Residents begin by identifying problems and discussing possible solutions. A citizen assembly will turn those discussions into recommendations. Lawmakers from both parties are then expected to bring at least some of them before the 2027 Legislature.¹
A normal campaign begins with a candidate who already has a platform. Consultants identify sympathetic voters and build a constituency around it. The Forum reverses the order. It begins with citizens, tries to build a constituency around the problems they identify and only later looks for politicians willing to carry the legislation.
In effect, Shue is building a campaign without a candidate.
That approach is also what raises the project’s central legitimacy question. Shue has said approximately $1 million is being spent in each state, with money coming from him and donors he described as “mostly centrist.” The major donors and their contribution amounts weren’t identified in the launch reporting.²
That doesn’t establish a hidden agenda. But “centrist” is a description, not disclosure. The Forum wants lawmakers to treat its eventual proposals as expressions of public will. To earn that authority, it should identify its major funders and explain clearly how thousands of comments become the relatively small number of choices placed before the final assembly.
The early conversations suggest the process may produce more than familiar appeals for civility. At a Concord gathering, participants proposed restoring New Hampshire’s interest-and-dividends tax, removing electronic devices from classrooms and allowing homeowners with solar panels and batteries to become small-scale power producers.³
Those ideas don’t fit comfortably into one party platform. Restoring a tax may appeal to the left. Letting homeowners compete with electric utilities could attract environmentalists, conservatives and libertarians for different reasons.
Common ground doesn’t always have to be a soggy compromise halfway between two party positions. Sometimes it can rearrange the political coalition.
The human moments have been more persuasive than the claims about consensus. At a Nashua meeting, Shalimar Encarnacion, who supports school choice, entered a discussion in which most participants were skeptical of Education Freedom Accounts. She expected to be isolated.
“I thought for sure that I would be by myself,” she said, “and I’m not.”⁴
At the same meeting, Maxine Mosley described neighbors who no longer spoke to one another and families divided by politics. She wasn’t asking everyone to agree. Her standard was simpler: “You need to be heard and I need to be heard.”⁴
Encarnacion didn’t persuade the room to support school choice, and the room didn’t persuade her to abandon it. She spoke, other people listened and everyone remained at the table.
That is worthwhile, but it’s also the easy part.
It isn’t difficult to agree that housing costs too much, property taxes are too high and electricity bills are painful. The argument begins when someone proposes who should pay, who should benefit and what government should do.
Should New Hampshire restore a tax? Permit more housing over neighborhood opposition? Regulate electric utilities more aggressively? Every serious proposal creates winners and losers. That is generally where broad agreement begins to narrow.
Shue also knows that getting citizens to agree is different from getting legislators to act. An earlier project, New Hampshire Together, convened a citizen assembly and helped produce a bill creating a single presidential-primary ballot. The proposal reached the Legislature but ultimately died on the House table.¹ ⁵
That failure may be the most important part of the story.
Lawmakers answer to party leaders, committee chairs, donors, interest groups and the voters most likely to appear in a primary.