NH Dems: "What is the Problem?"

After 30+ years of NH Dems struggling w/how to handle education funding, it's time to solve the correct problem.

Earlier this week, I published a piece entitled, “NH Dems: Winning with Sabermetrics.” It was part one of a several-piece series that will reflect where, after months of evaluating data, spending time with a few thousand activists, and learning lessons, I think NH Democrats need to apply our time, money, and attention in order to win state-level majorities in 2026 and beyond.

A lot of my work uses the principles of sabermetrics first introduced to me when I was 10 years old, way back in 1984. It is heavy in quantitative work - a lot of data - but it is perhaps even more valuable as a way of thinking…about thinking. That’s what today’s piece is about: Using the latest education funding court decision to look at whether or not we are doing the most basic of early steps when trying to solve a problem: Solve the right problem.

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The Emergence of “Moneyball”

Earlier this week, I wrote at length about how a book my Mom bought me when I was a kid ended up changing my life. The 1984 Bill James Baseball Abstract was a smorgasbord of pithy writing, quantitative analysis, and baseball, an early example of the groundbreaking work James was doing to question virtually everything about the conventional wisdom of the oldest American team sport.

James’s writing was sharp - including many literary sharp elbows at the sport’s managerial class - and acerbic. His research produced many nuanced conclusions, but his language was not nuanced. Add to that his lack of background as a trained statistician or even baseball player, and it made his contrarian ways rather easy for baseball’s establishment to largely disregard until well into the 1990s.

During the 1980’s, there was one general manager in baseball who followed James’s work closely: Sandy Alderson of the Oakland A’s. Though quiet about it throughout the 80s, by the mid-1990s, he spoke much more openly about sabermetrics’ role in building the 1988 to 1990 A’s, one of the dominant teams of the late 20th century.

But when the owner of the team died in 1995, the new owner ordered Alderson to slash the team’s payroll to among the lowest in the sport, putting the A’s at a competitive disadvantage. Alderson felt compelled to zig where other teams were zagging, and aggressively embraced sabermetric principles in an effort to exploit inefficiencies in how the rich teams were evaluating (and paying!) players.

In 1997, his protege in sabermetrics, Billy Beane, succeeded Alderson as general manager. Beane had been a highly-regarded high school baseball prospect who had decided to go directly to the pros, rather than accept a scholarship to Stanford. His pro career didn’t pan out, though, and he quickly moved up the ladder in the A’s organization as a player evaluator and front office talent.

Billy Beane

Beane took sabermetric principles much further than any major league sports team ever had, and on a shoestring of a payroll, oversaw the reemergence of the Oakland A’s as one of baseball’s best teams.

Michael Lewis, one of America’s most successful and well-known authors, took Beane’s story (and the field of sabermetrics) squarely into the mainstream in 2003 by writing a New York Times #1 Bestseller about it, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. It followed the construction of the 2002 A’s, who would make a series of unorthodox moves on the way to winning 100 games, including the longest winning streak in the 100+ year history of the American League.

Moneyball became required reading for baseball executives and business students, high school coaches and high-flying entrepreneurs. I was 29 when the book came out, and I couldn’t believe it: This sabermetric stuff I’d been telling my friends about since 4th grade was now cool.

It became shorthand for how somebody could try to find the market inefficiency, a winning edge, to be the scrappy David against some better-funded Goliath: “How are we going to Moneyball this situation?”

And then, it went even bigger. Moneyball, co-written by Aaron Sorkin and starring Brad Pitt as Beane, became one of 2011’s most successful movies, nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Film, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Screenplay.

That’s right - sabermetrics had gone from the scratchwork of a bored, overnight shift security guard named Bill James at a frank-and-beans cannery in the mid-1970’s to Brad Pitt.

“What Is The Problem?”

In the film, Billy Beane (played by Pitt) walks into a meeting of a group of old-school baseball scouts employed by the team. They have been tasked with figuring out how to replace three of the team’s biggest stars, all of whom have left the A’s over the winter to sign big money contracts (that the A’s could not afford to pay) with the sport’s richest franchises: the Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Cardinals. Beane listens for a while as they use painfully antiquated and non-data driven approaches to scouting players (“He’s got an ugly girlfriend - an ugly girlfriend means no confidence.”), before he unfurls the reality: The scouts aren’t even trying to solve the right problem.

The scouts resist, but Beane is unyielding. The scouts think the problem is that they need to somehow take their tiny budget and find a first baseman who can produce similar statistics as the departed Jason Giambi, arguably the best hitter in the league. That’s impossible, Beane reminds them, before stating the premise of the film:

“The problem we’re trying to solve is that there are rich teams, then there’s poor teams, then there’s 50 feet of crap…and then there’s us. It’s an unfair game. And now we’ve been gutted, like organ donors for the rich. Boston’s taken our kidneys, Yankees have taken our heart, and you guys are sitting around, talking the same old ‘good body’ nonsense like we’re selling jeans…We’ve got to think differently.”

