Testimony Before the New Hampshire Ballot Law Commission

Against Placing Walter Havenstein's Name on the Republican Primary Ballot

June 30, 2014


Additional Commentary by Timothy Horrigan; June 30, 2014 & July 1, 2014


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This is some written testimony I wrote in advance of the New Hampshire Ballot Law Commission's June 20, 2014 hearing. The commission met to decide whether or not retired defense-contractor executive Walt Havenstein should be on the September 9, 2014 Republican primary ballot as a candidate for Governor of New Hampshire. The state constitution requires him to have been an inhabitant continuously for the previous seven years. He appears to have been living in Maryland for at least some of the years between 2007 and 2014, even though his wife may have been living in Alton, NH the whole time, and even if all his heirlooms were up there.

The Ballot Law Commission held a two-hour hearing where Havenstein was the only witness. (I was willing to speak, but I was not called.) He gave some extraordinarily vague answers about where his primary residence was between roughly 2003 and 2012. He did, however, confess that he got a Maryland drivers license in 2009 (which seems totally unnecessary to me, although I do understand why he registered his car down there.) The oddest moment came when he and his lawyer described his luxury condo in Bethesda, Maryland as "very spartan."

The Ballot Commission voted right away to give Havenstein the benefit of the doubt, letting him stay on the ballot. That was not much of a surprise. The closeness of the vote was a surprise: the 3-2 vote would have been 3-2 the other way if one Democratic commissioner hadn't taken Havenstein's side.

I made extensive use of the documentation submitted by the New Hampshire Democratic Party to the commission.



Testimony Before the New Hampshire Ballot Law Commission

Against Placing Walter Havenstein's Name on the Republican Primary Ballot

June 30, 2014

I currently have the best job in politics: I am a state representative from my hometown of Durham. I was first elected to that office in 2008 and even though I have in the past lived and voted in New York and California, I have been an inhabitant of New Hampshire continuously since 1984. "Inhabitant" is a seemingly simple word which has no single definition.

The state constitution states that governors and state senators must have been inhabitants of New Hampshire for seven years at the time of their election. (The requirement for state representative is only two years.)

The line between inhabitant and non-inhabitant is a fuzzy one. Even though the line is fuzzy, Walter Havenstein appears to have been on the far side of that line for several years. The evidence I have seen tells me that Havenstein was an inhabitant of Maryland from at least the fall of 2003 until at least early 2012.

Until he stepped down rather abruptly in early 2012, Havenstein was the CEO of a major defense contractor (which also does some non-defense government contracting), SAIC. He was living in a condo in his hometown of Bethesda, Maryland and working at SAIC's corporate headquarters in Northern Virginia. He is currently registered to vote at a lakeside house he and his wife own (though their revocable trusts) in Alton, New Hampshire, and he has voted in almost every New Hampshire election since 2004. He and his wife bought the Alton property in May 2004 and transferred it to their trusts in 2006. These facts do not necessarily mean in and of themselves that he was an inhabitant of New Hampshire for all those years.

Even though he was voting in New Hampshire between 2004 and 2012, he kept a very high profile in Maryland. He was active in many civic activities around the capital region, and there are a variety of published sources where he refers to himself as a resident of Maryland. To name just one of his civic activities, he has been a leading spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development's ongoing "ChooseMaryland.org" campaign. The Alton, New Hampshire property was apparently merely a vacation home.

Maryland has broad-based income and sales taxes, but it also has state and county property taxes. The rates are relatively low by New Hampshire standards: in 2011, Havenstein and his wife were paying the equivalent of $10.71 per $1000 assessed value on their Bethesda condominium which was valued (apparently with some depreciation) at $1,016,000. They bought the Bethesda condo for $1,250,000 on January 2007, which was the same month Mr Havenstein became the Chief Operating Office of BAE Systems, working out of the corporate headquarters in nearby Rockville, Maryland. When they bought this condo, they took advantage of a tax break available only to Maryland residents who are using the home as their primary residence: this reduced their tax rate by as much as $2500/year. They continued to take a tax break on the Bethesda condo after Mr Havenstein became the Chief Executive Officer of SAIC in 2009, working out of nearby McLean, Virginia. If the Havensteins were in fact New Hampshire residents who merely used the condo as a pied-a-terre when they occasionally visited the Washington, DC area, they would not have been entitled to this tax break. On the other hand, if the Havensteins were Maryland residents who merely owned a summer home in Alton, they would not be entitled to vote in Alton.

The property tax aspect of this case deeply concerns me as a Durham taxpayer and representative. The two towns I represent are the two greatest communities in America, but not because of our low property taxes. The rate in Durham is (as of 2013) $30.41 per $1000. Madbury's is only a little lower at $25.24 per $1000. Mr Havenstein voluntarily paid broad-based income and sales taxes in Maryland, and he has not yet explicitly taken the so-called "Pledge." Nevertheless, he has signaled his commitment to maintain our state's current tax structure basically just the way it already is, including our reliance on extremely high property taxes.



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