“I’m in this to do something, not for something to do.”
Tom Brown announces that he's going to do something about it - from the Sun (page 7):
LACONIA — A week before the filing period opens on June 4, Tom Brown has announced that he will enter the Republican primary for one of the city’s five seats in the New Hampshire House of Representatives.
Brown, 38, will be making his second bid for a spot on the general election ballot in November. In 2004, when less than 17-percent of voters cast ballots, Brown ran seventh in a field of ten in the GOP primary, just one vote behind the two candidates tied for sixth place and 29 votes shy of the fifth place finisher. The fi ve Republican nominees — Don Flanders, Jim Fitzgerald, Frank Tilton, Ralph Rosen and John Veazey — went to sweep all five seats in November. Two years later, Fitzgerald lost his bid for the state Senate and only two of the four incumbents — Flanders and Tilton — held their seats as Democrats Jane Wood, Judith Reever and Beth Arsenault claimed the tree remaining seats.
“I didn’t even think of running in 2006,” Brown said, explaining that he had just begun a new job with HRO Plus, a small entrepreneurial firm that outsources human resources — health insurance, workers’ compensation, payroll and software packages — to national corporations. By 2007, Brown returned to politics as chairman of the Laconia Republican Committee and a regular guest on “The Advocates,” the radio talk show hosted by conservative and activist Niel Young.
“This time I’ve been thinking about it for months,” Brown said of his decision to join the race. “I’m concerned that Republicans aren’t getting a fair shake,” he said. “President Bush is not the whole party. It doesn’t start and end with him. I can’t stand to see Republicans being framed into something we’re not.”
Calling himself a “freedom Republican,” Brown said “I don’t want to lose the New Hampshire way of life. New Hampshire is an idea, not simply a state.” For him, that idea is embodied in the notion of limited government marked by laws designed to maximize personal liberty and policies intended to limit public spending.
“When you write a law,” Brown remarked, “you should ask ‘will it infringe on our freedom?’ It’s better not to have a law at all than a law that’s poorly written.” He said that if he is sent to Concord, his top priority would be to explore state expenditures with an eye to reducing them and “rolling back some of the recent tax increases.” At the same time, he would seek to promote economic development by encouraging entrepreneurial enterprise and commercial investment.
Public service runs in Brown’s family. His greatgrandfather was a supreme court justice in Massachusetts and his grandfather, after serving as an ambulance driver in the First World War, was elected to New Hampshire House of Representatives.
“I’m in this to do something,” Brown declared, “not for something to do.”
