Laconia Daily Sun
Michael Kitch
Feb 26, 2010
LACONIA — Jim Forsythe of Strafford, kicked off his campaign to become the Republican candidate for the District 4 seat in the New Hampshire Senate before an enthusiastic crowd of some 60 people at the Margate Resort last night.
Forsythe, 41, who moved with his family to New Hampshire in 2003, has become a presence on the conservative wing of the GOP during the past four years. Recalling his move to New Hampshire, he told his supporters “I felt I had died and gone to heaven — no income tax, no sales tax, no seat belt law. I enjoyed the New Hampshire advantage for two years,” he continued, “then things quickly eroded.”
As chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus, which calls itself “conscience of the Republican Party,” and associated Republican Liberty Political Action Committee, Forsythe began monitoring legislation and supporting GOP candidates. In 2008 he backed Ron Paul in the presidential primary and mounted a brief campaign for Congress in the 1st District, raising more than $100,000 before bowing out after two months. Meanwhile he said that his political action committee contributed $30,000 to the campaigns of “very conservative candidates” to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, including Bob Mead of Mont Vernon and Daniel Itse of Fremont, both of whom won.
While the Democratic ascendancy in Concord prompted Forsysthe’s entry into party politics, a visit to the Soviet Union as a boy of 14 defined his political identity. “It was a formative experience,” he said, explaining that he saw in the faces of Soviet citizens the effects of a government that denies freedom. “It instilled in me a belief and commitment to free markets and free enterprise.”
Forsythe said that the defining issue of the 2010 state election is whether “we have a revenue problem or a spending problem. He said that Kathy Sgambati of Tilton, the two-term Democratic incumbent incumbent in District 4, has said the state faces a revenue problem, which he called “the wrong answer.” Forsythe claimed that “whenever we’ve cut spending and lowered taxes we’ve had an economic boom.” He called for the repeal of the so-called “LLC tax” and reductions in other business taxes, including the business profits and rooms and meals taxes.
Acknowledging that tax cuts would require commensurate spending cuts, he said that the state could reduce health care costs by permitting the purchase of insurance across state lines, eliminating mandated benefits and introducing tort reform. “We can reduce costs and improve quality,” he said. Likewise, he estimated the state could trim its utility costs by 20-percent by changing its purchasing policies to draw more suppliers into the market.
Forsythe’s children are schooled at home and he favors encouraging greater competition in education by granting tax credits, issuing vouchers and opening charter schools, which he said would reduce expenditures by $32-million.
Former congressman and now state Senator Jeb Bradley, who first met Forsythe two years ago in the 1st congressional district GOP primary, is convinced he will win the nomination and take the seat. “No one is going to work harder than Jim,” he said. The size of the crowd, which included Senate Republican leader Peter Bragdon of Milford and newly elected Republican senator David Boutin of Manchester as well as several House members, indicated that Forsythe’s campaign team has already been at work.
Forsythe said that because he is best known in Strafford County, the most sparsely populated part of the district, gaining a following in Belknap County will be a challenge, especially since he will face George Hurt of Gilford, the founder of Hurt and Forbes Insurance Agency of Laconia, in the September primary.
An aerospace engineer who served in Air Force for 12 years and taught at the Air Force Academy for five, Forsythe is a self-described entrepreneur who moved to New Hampshire from Ohio where he was a part owner of Cobalt Solutions, LLC, an aerospace firm. He said that he, his wife Sue and two children, Kate and Connor, came to New Hampshire to be close to her family. He operates Forsythe Consulting, LLC, an aeronautical engineering firm and is a research professor at the UNH.
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