In short, Beane is saying that the scouts are focused on inputs, when what really matters is the outcome. And once you realize that what matters is the outcome, your organization becomes liberated, open to any possible means of achieving that outcome…even if sabermetrics suggest an unorthodox, but potentially effective, way to win. If you are good with being a little uncomfortable…then nothing is terribly uncomfortable anymore.

This brings me to New Hampshire politics, where the advantage goes to whichever side is willing to do things that make them a little uncomfortable - because they are focused on the outcome. They are solving the right problem.

Democrats and Education Funding

If you’ve read this far, you probably know about the NH State Supreme Court’s decision a few weeks ago affirming (once again) that the State of NH is short by at least $500 million in meeting its constitutional obligation to adequately fund K-12 public education.

I recently wrote about the impact of the decision, and would encourage you to at least skim it if you haven’t already. Prominent Republicans, including Gov. Ayotte and House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, basically said it was wrong and that no major changes in policy are forthcoming. Prominent Democrats generally said that this was simply the latest such decision from our state’s court system going back more than 30 years, and it is well beyond time to follow the law, and have the State do its part to adequately fund public education.

Nobody is terribly surprised by it, and nobody really expects anything to change. For NH Republicans, this is fine - indeed, it is the goal. New Hampshire’s school funding model provides the lowest percentage coming from state funding of any state in America (and consequently, the highest percentage that comes from local property taxes):

By definition, any move towards the Supreme Court rulings that have consistently come down over the past 30+ years will take this lopsided state-to-local tax relationship, and even it out. Every state - including the most libertarian conservatives in Big Sky country, and the most socially conservative states of the Deep South - does this. Every state, that is, but New Hampshire.

When the first successful lawsuit was filed claiming that the state’s education funding system was unconstitutional, I was a junior in high school. I am 51.

As the State Supreme Court released this decision a few weeks ago, my younger daughter is getting ready to start her junior year in college.

Because the NHGOP is content to see nothing change, and explicitly say their plan is to ignore the ruling, it will be up to New Hampshire Democrats to fix the problem, and comply with the law. So why hasn’t this happened over the past 30+ years?

Because we have not identified the problem correctly.

Is the problem legal, policy…or politics?

Many Democrats have determined that this a legal problem. Earlier this week, former Executive Councilor Andru Volinsky wrote a comprehensive summary of the legal status of this case. Volinsky is the expert on the legal history and arguments of New Hampshire’s education funding lawsuits; heck, not only has he been a lead attorney in the cases, he wrote the book on it!

But the problem is no longer legal - the state’s highest court consistently tells whoever is governor or the legislature at that time that they need to do something about it, or else….or else…or else…

Did I mention my younger daughter is a junior in college now?

At this point, relying on the legal system to solve this problem is akin to shaking the rubble at a bomb site. Another favorable court decision struggled to raise an eyebrow, much less an alarm.

Many Democrats believe that this is a policy problem. Now that the State Supreme Court has determined that the legislature shall do something, the next step is to offer up legislation. If the right funding formula or regime is created, we’ll finally address the problem. But:

1) Democrats don’t have a legislative majority, and in 2025, there was zero evidence that a substantial Democratic-led idea would go anywhere.

2) There is evidence that the current Republican majority will effectively use any discussion of increased revenue as a successful weapon against Democrats. Last year, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, former Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig, proposed bringing back a piece of the state’s recently-repealed Interest & Dividends tax. (Basically, it would have reintroduced it at a much higher income level than in the past.) Here is what then-candidate Ayotte did with that proposal at the WMUR debate in late October of 2024:

Calling it an “income tax”, Ayotte put Craig on the defensive repeatedly, forcing Craig to spend much of her time telling voters what she was against, rather than what she was for. This is because for more than 50 years, NH Republicans have owned the narrative on what has typically been the state’s biggest political issue: Taxes.

20 years ago, the “tax debate” was about whether or not New Hampshire should have a statewide, general income or sales tax. Gubernatorial candidates like John Lynch or Maggie Hassan could simply pledge not to promote or sign either tax into law, and it effectively took the issue off the table.

But in the last decade, the NHGOP has “moved the goalposts” on what can be discussed. Now, virtually any tax (notably, except for property taxes) can be considered an income tax. In fact, if a Democrat opposes a proposed cut to a current tax, it is treated as a violation of an income tax pledge.

3) This creates a big policy problem, if your goal is to comply with the Supreme Court’s decision: The court is saying that the state is at least $500 million a year short in paying for schools. The only ways to “policy” your way out of that problem are to:

• “Rename” more local property taxes “statewide” property taxes (which does nothing to actually solve the problem, and has been done for decades).

