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As expected, it didn’t take long for Democrats in New Hampshire to point out what proposals they didn’t like in Gov. Chris Sununu’s budget speech last week.

“I am encouraged by statements of Governor Sununu in support of full-day kindergarten and funding for the developmentally disabled, but as we all know, the devil is in the details,” said House Democratic Leader Steve Shurtleff in a statement. “The Governor’s budget address made no mention of the successful NH Health Protection Program, leaving serious unanswered questions for the 50,000 Granite Staters who rely on the program for their health care coverage.”

But the more divisive statements came from the Senate Democratic Caucus and New Hampshire Democratic Party (NHDP). While they applauded Sununu for keeping several initiatives put in place by former Gov. Maggie Hassan, they criticized him for not fully funding the Alcohol Fund to combat the opioid crisis.

“And in the midst of a substance abuse crisis, we need to find out why Governor Sununu chose not to fully fund the Alcohol Fund, which supports our effort to combat this crisis,” said Senate Minority Leader Jeff Woodburn in a statement.

NHDP Chairman Ray Buckley echoed Woodburn’s sentiments saying he was “disheartened to see that the governor did not fully fund the state’s alcohol fund, which would provide key resources to combat this epidemic.”

The Alcohol Abuse Prevention and Treatment Fund was created in 2000 by the Legislature, and it’s a mechanism that takes 5 percent of the gross profits from the sale of alcohol to support education, prevention, treatment, and recovery programs for alcohol and drugs. The fund has only been fully financed one time since its inception, which was in the 2003-2004 biennium — the first year it began. In his budget speech, Sununu proposed increasing the funds to 3.4 percent, double the 1.7 percent rate the previous budget had set.

In each budget after that, the governor or Legislature transferred the revenue to the general fund and only appropriated a small amount to the Alcohol Fund, which means Republican Gov. Craig Benson and Democratic Govs. John Lynch and Maggie Hassan suspended funding during their terms.

In the most recent budget, for the 2016-2017 budget biennium, Hassan and the House proposed suspending the funding formula. Hassan proposed giving the fund $9.6 million over the two-year period, but the Republican-controlled House dropped that figure to $3.6 million. Senators proposed bringing the formula back and lowering the cap to 1.7 percent, which would give the fund $6.7 million.

If the fund was fully financed for the whole biennium, it would have received approximately $19 million, still nearly $10 million less than what Hassan suggested. After the Senate put forward its recommendation for the budget, the NHDP called their budget “unbalanced and partisan” with “irresponsible gimmicks.”

It’s interesting that the NHDP would criticize Sununu for not fully funding the Alcohol Fund, when previous Democratic governors did not fully fund it either.

“We haven’t had a Democratic governor who has fought as hard as Sununu is fighting for it [the Alcohol Fund] right now,” said former state Rep. Joe Hannon, R-Lee, who made his mark in the Legislature by focusing on the opioid crisis.

“No one has taken the leadership on this, and the battle will be in the House and Senate Finance Committees,” he told NH Journal. “I’m always happy when the governor speaks about how he is addressing substance abuse treatment. He gets it, and that’s something I haven’t seen in awhile from leadership in the state.”

New Futures, a nonprofit group looking to curb substance abuse in the state, is a fervent supporter of fully funding the Alcohol Fund at 5 percent. They believe the money from the non-lapsing, flexible fund could be used for creative and innovative solutions to stop the opioid epidemic.

“We are encouraged by the fact that Gov. Sununu has increased the funding for the Alcohol Fund by doubling the current amount,” said Linda Paquette, president and CEO of New Futures. “However, we anxiously await the release of House Bill 2 in order to clarify the support in the budget for addressing New Hampshire’s substance abuse epidemic.”

Paquette said she was “very curious” what Sununu meant when he talked about “incentives” with the Alcohol Fund.

“First, I propose we double the Alcohol Fund, increasing these important resources by more than $3 million and creating incentives to ensure that those funds are truly spent,” he said in his Thursday speech.

Pacquette said she is hopeful that the Alcohol Fund will be a priority for the Republican-controlled State House because the funds are “not restricted.” New Hampshire is expected to receive federal money from grants and the 21st Century Cures Act, legislation approved by Congress and former President Barack Obama in December 2016, which gives $6.3 billion in funding to circumvent the opioid crisis and enhance medical research and development.

“The Alcohol Fund can be used to fill gaps where grant money and federal funds are restricted for certain uses,” Paquette told NH Journal. “It can be used for supporting recovery housing and investing in early childcare as a substance abuse prevention strategy. He [Sununu] clearly has made the opioid crisis a priority of his administration.”

Sununu presented his budget to the House and Senate Finance Committee in a Tuesday joint committee meeting. The House Finance Committee will take a look at his budget first and put forward recommendations to the full House later in the spring. After passage in the House, the Senate Finance Committee will review that budget and put it up for a vote to the full Senate, before returning to the governor’s desk for his signature or veto.

“We’re going to double that fund and get the money where we can have a lot of impact,” he said in the meeting. “Not just in the high-density areas, but really all across the state. None of our communities have been immune to that.”

The Senate Finance Committee recommended passage of Senate Bill 196 on Tuesday, which was amended to increase the Alcohol Fund to the 3.4 percent rate proposed by Sununu. If the House changes the formula or suspends it in its budget recommendations, this bill could override it and fund it at the rate Sununu proposed.

“This is a sound proposal that I and a majority of the Senate Finance Committee supported today by recommending a bill to do just that,” said Senate Finance Chair Gary Daniels, R-Milford, in a statement. “We have established a number of initiatives that serve to stem substance abuse, including the heroin crisis, and I know we can do more with the funding Governor Sununu has proposed as part of his budget.”

