About The Community first party

Why We Exist

Every election, both parties promise to fight for working people. Then the election ends and nothing changes.

Then the election ends and the basics keep getting harder. Housing costs rise. Property taxes rise. Healthcare costs rise. Schools get squeezed. Young people leave because they cannot afford to stay. The party in power changes but the donorsstay the same.

This is not an accident. Both parties depend on wealthy donors and PAC money. When politicians spend their time courting the rich, they end up writing policy for the rich.

Community First exists to build a political home for the working class, and to take power back from the donor class.

What We Believe

Community First is a party built by and for working people in New Hampshire.

We believe the economy should serve the people who live here, not the donors and corporations who extract from here. Everything we do comes back to one question: does this make life better for working people. If not, we do not do it.

  • We do not take PAC money or donations from organizations that work against working people. Candidates who cannot be bought cannot be owned.

  • When politicians blame immigrants or trans kids for problems caused by corporate landlords and tax loopholes, that is a con. Our neighbors are not the enemy.

  • Housing people costs less than managing homelessness. Funding schools costs less than funding prisons. Public health costs less than crisis care. We invest in prevention because it works and it costs less.

  • If a policy helps wealthy donors and hurts the people who keep this state running, we oppose it. If it helps working people and the donor class complains, good.

Why Now

The cost of living in New Hampshire keeps climbing. Housing, taxes, healthcare, childcare, groceries. All at once. And on top of that, AI is already being used to cut jobs and squeeze wages.

This is not new. Industrial automation did it. Offshoring did it. Robotics did it. Now AI is doing it. Every time, working people absorbed the damage while the people at the top collected the upside.

We can keep doing what both parties have always done. Let the market sort it out, watch communities collapse, and argue about whose fault it is while families lose everything. Or we can build the foundations now so people are protected no matter what comes.

Our Priorities

Granite Staters deserve more than survival. They deserve to build a life here, stay here, and watch their kids do the same. For too long, politics in this state has argued about ideology while the foundations fell apart. We are done with that.

Why the Goose? Geese travel together, protect each other, and take turns at the front. That is Community First in a nutshell.

Build Homes

Housing is a right. Not an investment product.

When people cannot afford to live where they work, or stay in the town they grew up in, everything falls apart. New Hampshire's shortage was built by decades of policy that made it illegal to build what working families need. Then the federal government walked away from housing and handed the job to the private market. The private market builds what is most profitable. For working people, that has never been enough.

  • Permanently affordable homes through community land trusts

  • Dignified public housing on public land, mixed-income and built to last

  • Legalize duplexes, starter homes, and small apartment buildings statewide

  • Fees on out-of-state investor properties and limits on speculation that prices residents out

  • Expand the senior property tax circuit breaker so long-time homeowners are not taxed out of their own communities

fix taxes

Working people pay too much. Wealthy investors pay too little.

A wealthy household living off investments pays almost nothing to this state. A renter or retiree pays through the nose. That is a choice the legislature made, not an accident. When they killed the Interest and Dividends Tax in 2021, $150 million a year vanished and the gap landed on property tax bills. New Hampshire loves to say "no income tax, no sales tax" but the truth is working people get crushed through property taxes, meals taxes, communications taxes, tolls, and fees that pile up every month.

  • Restore the Interest and Dividends Tax aimed at the largest passive incomes

  • Set a corporate minimum tax so large companies cannot write their way to zero

  • Legalize cannabis through a state-run model with revenue going to property tax relief and housing

  • Use new state revenue to buy down local property tax rates directly

Put Kids First

Every child deserves a fully funded future.

A kid in a wealthy town gets new textbooks and small classes. A kid twenty minutes away gets a leaking roof and a teacher shortage. Most of what New Hampshire schools spend comes from local property taxes, so a child's education depends on their town's real estate. Courts ruled that unconstitutional. Twice. Instead of fixing the funding, the state expanded a voucher program that drains public school funding and hands it to private schools with no accountability. Over three quarters of recipients were already in private school. Every time voters have been asked about vouchers at the ballot box, they have rejected them. Since 1970. You do not fix a starving school by taking more food off its plate.

  • Fund schools based on what every child deserves, not on local property wealth

  • Use state funding to buy down property tax rates directly

  • End the voucher drain and put public dollars back in public schools

  • Invest in early childhood education and science-based reading instruction

  • ‘Universal school meals, no forms, no stigma

  • Competitive pay for teachers

  • Remediate lead, PFAS, and mold in schools and homes

Healthcare for All

Nobody should go bankrupt because they got sick.

Healthcare is a right. The goal is Medicare for All: a universal system, free at the point of service, where nobody goes bankrupt because they got sick and nobody stays in a bad job because they are terrified of losing coverage. Insurance companies make money by denying claims and delaying care. That business model should not stand between a person and their doctor.

We know this does not happen overnight. So we build it in stages, and each stage makes the next one possible.