• Try to use the same state money you currently spend on more “targeted” educational aid (I was on Gov. Lynch’s ed funding committee way back in 2005 when we tried something like this, trying to evaluate each town’s “fiscal capacity”). It is politically very difficult, and Gov. Lynch unsuccessfully attempted to get a constitutional amendment passed in order to make his preferred targeting approach viable. That was 18 years ago.

• Raise more revenue.

The first one doesn’t help solve the actual problem. The second one is politically and legally dubious. The third one is (currently) political poison, and if you even suggest it, that suggestion will appear on a negative mail piece in your district soon thereafter.

This is not currently a policy problem.

The answer to the question, “What is the problem?”, is that this is currently a political problem. It is not clear to me that enough Democrats in New Hampshire see it this way. Consider:

1) The political marketplace is not asking for action. Nationally, Democrats (and many non-partisan legal scholars) have expressed grave concerns that the Trump Administration will ignore court rulings, effectively daring judges to do something about it. Just this week, a DOJ whistle-blower claimed the administration pressured him and other attorneys to ignore court rulings related to protecting due process during deportation efforts.

But for 30 years New Hampshire has episodically chosen to ignore clear, consistent orders from the state’s highest courts to come into compliance on the education funding issue. Just asked a few weeks ago what a “reasonable legislative response” to the Supreme Court ruling would be, the House Majority Leader said, “Nothing.” The fear of the Trump Administration ignoring the courts leads to national protests and outrage by the Democratic base. But the reality of ignoring the state’s Supreme Court has largely led to…yawns.

That’s a political problem. Politicians respond to the political environment, just as retailers respond to consumers’ demands. If the political marketplace is saying that ignoring the latest Supreme Court ruling is not a big deal, there’s no legal or policy strategy that is going to move the needle. Only political strategies (likely long-term ones) will do that.

2) The political marketplace, however, is angry about the consequences of inaction. It feels like every month or two I write a piece saying the same thing: “The latest UNH Granite State Poll says that the top three issue remain housing, property taxes, and local public education.”

The thing is, when a voter says that the most important problem facing New Hampshire is housing (36% said this in the last such poll taken, in late May), taxes (10%), or education (8%), they are really saying the same thing, looked at in three different ways. I call it the “Bermuda Triangle” of New Hampshire politics, and I’ve written about it extensively, including here.

Voters are very unhappy about how expensive and difficult to find housing has become; how high property taxes are; and what seems like the uncertain future of many of our local public schools. The majority of New Hampshirites are telling us these are the biggest problems in our state.

And yet, the driving reason for all three of these problems - the uniquely antiquated, inefficient, and regressive way we fund schools - has been clearly determined by our highest courts to be unlawful…and virtually nobody is angry about that.

Democrats in New Hampshire have failed for decades to successfully connect the problems which make voters angry with the cause of the problem.

That is not a legal or policy challenge - that is a political challenge. The NHGOP sees this barreling towards lawmakers, and is trying to win the battle of the coming political argument:

• Deal with housing unaffordability by increasing supply through statewide override of restrictive local zoning laws

• Get at high property taxes by putting a state per pupil cap on the single biggest cost driver of local government - education

• Address education quality through open enrollment among traditional public school, and a universal Education Freedom Account (or voucher program) to theoretically allow parents to better “shop” for a school.

I am personally very much opposed to their “solutions” for last two bullet points, but (like many Republicans and Democrats) think land use and zoning policy reform holds promise.

The key here for New Hampshire Democrats is to recognize that we are in a race with the NHGOP to frame and win the political argument over how we frame the cause of our housing, property tax, and education problems.

Look at those three bullet points above: The NHGOP is making an argument that the reason we have the “Bermuda Triangle” problems are because of crappy local elected officials. Your local land use boards have their heads in the sand! Your local board of selectmen are spending like drunken sailors! And your local school board is focusing less on math and reading, and more on DEI and bloated administration!

They even tried to pass a law, vetoed by Gov. Ayotte this week, to make local elections partisan, arguing that ultra-low turnout in local elections is allowing liberal special interests to dominate who serves on these local boards. Earlier this year, the GOP tried to pass a law that would move local election days to the same day as statewide, even-numbered year general elections, using the same argument.

Every minute New Hampshire Democrats are thinking about state politics for the remainder of this election cycle, it should be on building a strategy for solving the political problem. Winning more education funding lawsuits, or constructing education funding-related bills, are laudable, but they fail to look at the correct problem.

As Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane said, we have to stop acting like we’re selling jeans. If you think it’s an unfair game, then you’ve got to play Moneyball to win. And that starts with correctly answering the question, “What is the problem?”