New hampshire democrats, please welcome to the stage, chairman ray buckley. We have a message for Christopher Sun knew knew. 2018 is coming. Yesterday we launched a project to keep sun knew knew accountable for his out of touch policies that are favoring his families, and his friends and corporate interests. Were tired of his double speak, and his policies are hurting New Hampshire, education, the economy, health care, the environment and ethics. And we cant hold them accountable alone. We need your help. So follow sununureality on twitter. Like sununu reality. Com to hold them accountable. Chris sununu won by 2 in 2016. So lets get to work and make sure he loses by far more than 2 in 2018. So is everyone clear . Everyone clear what our focus is . For the next 11 months. Good afternoon democrats. Were joined by congressman delaney, tim ryan, and vice chair grace mann, congresswoman and our extraordinary senator Maggie Hassen. So tonights dinner is a chance to pause and reflect on the year we have had. While we have plenty of work to do, New Hampshire democrats have a lot to celebrate. This year, we celebrated and sworn in the first ever all democratic, all female congressional delegation in american history. Congresswoman custer fight for us in washington every day, and theyre winning, incredibly important battles to protect all the progress that we have made. This year we sent donald trump a message on his very first day in office by showing up in concord, across the state and around the country and throughout the world with the womens march. This year, we have won eight out of ten special elections. Five in republican districts. And our First State Senate special election victory since 1984. We have won house special elections across the state. In carol county, sullivan, county, Hillsborough County and rockingham county, simply put, there is no district that a democratic candidate who works hard cant win in 2018. Now that would be enough to celebrate, but its not all we did. This november, we broke records across the state with our incredible municipal victories, joyce craig became the first woman elected mayor in manchesters 111year history. Her victory flipped the largest city from red to blue for the First Time Since 2003. And in nashua, sweet nashua, we pulled off a clean sweep of nashuas at large all democratic sweeps, thanks to joe tenza, joe kelly and brandon laws. The first woman of color elected to nashuas board of alderman. Now think about this. Two years ago today, nashua had a republican mayor and it had republican majorities of alderman and school board members, today we have mayor jim danches with an overwhelming win on both boards. Lets hear it for the nashua city democrat. And jerry cannon became the first ever Transgender School board member in all of New Hampshire. Congratulations to him. R[5z its been a long time coming. And Jeremy Hutchinson became the first ever lgbgq city councilmember in rochester history. And dana helman was reelected to his third term. And concord mayor jim bule was elected to a sixth term. Women, persons of color, the lgbtq community. Folks, we have a lot to accomplish, we need to make chris sununu a oneterm governor. We need to hold on to the first and second congressional districts. We need to win majorities onm,te council and the senate and the house. Democrats, with our success of 2017, we have the team, the energy and the attitude to win in 2018. So lets go do it. [ applause ] so theres another line here that they added in, since i last saw it, so i was reading it as i was thinking, there was another line, and so the line is, and for all of you wonderful yankees, this is going to be the best line of the night. And please dont forget to take the pumpkins at the conclusion of the program, the centerpieces are yours. We have got a full program tonight, but i want to start and take a moment to acknowledge our fantastic staff, our executive director amy kennedy. Communications director wyatt roden. Political director aaron germail. Finance director dallas thompson, athletics director peter kramer. Communications assistant sarah gutenhimmer, political director donald stokes. Grass roots coordinator sue ford, deputy Operations Director ethan moorehouse, our phenomenal intern eric zip. And our conference distributor nick taylor, the house and senatee;,. caucus director mik kennedy and the New Hampshire executive director amelia king. We are so lucky and so proud to have the best damned party staff in the country. Lets also take a moment to acknowledge our officers, our first vice chair senator martha fuller clark. Our second vice chair mo baxley. Our secretary michael kennedy, our treasure you arer brian rapp, Legal Counsel bill christy, finance chair katie wheeler. Dnc woman Kathy Sullivan. Dnc man bill shaheen. And dnc lr member joanne dolan. Thank you, everyone. Lets have a great night. New hampshire democrats, to lead us in the pledge of allegiance, please welcome to the stage the newly elected at large members of the National Board of alderman. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of america, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. New hampshire democrats, please welcome to the stage, manchesters mayor elect, joyce craig. Is there something we forgot to say to you the manchester folks are the loudest. Good evening, New Hampshire democrats. Im honored to welcome you mayo manchester, and as the first woman elected to lead the queen city. Its so wonderful to be here with all of you. So many of you joined the hundreds of manchester residents in knocking thousands of doors, making phone calls, sharing our campaigns message with our friends, your neighbors, your colleag colleagues. Your work over the many months really made the difference and i will forever be grateful for your support. I want to offer a special thank you to senators hassen and that reign a shaheen, New Hampshire has led the way in demonstrating that we all do well when women serve in leadership roles and i am thankf thankful i am so thankful to have four outstanding role models. And thank you too to chairman buckley and the staff of nhdp for your support of our campaign and for organizing tonights festivities. I would also like to thank congressman delaney and ryan and also congressman mann for being here tonight. I know that the real work begins now, ill focus on making our streets safer, bringing businesses to our city and making real and lasting progress against the opiod crisis. Manchesters best days are still ahead of us and i hope you all will join me in building a Better Future for the people of manchester. Because we all know that when manchester prospers, so does the rests of our great state. So thank you all and i look forward to this wonderful evening. New hampshire democrats please welcome to the stage congresswoman Carol Shea Porter youre still the one. Were still having fun and youre still the one its i who really have to thank all of you. I am so grateful for the gift that you gave me to serve the of and all the help that came across acrothe state over and o again, and i want to thank all of you and say were not done yet, we have a lot of work to do, you heard what the chairman had to say, im sitting here with some wonderful colleagues and i know that were going to turn this around in 2018. I a full reckoning is coming and soon. Very soon. So when i started to run in 2006, you know, i said i was running for the rest of us and throughout the time we have always had different slogans that we have used, keeping that of course, the rest of us, the bottom 99 , im sure youre all familiar with those phrases that we had. Then it started to get kind of serious, i mean really serious since donald trump came. So i started running through some slogans in my head that would help me every single day. Churchill, who said whenh6v1jv going through i . U7 y9n just going. And he said a number of things like that, but then i started thinking of my own slogans, because we have to stick together. You all know that and we have shown what we do when we stick together. We have done great things and we will continue do do great things, but sometimes there are things that we dont like, little bits of this or somebody said this or somebody thinks that or somebody says manager in washington. So today in the morning, i wake up and i say to myself, shut up and row. Thats our message, at least my message right now. We are definitely rouch watgh w nobody would have written a story about our current president , people would never have believed it. But we are confronted with an administration and a president that challenges all of us in our understanding about our great country. The wonderful thing is that we are a very good people. And we know what we need to do. And were working on it. Every day. On wednesday night, i had the great privilege of hearing tony bennett and he received and award, the gershwin award. 91 years old. He came out faster than joyce and i did. He just came bounding out on the stage, when it was time for him to give me the speech. When it came time to give his speech, he just stood there and he said, i wasnt really prepared. America is the greatest country in the world. And it was the best speech i ever heard. Because thats who we are, thats what we are. And we will overcome this. So, yes, were in turbulent seas, but if we row together, and then when we get to shore, and we will, when we get to shore, we can pull out our maps and say, shall we go left or right, i myself prefer to the left, some might prefer to go to the right. But we will get ourselves out of this. We are the people we have been waiting for. Were here, you can see the energy, you can feel the excitement. And joyce, i cant tell you, if i didnt have a wonderful mayor in rochester, i would be looking to move to manchester. So we know we have everything we need. We have the New HampshireYoung Democrats, which has done tremendous work, we see this deep bench we have now, i love in my seat. I think its awesome and i think its going to help amplify our message and is rest of our state will be able to hear what we stand for, because we know what we stand against, we stand against the tyranny, we stand inst the deconstruction5 the administrative state, and we stand for Human Dignity and for economic security, we stand for advantages of everybody, we stand for business and supporting families and individuals. So we have something you can be very prude oud of, we have a mae that has all of our good stuff on it, now we just need to stand together and put this message out across our state. We will win and we will win because we have something they dont have. We are right, we are on the right side of history. No question about it and people are realizing that around the country. Theyre realizing that this agenda is the agenda that will help lift them and their families. So i just want to say thank you for your confidence and i do not plan to go away, im going to be very, very involved. Well get through 2018 and we all have our 2020 president ial election and well get it done right here in New Hampshire. I love all of you and i am so grateful. Thank you. New hampshire democrats, please welcome to the stage for our nhdp chair Kathy Sullivan. This girl is on fire this girl is on fire i know, i came on stage before they did my walk on music. So anxious. So i want to say a few things about ms. Porter, because she was my congressman. And i was always so proud to have csp as my congresswoman. Every vote she took was always the right vote. And she was always there as she said fighting for the rest of us. She i remember the first time i really met carol, she came to my office to talk about running for congress and i was quite impressed. And at that point, she had stood up and protested the policies of george w. Bush. Ezxud