  • Start with a state-run nonprofit health plan for public employees, replacing private middlemen and proving the model works

  • Expand community health clinics with sliding-scale fees so people stop using the emergency room for basic care

  • Grow the healthcare workforce through training pipelines and loan forgiveness

  • Open the public plan to voluntary buy-in for individuals and small businesses

  • Coordinate with New England states on drug prices, rates, and purchasing power

  • The end goal is universal coverage, free at the point of service, for every person in New Hampshire

Personal Freedom

Live Free or Die means everyone.

Government has no place in your medical decisions. That goes for pregnancy, gender-affirming care, and anything else between you and your doctor. Trans kids are being used as political props by a national campaign that has nothing to do with protecting children. New Hampshire should refuse to play along. New Hampshire also has a real gun culture built around hunting, sport shooting, and rural life. Law-abiding gun owners have rights and those rights deserve respect.

  • Protect access to reproductive healthcare

  • Defend gender-affirming care for trans youth and adults

  • Defend Second Amendment rights

  • Oppose mass surveillance, civil asset forfeiture, and police militarization

  • Set limits on AI-powered government surveillance of residents

Clean Air, Clean Water

The people who poisoned the water should pay to clean it up.

New Hampshire's outdoor economy depends on the land and water being worth protecting. Right now, families are dealing with PFAS contamination, aging infrastructure, and energy costs that spike every time there is instability overseas. Companies that knowingly polluted while disputing the science should face the same accountability we demanded from Big Tobacco and Purdue Pharma.

  • Clean water first. Treat PFAS, lead, and contamination as a public health emergency

  • Lower energy bills through weatherization and efficiency upgrades

  • Expand solar and community energy where it lowers costs and improves resilience

  • Stronger penalties and enforcement for dumping, emissions, and repeated violations

  • Protect what makes New Hampshire New Hampshire: conservation, working forests, farmland, and public access

Open Government

A democracy that belongs to everyone, not just the wealthy few.

New Hampshire pays legislators $100 a year and wonders why the statehouse looks nothing like the rest of the state. When the price of entry is personal wealth or wealthy friends, working people get locked out of the rooms where decisions happen. A government that only the rich can afford to run will only ever serve the rich.

  • Ranked Choice Voting for New Hampshire elections

  • Proportional representation through STV for the NH House

  • Fair legislative pay so working people can serve

  • Fair ballot access for new parties and independents

  • Full transparency on political spending

  • Stronger protections for workers who want to organize

  • Protection for free speech and a free press

Build This With Us

People say third parties never win. Before the Civil War, abolitionists formed the Liberty Party. They lost. But they built the foundation for the Republican Party, which elected Abraham Lincoln in six years.

It started with people who refused to accept that the only choices were the ones on offer.

Four percent in the governor's race puts Community First on every ballot in New Hampshire.

If you want a party that fights for working people and backs it up with policy, come build this. Join. Donate. Run.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is this a real political party?

It will be. Under NH law (RSA 652:11), a political organization becomes a recognized party when its gubernatorial candidate gets at least 4% of the general election vote. Every vote above 4% is an investment in making Community First permanent.

What does “Community First” actually mean?

It means money and power should flow from communities upward — not from corporations and party bosses downward. It means your town’s economy should serve the people who live there. It means every policy decision gets measured against one question: does this help the community, or does it help someone extract from the community?

Are you left-wing or right-wing?

Neither. If you had to put a label on it, the closest thing is probably libertarian socialism — we believe in personal freedom and community investment at the same time. But honestly, most of our positions are just common sense that doesn’t fit neatly into either party’s box. Pro-Second Amendment. Pro-universal healthcare. Anti-surveillance state. Pro-community investment. The two parties force you to pick a side. We don’t.

Aren’t you going to spoil the election?

Cinde Warmington already trails Ayotte 46–39% head-to-head. She’s not winning that race regardless. The real question is whether expanding the electorate with voters who wouldn’t have shown up for either major candidate can change the math. We think it can. And even if it doesn’t this cycle, establishing a permanent Community First party changes the math for every cycle after.

What about AI and automation?

This is the issue no one else is talking about. AI will eliminate millions of jobs in the next decade — not just blue collar, but white collar too. We’re the only party in NH preparing for that reality: socialized housing so job loss doesn’t mean homelessness, universal healthcare decoupled from employment, UBI funded by automation’s productivity gains, and an automation tax that makes companies contribute to the communities they’re disrupting.

How do I sign the petition?

We need 3,000 signatures from registered NH voters — 1,500 from each congressional district. Sign at our events, at our Newmarket HQ, or request a form through the website.

How is this different from Forward Party or No Labels?

Those are centrist coalitions funded by wealthy donors who want to split the difference between two broken parties. We’re not centrists. We have a specific economic philosophy, a published book, and a commitment to working-class power. We don’t want the middle ground between corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans. We want to replace the whole framework.

Can I run for office as Community First?

Yes. Once we achieve party status (4% in 2026), Community First candidates get on future ballots. We’re already building a candidate network. Visit Run With Us.