Faces and Voices of Recovery New Hampshire Recovery Town Hall

Dear Colleagues,



Now that the dust has settled from this past Sunday's first in the nation Presidential Town Hall Meeting which introduced Presidential Candidates and their campaigns to addiction recovery issues, I wanted to provide you with a brief report of the event...



First, I want to say how happy I was that we accomplished many of our goals and to tell you that the event was a great success on so many levels. I was especially pleased with how many campaigns were represented - 9 in all. Seven Democrats - Clinton, Edwards, Obama, Richardson, Kucinich, Biden and Gravel and two Republicans - Huckabee and McCain sent representatives. We came close to getting surrogates for Dodd, Romney and Giuliani but they unfortunately did not come through in the end. Each of the campaign surrogates took the time to educate themselves on our issues and some provided us with prepared statements from the candidates to publish after the event. We could tell from their remarks that they had visited our website and thought about our issues. While it was disappointing that we did not have candidates attend, it wasn't because they don't care about our issues. Rather it was simply a function of the front loaded primary process this cycle. The Iowa Caucus is days away from the New Hampshire Primary making Iowa an important place to campaign right now. Not to mention Michigan, Nevada & South Carolina which are right on the heels of these first two contests. These factors are keeping candidates jumping from state to state trying to get as much face time with voters as possible. Candidates were just not in New Hampshire on Sunday.



We received great media coverage around the event - almost 10 stories in all! This helped educate candidates (who read clippings), public policy makers and members of the general public who were not able to attend, providing them with good information on our issues. This education through media outreach is so important for our long-term work as well as the impact it has on changing negative public attitudes and ending discrimination each time we receive a positive story. I'm attaching some excerpts from an article from the Union Leader (the statewide newspaper of record in New Hampshire ) and some quotes we received from folks who attended the event. I'm also attaching the printed program for the event in case you're interested in seeing how it was laid out.



The actual town hall meeting was impressive on all fronts as we had...

A great moderator - Lisa Peakes, NH Public Radio's Morning Edition Host, and a person in long-term recovery;
A flawless program - which included speeches from candidate's representatives, questions from the audience, a video of the Emmy Award winning HBO documentary, a reaction panel and a recovery speaker;
High profile campaign surrogates - who did an outstanding job representing their candidates (including a State Senator, several State Representatives, A District Attorney, A former Congressional candidate, the former chair of the State Board of Education, etc.);
A wonderful panel - that reacted to the HBO documentary (the panel included: a family member whose son is in recovery, a student from the first recovery high school in NH, a prevention specialist, a treatment provider representative and the director of a recovery community organization - every panelist identified themselves as being in recovery!);
Passionate questioners - people in recovery, family members, students from the school's prevention program, and women from the Taskforce on Women & Recovery (some who identified as being currently incarcerated in a minimum security work release program)
A great recovery speaker - Carol McDaid, a Faces & Voices Board member told her story and called upon those in attendance to take action by seeking candidates on the stump in the next several weeks and asking them questions;
A dedicated committee - who were brought together back in May by Denise Devlin (who put on a similar event 8 years ago),a former Faces & Voices of Recover Board Member and director of FOR-NH;
and Superb volunteers and students - who helped set up the event and worked to help make the day run smoothly.
This event brought together important Granite State partners in the prevention, treatment and recovery communities including family members and provided them the opportunity to work together and speak with one unified voice. We also had several national allies on board (CADCA, Faces & Voices of Recovery, NAADAC, and The National Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare). We were grateful to Joe Harding, the Director of the NH Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Policy who supported the event and gave greetings from the State of NH. Former ONDCP Deputy Director (under President Clinton) and State Representative Ricia McMahon was also very helpful in the planning and identifying campaign surrogates. And non-partner organizations like Join Together and New Futures supported the event by promoting it to their extensive email lists.


In addition to the town hall meeting, we were fortunate to meet and talk to several candidates and spouses during the planning process. I personally met Governor Huckabee, Elizabeth Edwards and Bill Clinton. I told them all about the event and I was able to ask Governor Huckabee a question about the parity legislation. Two of our planning committee members also tracked down Senator Biden and Congressman Kucinich and asked them questions. We plan to continue to do this one on one candidate questioning in New Hampshire and we're training folks in Iowa and South Carolina to do the same as part of our larger effort called Recovery Voices Count


Tom Coderre
National Feild Director
Faces and Voices of Recovery