Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Spring 2014, Vol. 40, No. 1 | Page 27

The New Hampshire Rebellion
Since the New Hampshire primary is so
critical to selecting our next U.S. president in 2016, an effort is underway to try to
make this issue an important part of the debate among primary candidates. The effort
is called the New Hampshire Rebellion21
and it hopes, with media attention gained
through three walks the length of New
Hampshire in each of the three years leading up to the primary vote, plus other related events and media pieces, to encourage at least 50,000 New Hampshire voters
to ask a simple question of each candidate,
over and over in as many forums as possible. “What are YOU going to do to end
the system of corruption in DC?” It’s hoped
that candidates, with all the local, state and
national media focus, will either begin to
intelligently answer this question, or suffer
the embarrassment of being shown in the
media as not having a sufficient answer. If
this approach is sufficiently successful, it’s
hoped that one or more of the presidential
candidates will then choose to run on this
issue, which would, as a first step, clearly
place it before all Americans in both New
Hampshire and in all subsequent contests.
The New Hampshire Rebellion takes its
name from New Hampshire’s Constitution,
which in Article 10 of their Bill of Rights,
provides this right “whenever the ends of
government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other
means of redress are ineffectual.”22
Several Vermonters, I among them, participated in the in