My Vote: Walter King on why he's leading Joe Biden write-in effort

Voter's Name: Walter King

Age: 73

Hometown: Dover

Polling Place: Ward 6

Voter Registration: Democrat

Career: King has been retired for nine years after a career in health care. He has a PhD in virology and has worked as a vice president of research and development for companies such as Abbott and GE Healthcare, and several start-up companies.

King is the chairman of the Strafford County Democrats and is on the executive committee of the Write-In Biden political action committee.

Why are you supporting President Biden in the NH primary by volunteering for the Write-In Biden committee?

King lived and worked in the Chicago area in Illinois before moving to New Hampshire. In getting to know Barack Obama’s candidacy, he remembered, “I’d never heard of the guy, but I was familiar with Joe.”

“It seemed like he’d done an awful lot and I thought, ‘He would be my first choice.’ So that first time that Obama ran, I got to know and support Joe Biden.”

“His qualifications increased because of his role in the Obama administration. He’s somebody who I think has been in the Congress and the government a long time. He is getting old, but he has established relationships he knows how to work so he is very effective, especially when he was vice president and was able to talk with both sides and get things done. Also, his exposure to international affairs and national defense is important to me.

“I’m voting for him because it's becoming quite clear that the (Republican) nominee is likely to be Donald Trump. Although I admire the other candidates who are in the Democratic primary, I know that he is the strongest candidate because he has a record of accomplishment. … It has to be based on accomplishments because that’s what Trump’s gonna be talking about.”

“There are some that want to bring us back to where we were 100 years ago. That would be such a tragedy. That has happened because I don't think people fully appreciate all the progress we’ve made as a country — the things the Biden administration has done in creating jobs, getting the rescue plan in place, putting money into building infrastructure are huge. For example, everybody talks about lowering drug prices. But he’s done it. The price of insulin has dropped to $35 a month. That’s been a huge issue. … It doesn’t seem like people have an interest in trying to put everything he’s accomplished in the context of the history.”

What do you feel are the three most important issues in this election and how does Biden address these?

“I think the most important one was made evident in the last election and that is the preservation of our democracy. It’s the separation of powers, three branches of government, and that every vote counts, and that we have to have elections. If we don't have that, we don't have anything.

“I think the other thing that is important that President Biden is fighting for is to lessen the widening economic gap. By every metric, when we compare ourselves to other countries, our economic gap is widening. And we know Democrats are also partly to blame — that we really helped hollow out the middle class in the name profit and helped corporations find the cheapest form of labor and materials, etc. We've done nothing to train and retrain our workers so they can have a living wage. I think that the economic disparity in this country is probably greater than we have evidence of. Trump’s first big bill was to give a big tax cut, and no one talks about how that added to our deficit because we don't have the revenues from those earnings and that just hurts people more.

“The third is our stature in the world as a leader of democracy. We have to support our allies and we have to really do what we say. We are the beacon of democracy for the world. … We can't just renege on treaties or any of those things. This is a very uncertain time. Now in our world history, many, many nations are kind of teetering and we have to be strong and make sure we have a strong foreign policy that supports our efforts, not just militarily, but in many other ways.”

Have you met or seen President Biden in person?

I have not met him personally, only seen him at past rallies with thousands of people.

How are you participating in the write-in campaign and why?

“At my age, I’ve seen and read a lot. We’ve been at these points of struggle throughout our history and I think we're at another one and our democracy really is at risk. It's important for me to do something, to try to get people to volunteer at the grassroots. We just can't sit on the sidelines. Many of those volunteers are older people, and they recognize all the progress we've made over the decades and what's at risk now.

“I'm working on this organizing effort with Larry Drake, who is the the Rockingham County (Democratic Party) chair. He and I are organizing the efforts across the state at the 303 polling stations, of which Strafford County has 27. So we're trying our best … at getting volunteers, getting signs out … by breaking the state down to counties and regions. We're trying to make sure that the people who have taken on the role of a regional coordinator have the support they need … to help get the word out about the Biden Write-In campaign.”

Why do you feel the NH primary is important?

“I think that New Hampshire has a role to play because coming here from Illinois and from California, it’s a different kind of politics and campaign. This is a state where, because we're the first, people really make the effort to understand the candidates, the issues. It's really elbow-rubbing, visiting, hand-shaking, and really cuts to the core of what campaigning is all about here. I know the argument about the demographics, and I applaud the effort to be more inclusive, to make sure that very first key primaries are representative of the country.

“New Hampshire is reflective because I'm a minority myself. I'm a Chinese American. … Only about 15% of the state is non-white. So it is important for diversity, but I also think that 70% of the country is still white. So it's not like you could just discount the voice of white voters.

“New Hampshire also presents a cross-section — we have very rural areas, we have very sophisticated city areas. So I think it represents the kinds of areas people have to go to in a campaign. People have learned a lot from New Hampshire because it is a place where serious politicians still campaign. We have demonstrated how valuable a role New Hampshire has played in the campaign cycle. We can't sit by and let this happen because an incumbent president didn’t participate. What kind of a message would that send to the rest of the country? That New Hampshire doesn't count? ... We have to do what we've been doing for a long, long time, and that is to show the nation that New Hampshire is a leader and it can help play a major role in an election cycle. New Hampshire can still represent the country.”

How did you feel when Biden decided not to participate in the NH Primary?

“It was discouraging. To be realistic, it was a slap in the face. … I was somewhat insulted by the whole thing. … This just hurts because we at the county level, at the city and town level, at the committee level, we work really hard with every campaign. To say that New Hampshire is not important or not as important, it’s not helpful or constructive to the national dialogue.”

More: What's best strategy for undeclared anti-Trump voters in NH primary?

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: My Vote: Walter King on why he's leading Joe Biden write-in effort