen’s leadership PAC is called “A New Direction PAC,” which I admit sounds change-y. A New Direction PAC receives contributions from the usual suspects.

In the current two year cycle, the usual suspects are dominated by military defense contractors. Among the defense contractors who contributed to A New Direction PAC are Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics, General Atomics, GE Aerospace, Northrup Grumman, BAE, Pacific Defense Systems, Boeing, and Anduril Industries. The Israeli military tech company Elbit also contributed.

In prior years, A New Direction PAC directly received contributions from a broader array of donors, including many in the healthcare field. In 2024-25, these included: United Healthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Humana, HCA, American Hospital Assn. Federation of American Hospitals, Davita, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Otsuka America Pharmaceuticals, CVS, and Centene.

Jeanne Shaheen’s leadership PAC contributed the max of $10,000 to her daughter’s campaign ($5000 on 6-27-25 and $5000 on 11-18-25). The maximum an individual can legally contribute to a federal campaign is $3500 per election or $7000 for a primary and general election. Jeanne Shaheen, the individual, contributed the max of $7000 to her daughter’s campaign on June 13, 2025 then she added the additional $10,000 from her leadership PAC.

Stefany Shaheen’s campaign ad is about her daughter’s health problems. But when Stefany was asked about support for Medicare for All, healthcare for all of us, her answer was not “yes.” Do we expect a recipient of insurer United Healthcare’s largesse to argue for the changes we all want in how healthcare works in America? Would Stefany likely join other candidates in advocating for decreases in defense spending? That would be a big change.

Change.

Do candidates who place themselves so close to established power centers really present good opportunities for change?

The Other Extreme

We then have the other extreme. Those candidates who try to shock their audience by espousing such dramatic change that they make it clear they can’t win elections. Their antics get attention but they can’t convert that attention to votes. NH US Senate candidate Karishma Manzur and Congressional candidate Heath Howard fall into this category.

Just one example makes my point.

Manzur and Howard appear to support Iran.

We are at war with Iran. It’s a stupid, pointless war that Trump was manipulated into joining by Israel’s Netanyahu. I do not support this war in any way or form. However, Iran is actively killing our service members. The Iranian regime is an autocratic theocracy. Before Israel and the US started this war of choice, the Iranian theocracy suppressed dissent in Iran by killing its own people. As many as 30,000 protestors were killed by Iranian military using live ammunition to suppress dissent. Women are also second class citizens in Iran’s theocratic scheme..

Misguided Support for Iran

Despite this, Manzur and Howard chose to speak at a rally last week where the sponsors decked out the speaker’s podium with Iranian flags. They’re the green, white and red flags in the photo below.

I know there can be all kinds of explanations, including empathy for the Iranian people, but the Republican ad that would run in the general election if either of these candidates is the Democratic nominee writes itself. Whatever change these candidates would like to support will never occur.

Where does this leave us?

Sullivan and Shaheen are good candidates if you like how things currently are. They have no ability to make change. Manzur at the Senate level and Howard at the Congressional level are so extreme as to be disqualified. They are unelectable and therefore can’t make change as elected officials.

More as we move forward to the primary which is scheduled for September 8, 2026.

Register to Vote

If you are not currently registered to vote, now is a good time to pop into your local town or city hall and register. You’ll need to prove your domicile is in the district where you plan to vote, you are a citizen and will be 18 years of age as of day of the election. There is no minimum length of residence to vote. In fact, you could register at your polling place on Election Day, it just gets crowded and there may be lines. Better to plan ahead.

For more on the documentation you’ll require to register, go here. (Note, I disagree with the NH Secretary of State’s website assertion that you can only register during a short window of time before an election but it is best to call your town clerk before you go to their office.)