With lessons learned from 2024 bid, Jon Kiper mounts 2nd run for governor

Before former Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington announced her challenge against Kelly Ayotte’s governorship on Wednesday, business owner Jon Kiper, of Newmarket, was the lone Democrat in the race. 

And he’s creating his own thundering herd.

In the previous Democratic primary in 2024, Kiper ran against the former mayor of Manchester, Joyce Craig, and Warmington. Craig went on to win that race, and ultimately lost to Ayotte in the General Election. Now, Kiper says his message — emphasizing economic populism and broad inequalities — is poised to resonate. 

In 2024, Kiper’s campaign spent only about $60,000, and about $20,000 of that was spent on marketing, he said Thursday in an interview. He achieved about 9% of the vote, working out to a return on investment of about $5 per vote — by his estimation, Warmington and Craig spent around $30 to $35 per vote.

He credits his momentum to connecting, in plain language, with working-class Granite Staters on the issues they care about most.  

“The one thing that we failed at was to get, basically, people under the age of 40 to vote,” he said. “They just didn’t show up.”

A recent University of New Hampshire poll shows Kiper trailing Ayotte by 11 points. But Kiper is pessimistic about the idea either party would throw their weight behind candidates without millions of dollars in cash, who lack legacy name recognition, and who are not connected to the wealthiest in New Hampshire.  

“I think what I realized was that these political action committees, they don’t want to rock the boat with the party either. And they’re afraid to pick a loser and then be sort of not included in the discussion if they back a loser, which makes them kind of irrelevant,” Kiper said. “If you’re not going to flex your power in the primary, what’s the point?

“I think there's this self-fulfilling prophecy where the media, the establishment candidates, the establishment Democrats, the leadership, will say, ‘You have to have X amount of money, you have to have $1 million to run.’ They’ll call me like a third-tier candidate — Politico just did — and the only thing is money,” he said. “If I were a millionaire restaurant owner, they’d say, ‘He’s legitimate.’”

Kiper said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) offered to help finance his campaign in October, but will no longer take his phone calls.  

“I think that there’s something going on behind the scenes that has made a small group of the leadership really not want me to be running as a Democrat,” he said. “I don’t think they like hearing ‘tax the rich,’ I think that they’re worried that I’m going to alienate the donors by saying ‘tax the rich.’”

Rather than relying on the Democratic establishment, Kiper is pushing forward by centering economic policy people of all sorts can find common ground on. He’s also the man behind a lawsuit against the state, calling the $100 per year owed to state representatives a barrier to participation for working-class Granite Staters. 

This time around, Kiper said he’s focused on confronting inequality, which he described as the biggest problem facing New Hampshire and the nation, and considers housing, the state’s tax system and its public schools to be structural problems that are intertwined.  

“Most people have an opinion, and it's not [keeping] the same system,” Kiper said of the state’s property tax burden. “Some of them want an income tax, some say a sales tax, some say consumption tax or value-added tax. I’m not married to any one idea, but I know what we’re doing right now doesn’t work. And I would like to get to a consensus of where we can go to a system that would be more equitable and be more fair and not distorting the housing market — follow the Constitution to fund the schools as per what the judges have told us we need to do.

“One thing that I also think people should think about, in terms of thinking 10 or 20 years ahead, which is the problem in our current system, it's a two-year cycle, so no one’s thinking 20 years ahead, no one’s thinking 30 years ahead,” he said. “I like to think 30 years ahead when we come up with a way to fund the schools.”

Kiper cited future reduced employment due to artificial intelligence, automation and robotics, and said an income or sales tax, with fewer employed persons contributing, likely wouldn’t help. Instead he's looking toward the return of the interest and dividends tax, and to spark a conversation generally about the issue. 

“That’s why I think we really need to get toward taxing wealth and not work, because more and more people are going to have wealth and less and less people are going to have work,” he said. “How do we do that? Frankly, the interest and dividends was a great wealth tax. It was started, I think, in 1923 — almost lasted 100 years.

“You’ve got to address education funding — it will lower property taxes and it will allow the housing to get cheaper,” he said. “That’s the sequence that it’s got to be, it’s not going to happen any other way. I hope more people are starting to realize how connected those things are.”  

Leaning on his experiences two years ago, Kiper is looking to connect with the voters unsatisfied with the status quo, whether they’re Democrats, Republicans or independents. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders did well in New Hampshire, he noted. Maine candidate for U.S. Senate Graham Platner, a Democrat, has also made inroads there with similar messaging. 

“The problem with the party is that they’ve gotten so into this identity politics thing that it’s really hard to build a cohesive coalition,” Kiper said.