On the trail: First candidate announces in NHDP chair race

On the trail: First candidate announces in NHDP chair race

Longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley hasn’t announced yet if he’ll bid for another term steering the state party.

It would be a shock if he doesn’t – and his announcement on running for re-election is likely to come early next year.

But Buckley – who was first elected chair in 2007 – already has some competition.

Democratic activist, executive council candidate, and Somersworth business owner and community leader Emmett Soldati this week announced his bid, pushing a “local first” platform instead of what he argues is the party’s the current “top down approach.”

“The further you get from Concord and the further you get from the Democratic center, we don’t have as a party really strong relationships with our towns and local communities,” Soldati highlighted in an interview with the Monitor.

Pointing this this year’s elections, where the Democrats swept the four federal contests but suffered setbacks in the state showdowns, losing their majorities in the state House and Senate and the Executive Council, Soldati argued that the party’s strategy “was really about trickle down politics…and obviously that didn’t happen.”

Buckley announced soon after last month’s election that the state party was setting up a “Task Force for a Building a Blue Hampshire.” Work is now underway by the panel to determine the disconnect between the victories by President-elect Joe Biden, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, and Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas in comparison to the major setbacks in the state contests.

While Soldati’s the first to announce, potential candidates have until Jan. 15 to declare their candidacy for state party chair, as well as vice chairs, secretary and treasurer. Roughly 260 members of the New Hampshire Democratic State Committee will meet virtually on March 14 to elect the party officers.

Four members of the party’s state committee, who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely, told the Monitor that while there’s plenty of frustration over the state election results, Buckley is still considered the very clear favorite to win another term steering the party.

Soldati, who’s three decades younger than Buckley, hails far from the state’s political power center in Concord. He grew up in Somersworth, where his father Lincoln served as mayor after nearly two decades as Strafford County attorney. The elder Soldati ran unsuccessfully in 2018 for the Democratic nomination in the state’s First Congressional District.

After moving back to his hometown as an adult, Emmett Soldati opened Teatotaller Café, a popular café and restaurant in downtown Somersworth that became a hangout for local progressive political activists and a must stop for Democratic White House hopefuls during the 2020 New Hampshire presidential primary campaign.

Soldati, who finished third in this year’s 8-person race for the Executive Council District 2 Democratic nomination, for weeks has been signaling that a bid for state party chair was eminent. This week he announced an exploratory committee, releasing a list of 25 supporters, many of whom backed his council bid.

“If we move up the ballot, it is successful for our party,” he told the Monitor. “When we strengthen the candidates that are on the ground, connected to their community… if they really can build relationships on the ground to get elected as Democrats, that support flows upward.”

He emphasized that “the party needs to have a more local community grassroots organizing approach” and needs to do a better job “providing financial resources and digital resources helping Democratic communities and committees be adaptive and responsive.”

Soldati noted that “the person I’ve been most inspired by in Somersworth is a friend of mine who ran on opening a dog park and she became the highest vote getter for city council and she’s an active visible Democrat.”

Buckley, a former state representative who for years served as City Democratic Chair for Manchester and vice chair of the state party before being elected to the top job, is well known nationally among party circles.

He served for years as President of the Association of State Democratic Chairs and as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). He ran unsuccessfully in 2017 for DNC chair. He’s known for his fundraising prowess and his been credited with building up the party structure and organization in New Hampshire, which helped the party to sweeping victories up and down the ballot in the 2018 elections.

Soldati said that “I have no intentions of running a campaign against Ray Buckley.”

And he acknowledged that Buckley’s “done an incredible job building the infrastructure that’s needed to win.”

But he added that “it’s time that we are in touch with communities that he just currently isn’t prioritizing and strategizing around.”

“Do I believe that someone can be in a single position, setting the strategy and setting the goals and being the sole source of that for too long, of course I do,” said Soldati, who three decades younger than Buckley. “New Hampshire is very different than when Ray was my age.”

Asked about his longshot bid, Soldati said “my goal is to share with the entire state why they have a home in the Democratic Party.” He noted that that’s “a message that also resonates with the 260 voting members because at the end of the day their allegiance is not with party leadership, their allegiance is with expanding the tent of our party.”

He said that “the current leader may be very popular and very well know, but we also know that at a time when it was really crucial, the Democrats did not perform as well.”