On Oct. 12, Democratic candidate for New Hampshire governor Cinde Warmington visited Dartmouth for a speaker event hosted by the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and a meeting with Dartmouth Democrats. Warmington — who trailed Republican incumbent Gov. Kelly Ayotte by 11 points in a Sept. 22 New York Times/Siena University poll released Sept. 23 — ran unsuccessfully in 2024. Warmington also served on New Hampshire’s Executive Council from 2021 to 2025.
The Dartmouth sat down with Warmington after her event at the Rockefeller Center to check in about the gubernatorial race and discuss her policy proposals on housing, affordability and AI.
Which issues do you think resonate with voters right now in New Hampshire, and which are not?
CW: Cost. Affordability. People are struggling just to get by: the cost of housing, childcare, food, gas, electricity, property tax, rent. It’s incredibly hard for people to just make ends meet. That’s all people want to talk about right now. Their very basic needs are not being met.
Recent polls show that you are trailing Ayotte by 11 points. What has to happen for you to win this race, and which voters are you prioritizing?
CW: We need to keep closing the gap. In every poll, we are closing in on her. Despite being attacked by her, being outspent by her, we are closing in. In the Sept. 24 University of New Hampshire poll, we’re in a statistical tie. So we just need to keep doing what we’re doing, and we’re gonna win this thing on Election Day.
From 2021 to 2025, you were the only Democrat on New Hampshire’s Executive Council. If Republicans keep control of the legislature, what would you be able to get done during your term?
CW: They’re not going to keep control of the legislature. When I’m governor, we’re going to have a blue state house.
I certainly have a lot of experience on the Executive Council, dealing with Republicans and people who have very different opinions than I do. My strategy is the same, no matter who I’m talking to: treat everybody with dignity and respect, understand that we have disagreements and find the common ground when we can. Stand your ground when you have to.
In April, Ayotte signed a bill removing student IDs from the list of accepted identification to obtain a ballot on Election Day. Would you repeal this law? What would you tell a Dartmouth student who wants to vote in New Hampshire?
CW: That law should be repealed. This is just an effort to suppress the vote of students.
In the meantime, I would advise students to bring the documentation that they can. A judge found that that rule would not go into effect, and then the state has been moving for reconsideration. So it may be that students can still use their student IDs but, to be safe, bring a government-issued form of ID.
Is there legislation you would prioritize to address the housing crisis in New Hampshire? What changes will incentivize new home construction, and how do you ensure from a policy perspective that new housing is affordable?
CW: To start with, we have nobody in the state government right now who is accountable for how many housing units we have, how many we need and how we’re going to get there. So, let’s put in a plan and a housing czar.
Let’s fund the Housing Champions program, which was responsible for nearly half of our housing starts last year and which Ayotte defunded [Ayotte rejected the repeal of the program in an interview on Feb. 8 this year]. Let’s invest in the Affordable Housing Fund. Every dollar we put into that, we can leverage three federal dollars. We leave millions of dollars on the table every year. Those are just some of the starts, but we have a lot of work to do in getting the stakeholders all at the table to address the housing crisis in our state.
One of your proposed policies is data center regulation, and placing a temporary moratorium on data center permits until that happens. Ayotte has also said that she supports a moratorium on data centers. How would your plans on AI and data centers differ?
CW: We should have had a moratorium six months ago. We had a bill in the legislature six months ago. Kelly Ayotte let that die. Now, all of a sudden, she’s discovered that data centers are very unpopular. She’s talking about a moratorium next year, sometime, in her budget, which might not be signed before next June. We’ll have data centers in the state by then.
We need to take immediate action to make sure we have guardrails around data centers, to make sure local communities can have input into whether they want data centers in their communities, and if so, under what circumstances. We absolutely need that. We need it now.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Eliza Dorton ’29 contributed to reporting.
Jackson Hyde ’28 is a reporter and editor. He is from Los Angeles, Calif., and is majoring in Government modified with Philosophy.