she went to jeff bradleys town halls and knew his districtnoi]h bae better than he did and she asked the questions that drove him crazy. But what i will always remember about carol porter is she made me cry once. Some of you were there when this happened. It was the night of the election 2006, when she was running for congress the first time. And i was in manchester at the coordinated Campaign Headquarters and, you know, people say, well, you must have known you were going to have a good night. I always think were going to lose. I had a good feeling about john lynch, okay . But other than that, and judy rearden and i were driving around and at one point i called in and said how is it looking and mike and rick said, you know, the turnout is not the way it should be in some of the districts. I was like, i knew it. I knew it. And then of nu1skimcourse, it w really the best night of my political life because we had came from losing badly in 2002 to coming back in 2004 and then in 2006, the results are coming in and were all standing there, you know, the numbers are coming up and this town, that town, and yep, john lynch was winning, and things were looking good here, some senate races and were all feeling really good. But things in the first;yba dist were real close and then epping came in and carol won epping and i started crying. As. n and i remember paul toomey was there, and he said im going to take a picture of you crying, an i said get that camera away from me. And im crying, because when carol won epping, i knew that she was now going to be our congresswoman and i knew we were winning everything that night. And thats the night that Carol Shea Porter made me cry because she took epping. And she has been through her career, political career, one of the most courageous people you could ask for. When she i mean, this is someone who, no secret, when she ran for congress. A lot of people are like, i dont know, people in washington were not necessarily supportive, and but she came out and she surprised the heck out of everybody and she won that primary. And then, you know, won the general election, was reelected and then lost a race in a republican wave year, but she came back, she came back, she didnt give up. She came back and she ran again. And then when we had another republican wave year and her opponent lied about her, and ran a tv ad, lying about her and unfortunately defeated her, she came back again. She didnt she never said im done. In the light of events where some people might have said, ive done enough. Ive done enough. But she always came back and picked herself up. So its not just because of the work she did in congress for veterans and for the middle class and working people, but also because she just always came back and she fought back and thats why i am so proud to give you, and im going to cry again because im going to miss you, the Kathy Sullivan courage award, because you deserve it, congresswoman. Thank you. I wondered why you kept talking about me, right . Thank you very much. And im so honored. And what Kathy Sullivan doesnt say about herself is that there might be a tougher irish woman around, but i dont think so. So, thank you, kathy, thank you, everybody. Im so honored. New hampshire democrats please welcome to the stage congresswoman grace mang. This is the moment this is the moment thanks, ray. Good evening, everyone. Its great to be in the granite state. Thank you for dialing the temperature up 10 degrees for me. Thank you chairman buckley for your wonderful welcome to this great state. And for your friendship, it truly means the world to me. Ray is one of the reasons that i was elected to be a vice chair of the dnc. So on a good dnc news day, im so thankful to him. Which means, on most days of the year, im not. But all in seriousness, it means the world to me to share the stage this evening with three of the four great women who represent the great state of New Hampshire. Youve heard lots already tonight about congresswoman Carol Shea Porter who was my classmate as well going to congress. And she gives new meaning, as you know, more than anyone else to the phrase never give up and always keeps getting up. So thank you, carol for your service. To senator Maggie Hassen who has broken so many tm÷wbarriers, n just for women, but for all americans and no big deal, she only saved health care for the whole country. And to my good friend, one of my closest friends in congress, also my classmate, congresswoman annie custer. Who really has no ego in the fights that she leads in congress. Whether its working on workforce development, or combatting opiod abuse, Sexual Harassment in the workplace, annie just gets it done and never cares about whether her name is on the bill or news conference. Im also honored to be here with two of my colleagues and friends, congressman john delaney and congressman tim ryan right now, the National Media is still focused on the democratic victories that occurred in virginia recently. But we know that the victories of 2017 began right here in New Hampshire. And continued to happen. Winning eight special elections in 10 tries, resulting in four red to blue flips, electing joyce craig as mayor of manchester after 12 years of republican rule. Thank you and congrats, joyce. And averaging 53 of the vote in districts where republicans have a registration advantage is incredible no matter what state youre from. Now ill be honest, we know that the path to retaking congress in 2018 and the white house in 2020 will not be an easy one. Just as the wins we have witnessed here in New Hampshire and rooent lrecentlylqn in vi not easy. But those wins were the results of days, months and years worth of hard work, often unseen and under appreciated. And it is that same dedication that will make future victories possible. And frankly to each of you here tonight, i say now, more than ever, we need you to continue to fi