Originally Published in NH Journal by Michael Graham.
Could Noah’s Ark be the model for a new political movement?
That’s the idea behind The Forum, a major nonpartisan initiative launched by actor and social entrepreneur Andrew Shue in Concord on Tuesday. And Granite Staters are already getting involved.
Flanked by Republicans and Democrats, the former Melrose Place star and co-founder of DoSomething.org, framed the launch not as a political campaign, but as a rescue mission for American democracy.
“Don’t tell me how stormy the seas are, just tell me you brought the boat home,” Shue said, quoting his former Dartmouth soccer coach, Bobby Clark. “I think that we are in that moment… This is an all-hands-on-deck moment. America is not right, and we feel it for our kids and our grandkids.”
The project is the culmination of seven years of work, which began with grassroots meetings across New Hampshire. Shue noted that during those sessions, citizens from both the left and the right reached a rare point of agreement: no partisan fix is coming to save the country.
“We have elected leaders from both sides, who have shown up for this idea,” Shue said. “We have partisans who have been traditionally just battling each other, now putting down their arms and saying, ‘We want to work differently. We have been divided for too long.’”
To ensure the forum remains untainted by partisan bias, the organization follows what leaders call a “Noah’s Ark” structure—every leadership role and advisory position is shared by one Republican and one Democrat.
The New Hampshire effort is co-chaired by former Londonderry Town Manager Kevin Smith, a Republican who ran for U.S. Senate in 2022, and Manchester Democrat Donna Soucy, who led her caucus in the state Senate.
“I wanted nothing more to do with politics,” Smith admitted Tuesday. “But when I saw the goals… and that Donna Soucy was the co-chair, I said, ‘Sign me up.’ Most people are exhausted with the polarization.”
Before coming to New Hampshire, Shue launched Forum efforts in South Carolina and Nevada. When NHJournal noted that they are also early-2028 presidential primary states, he acknowledged it was no coincidence.
“We believe that if we are successful in 2027 with the legislative cycle, and we show scale and we show political balance, we will tell a story to every one of those candidates who are going to be trudging through these states (in 2028),” Shue said. “The next president has to call the American people to the table. This is the process that we are going to perfect to allow for their voices to be heard and solve the big problems.”
And based on the response at nhforum.us, Granite Staters are already engaging. There have been more than 5,000 signups in the past two weeks, and about 500 policy ideas have been submitted.
They range from policy positions of the political left (“Fund and improve our extraordinary public education system”) to the solidly right (“Fix our election integrity!”).
Some suggestions are basic: “Civility. So we treat each other with more kindness.”
NHForum’s goal is to reach 25,000 participants to ensure a representative sample of the state, who will submit policy ideas and share their concerns.
These ideas will eventually be distilled by “Citizen Assemblies,” demographically and politically balanced groups of residents who will co-create specific legislative proposals. A bipartisan Legislative Advisory Council, including state Sens. Denise Ricciardi (R-Bedford), Tara Reardon (D-Concord), and Tim Lang (R-Sanbornton), will then help guide these proposals toward the 2027 legislative session.
“I would say 80 percent of the issues, they’re not Democrat or Republican or independent,” Soucy said. “They are issues that we confront each and every day, and there are real ways, if we listen to each other, that we can solve these problems.”
Shue reiterated that the Forum effort, with a price tag of around $1 million, will use technology to get voters engaged with one another, not just to create a political message board.
“It goes from a digital platform to online face-to-face meetings to meeting in person, meeting with a representative body that comes to Concord in the fall. It is a process for the people of New Hampshire to co-create legislation, with legislators working with us, advising us along the way.”
And while the Forum effort relies on technology, Shue mentioned one form of tech he hopes his effort will confront: artificial intelligence.
“Our free society is at stake, and everybody knows it. We see it in the polarization, the factionalism. We see it in the aggregation of wealth at the top that was just like before the Great Depression. We see it in the political violence that we saw in the 60s, and we see it with the fear that everybody has with the impending transformation of AI,” Shue said.
Shue gestured to his 22-year-old son, Wyatt, standing in the crowd. “Because of AI, there is not a young person who has just graduated from college who is not genuinely fearful for their future,” he said.
“The people are going to have to decide these big decisions. The partisans are stuck. They’re in a box. We’ve built the table; now we need the people to show up.”
