By Joseph Edgerton
Staff Writer

Brian Wright, now of New Boston, poses with his new front license plate – something unnecessary in his former hometown of Detroit. He moved to New Hampshire this summer. (Courtesy Photo)

Read a portion of Brian Wright's blog here.

The Free Staters are coming.

Wait, make that: The Free Staters are here. In our towns.

The Free State Project is a movement whose goal is to recruit voters to move to New Hampshire and go about reinstating constitutional federalism by minimizing government. They had hoped to get 20,000 pledges by next September, but recently abandoned that deadline.

Although there are fewer than 400 of them to date in New Hampshire, Free State Project members are optimistic about the future of their organization. Currently, the project has 6,840 participants, 383 of whom have moved to New Hampshire.

Brian Wright, who recently settled in New Boston, is one of them.

"The idea of the FSP is a numbers game," he said. "We're focusing on freeing one state to show the rest of the country how freedom really works."

The Free State Project chose New Hampshire from a list of 10 other states. The others were Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.

The members of the project come from all political walks of life, and join for different reasons; some are staunch advocates of the right to bear arms, others seek to abolish income taxes, and still more want to privatize schools. All members share one interest; minimizing the role of government in their daily lives.

Calvin Pratt of Goffstown said he was relatively apolitical until his mid-30s, but joined the project because he is disillusioned with modern government.

"New Hampshire is what our original government was supposed to be like. Today's United States is not the United States I learned about in civics class," he said. "I think Washington, D.C., is like the Kremlin, or London during the Colonial period, and the rest of the states are like satellite countries."

Brad Keyes moved with his wife and four children from Minnesota to Epsom in February.

"I moved to New Hampshire because I've grown increasingly tired of the government encroaching on my life and the life of my family," he said. "My kids are in the Montessori school program, and the government kept coming up with more new regulations, right down to telling them what to eat at lunch."

Generally, Free Staters cite minimal taxation and increased personal responsibility as two of the main advantages of living in New Hampshire.

The Free State Project has been criticized by some as a splinter group, a band of Libertarians bent on slowly subverting New Hampshire's government at every level, but the project's Vice President Evan Nappen said that isn't the case.

Nappen, an attorney, lives in Bow with his wife and three children, and said the project opened his eyes to a new life in New Hampshire. The former New Jersey native said the difference between his old state and New Hampshire is staggering.

"I love New Hampshire, and the last thing I want to do is come here and change what I love," he said. "There's no takeover plan."

Keyes said the idea of a takeover plan is already in effect, but many Americans don't realize it.

"In my opinion, people have already taken over," he said. "They're telling me what to do with my land and money, what medicine I can and can't take."

Keyes would consider a position on a town board, but is unsure whether he will run for office.

"I'm not a politician, because every part of my personality is against telling people what to do," he said. If I were to run, I might have a ?just say no' platform; no new legislation and getting rid of as many laws as possible."

Wright said the most basic beliefs of the members, the socalled "nonaggression principle," means that a takeover is unlikely.

"The principle states that you don't use force or fraud to obtain values or impose your values on someone else," he said. "There's no problem that the application of the nonaggression principle can't solve."

As written, the Free State mission statement does not call for members to run for office. The project is not intended to support or elect any candidates.

"The Free State Project is like a bus to get people here," said Nappen. "If the project vanished tomorrow, I'd still be happy just because of where I am."

But how do you get a member calling for the decriminalization of drugs to vote in the same way as a Second Amendment advocate?

"The Free State Project isn't a political party," said Nappen. "People who move to New Hampshire can be Democrats, Republicans or Libertarians. The general thread that ties us together is freedom. Protecting someone else's freedoms is the same as protecting your own."

Bow Town Manager Jim Pitts said the election of a Free Stater to a town position wouldn't necessarily change the status quo.

"Local politics are nonpartisan, and candidates usually aren't identified by party or political persuasion," he said. "It's not uncommon for management to change direction with the new officials. Our job as town employees is to carry out policies from the elected officials as long as they are legal."

Epsom Selectman Julie Clermont said smaller community government would likely be unaffected should Free Staters with political ambitions be elected.

"The impact on a five-person board wouldn't be very big, not in a small town," she said. "You need local support to get elected, but if people don't mind being represented by someone from out of town, you might have a shot."

Clermont also said the minimal government that so many Free Staters find appealing doesn't necessarily exist in New Hampshire.

"It's not minimal government when you have a legislature of nearly 400 people," she said. "Putting one or two people here and there won't do much."

Pitts said the government controls what it does because people give it the power to do so, and that voters who don't see the need for something will vote quickly to remove its funding.

With a birth certificate and a driver's license, I sign up to vote, then later I'll come down with a check book to initiate the Audi registration. Here, a person actually has the time to banter to and fro with the local-government help.

As a FS town citizen, you quickly grasp you really are the boss. The clerks are sweet, competent, and caring—no insolence like I've been used to in the Motor City (try to get a record of an ancestor from the city of Detroit someday, if you want to see smoke coming out your ears).

I kid them, "So, Kimberly, y'all are highly paid professionals, eh?" At that she and Fran share amusement. Hardly any elected or appointed public official in the Free State makes a dime.

This is Tuesday, and we've worked hard. Southern FS is uncharacteristically hot and humid. Time to stop off at the local, likely famous, New Boston Tavern. Bonnie is our mixologist, but we're beer guys so she mixes an occasional metaphor instead.

She's from Mancester—only 20 minutes from New Boston along largely scenic roadways—and comes from the True Grit school of bartending, suggesting politics in this old town can be treacherous ... "some people have been known to, like, disappear."

"Well, allrighty then. But I'm going to go to the town hall meeting, anyway. It's my right as an official citizen of the Free State." (Later, I learn from my town clerk that New Boston has gone away from the direct town hall meetings of yore, and is what they call an SB2 community.

All the selectman and other meetings are public, though, and occur regularly. I'll find out what this means eventually.) So I'm going to lots of meetings, anyway.

And I won't disappear. I have an ex-wife, a mother, and three bartenders back home who depend on me, and will come looking.

It's getting toward the end of week one, now, and I make my move regarding "vehicular legitimacy."

This is the bugaboo of any incoming citizen in probably any state, how to negotiate the maze set up by the state drivingsystem poobahs. It appears the motor vehicle rules in the Free State aren't nearly as bad as most states—for example, you are not compelled to buy insurance—but some simple changes are clearly needed.

Registration isn't too painful: $250 (based on the value of the car, which is a 2002 Audi A4) to the town, $95 to the state. I ask Kimberly if these fees reflect my good-looking guy discount. This really cracks ?em up. I can live with these numbers, even on an annual basis. (In Texas, where there's a sales tax, you bring in a leased car, you gotta pay the prorated entire tax right there ... once cost me $650 on a beatup old Saturn!)

The simplest change is this: New Hampshire is a dying breed of states that require a plate on the front of your car, as well as the back. Further, you have to get an annual car inspection, which costs you anywhere from $30 to $50, but can cost an arm and a leg if something doesn't pass. (Bob, the mechanic at the Gulf station tells me some nonconformances on old cars can

cost several hundred dollars to fix—how many people driving a $500 vehicle can afford a $500 fix?)

So my first order of politics is to get the Free State to ditch mandatory front license plates!