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There are 19 groups in New Hampshire that have signed on to completely resist President Donald Trump, and they’re trying to take a page out of the Tea Party’s playbook.

A new national organization called “Indivisible” is going back to the basics: push back against Trump from the grassroots level. The group published a manifesto, essentially a manual on how to resist the Trump agenda, written by former Democratic congressional staffers.

“We examine lessons from the Tea Party’s rise and recommend two key strategic components: A local strategy targeting individual members of Congress; a defensive approach purely focused on stopping Trump from implementing an agenda built on racism, authoritarianism, and corruption,” they wrote.

Indivisible, which has more than 2,400 local groups registered with them, is advising voters to assemble at the local level and have members focus on their respective elected senators and representatives by speaking out at town hall meetings, asking their elected officials questions at local photo-ops and ceremonies, showing up at their district offices for meetings, and overwhelming their phone lines with coordinated calls.

“We can all learn from their [the Tea Party] success in influencing the national debate and the behavior of national policymakers,” the group wrote. “To their credit, they thought thoroughly about advocacy tactics.”

Many progressives are trying to recreate the circumstances that led to a wave of Republican victories in Congress and state legislatures in the 2010 midterm elections. Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, gained more seats in the Senate, and flipped several state legislative seats, mostly campaigning on conservative ideals and anti-President Barack Obama rhetoric. But liberals could find it difficult to implement a similar strategy and might find more success if they work with Trump when possible.

The Democratic Party enters the Trump presidency completely shut out of power, with Republicans in control of the White House, House, Senate, and even most state governments. And they’re already divided amongst themselves with progressives versus moderates, and whether they should oppose Trump or work with him on common interests.

Just after his first week in office, it looks like many Democrats and progressive activists want to resist him at every step. The American Civil Liberties Union already filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order that temporarily bars entry to refugees from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen due to terrorism concerns. A federal judge granted an emergency stay Saturday to stop deportation of people with valid visas who landed in the United States.

But if they continue that mentality, they might run into some trouble in the 2018 midterm elections and even the 2020 presidential election. Even though the party in charge usually doesn’t do well in midterm elections, many House seats will still favor Republican control due to gerrymandering. And Democrats have to defend 10 Senate seats in Republican-controlled states. The political terrain isn’t favorable for them right now.

By refusing to compromise, Democrats may be unable to influence policy even when the president’s agenda aligns with traditional Democratic interests. It’s true that rejecting compromise can reveal internal differences and struggles within the president’s own party, such as with the ongoing Republican debate on repealing Obamacare. More damage could be done by working with Trump and exposing the internal divide in the Republican Party that’s been there since the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2009.

An area some Democrats and Trump could work on together is infrastructure spending, albeit with some disagreements on how to fund it. Trump will almost need Senate Democrats to help get it through Congress. Some of his ideas resemble the “big-government conservatism” of George W. Bush that upset many Tea Partiers. Working out a few deals with Trump could anger some Republicans, and it might do more damage to the president than being vehemently opposed to everything he does.

If the Democrats could unify around that message, they could be in much better shape to retake Congress and the presidency, and ultimately be able to govern themselves and the country better than before.

Uncompromising Democratic opposition is essentially saying the party wants to be more like the Republican Party, by trying to emulate what the Republicans did in 2009. But while the Republicans were “unified” by being anti-Obama anything, they didn’t take the time to rebuild as a party and create a clear message for the base. That was evident by the loss of Mitt Romney in 2012. And now, look at them. They ended up nominating a candidate who barely aligns with their platform. They have full control over the federal government, but they still are struggling to be unified over how to run it, as exhibited by disagreement over many of Trump’s policies.

While it’s understandable that Democrats and progressive activists would want to go about rebuilding their party the same way the Republicans did in 2009, it’s better for their party to engage with Trump in policy debates because those issues are ones they can build a campaign on, and not just on partisan rhetoric.

The Democrats have a prime opportunity to genuinely build their party from the grassroots level up. If the loss of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election taught them anything, it’s that they need to listen to the working class in Middle America again and create a message that appeals not only to their base, but also to disenfranchised voters who feel left out of the system.

It’ll prove to be difficult for them to do that though, especially with some major players on the national stage that see the party going in a different, more radical direction.

Just look at the confirmation hearing battles. Several Democratic senators who are looking to run for president in 2020 won’t vote for anything put forward by Trump out of fear from attacks to their left. John Kelly was confirmed as secretary for homeland security by a vote of 88-11. Some of those “no” votes came from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). The more moderate Democrats might feel pressure to vote a certain way in order to follow suit, and especially when the media reports that former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Warren, and Booker voted one way, it could make it seem like the Democrats who don’t fall in line aren’t supportive of the party.

An unpopular Trump could win another four years if the next Democratic presidential leader is too far outside of the political spectrum.

And speaking of leaders, the race for the next chair of the Democratic National Committee is revealing to show how anti-Trump and against compromise the Democratic Party could be. While members of their party were participating in the Women’s March earlier this month, most of the 10 candidates for DNC chair were at a private fundraising conference held by liberal political operative David Brock. The message that could send to grassroots leaders is that the Democratic Party hasn’t learned its lesson from its recent defeat and instead, continues to listen to big money rather than voters.

The latest forums between the candidates have also shown that there aren’t many disagreements between them; they don’t have many new ideas to jumpstart the party, and they all have zero desire to work with Trump.

“That’s a question that’s absolutely ridiculous,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman Ray Buckley at one of the forums, when he was asked about working with Trump.

If the Democrats try to imitate the Tea Party movement, don’t create a unifying message for its voters, and resist Trump at every turn, then they’re in for a long eight years.

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