Senator Wayne D. King

Wayne D. King
B. Nov 24, 1955
Senator (Ret.) Wayne D. King is a businessman, social entrepreneur and former politician. In the course of his life he has been a mountain guide, a teacher, a State Representative and Senator in NH, The Democratic Nominee for Governor of NH (1994), a publisher (Heart of New Hampshire Magazine); President of Moosewood Communications, and VP, elevated to CEO of MOP Environmental Solutions, Inc., a public company in the environmental remediation business. He also convened a small group of Social Entrepreneurs calling themselves the Electronic Community Project. Since 1997 when they first went to Nigeria for the Ford Foundation they have been working in West Africa with NGOs and businesses to enhance their connectivity, communications and to empower communities and people.

King is also a noted photographer and artist with work in galleries across the US.


Life and Career

Early Years
Born on Thanksgiving day, November 24, 1955 to parents Roger Franklin King and Roberta Dixon King. Though his family was living in in rural New Hampshire in the town of Bartlett, King was born in Boston where his family was visiting his mother’s family in Massachusetts for the Thanksgiving holiday.

King Spent summers at Mowglis, School of the Open an outdoor-education oriented camp on Newfound Lake first as a camper and later as the director of the camp’s Outdoor Adventure trip program organizing and leading backpacking and canoeing trips in the White Mountains.

King as Mountain Guide in NH

King attended elementary school in Campton, NH. He was badly injured in a childhood accident that shattered his right elbow. Doctors at the time feared that he would never be able to use the arm for more than limited purposes but King credits his nurse mother with pushing him to get more and more use from the arm until the injury became barely noticable to all but the most observant.





Mount Hermon School: King attended Mount Hermon boys prep school, later Northfield Mount Hermon when the school merged with nearby Northfield School for girls. He graduated cum laude though all indications were that he was at best an average student. However, it was at NMH that King became politically active in part because of the radicalizing influence of the campus anti-Vietnam war movement and the killing of four students at Kent State University during a protest there.

King in College at University of New Hampshire

College
The University of New Hampshire: King attended and graduated from the University of New Hampshire, initially for financial reasons but later became so thoroughly ensconced in the academic and social life of the University that he remained there for both a Bachelors degree and his Masters degree in Earth Science Education. On first arriving at UNH King managed to arrange a job as a photographer with the student newspaper by borrowing a camera and some photos from his roommate and best friend Edward Acker III and presenting himself as an experienced photographer. Both he and Acker were hired and would spend the next four years competing for the front page photo credit each week. It was during this time that he developed his actual skills and love for photography. He would go on to study under Richard Merritt at UNH, though the University had only 3 photography courses. 

Political Beginnings:
Kings activism in the antiwar movement led him to activism on campus including his participation in a student organization, MUSO, that brought speakers and musicians to campus. Over the next four years he would move more and more into the mainstream of politics, becoming involved in Presidential politics with the campaigns of Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris and later California Governor Jerry Brown. In 1980 he filed to run for State Representative in the family tradition as a Republican but later removed his name from the ballot because he came to realize that his more liberal politics were ill-suited for the Republican party. In 1982 he would file again, this time as a Democrat and despite an overwhelmingly Republican district, win election to the New Hampshire General Court (House of Representatives).

1982 - 1987 General Court: King’s fast-earned reputation as a maverick made him a bit of a target in both political parties, but his ability to build coalitions and consensus eventually won over many of his colleagues.

Removal From EDA Committee:
During his Freshman term King was assigned to the Committee on Executive Departments and Administration a committee that normally was of little consequence but because of a major reorganization of state government initiated first under Governor Hugh Gallen and now under the control of newly elected Governor John H. Sununu. King would become a key player in efforts to limit the power of the Governor and to protect the citizen boards and commissions that he felt kept government more responsive to its people. This opposition eventually led to his removal from the committee, ostensibly for poor attendance, although King demonstrated with attendance records and other documents that his attendance had been among the highest of any members of the committee. Normally, a removal from a committee would hardly draw attention but Kings insistence that “they can tell me where to sit, but they will not tell me where to stand” made the skirmish a media cause celeb. King would not be restored to the committee until he was re-elected overwhelmingly by his constituents.

Fight over Computer Access: in 1984 King and his Republican colleague and friend V. Michael Hutchings became involved in a very public battle with Governor Sununu over open access to computer records that gained the attention of national and international media including the New York Times, Time Magazine,The London Economist, and the Wall Street Journal as well as locally in the Boston Glabe and NH Union Leader. In what to most seemed an innocuous effort to consolidate government access to citizen records, King and Hutchings insisted that this was an opening salvo in a much larger battle to come in the nascent technology revolution and insisted that government needed to begin the process of opening up information to citizens. Eventually the battle would conclude with a re-examination of the state’s Right-to-Know laws and a commitment to a policy more inclusive to citizens in the pre-Internet age.

1988 Election to the NH Senate:

Alice King, Senator Bob Kerry and Wayne King

In 1988 King was elected to the New Hampshire Senate, among the youngest NH Senators ever elected. He quickly established himself as a consensus builder and would be a key player in the election of the State Senate president in both of his next two terms. Having moved from a legislative body with 400 members to one with 24 King quickly discovered the power of a Senator and directed his energies toward legislation that would have a broad impact on the lives of citizens. Sponsoring and passing legislation to establish New Hampshire’s first homeless shelters, a trust fund to help rentors in mobile home parks and apartment buildings to purchase their buildings or parks to gain greater control of their costs. He also became one of the Senate’s leading authorities on economic development and growth, helping to create the Office of International Trade, The Business Finance Authority to provide loan guarantees for new buesinesses and to convert the former Pease Air Force base into a high technology business park.

1992 Growing power in the Senate: By the time of King’s third election he was instrumental in the election of Senate President Ralph Hough, a moderate Republican committed to a Senate where “merit mattered more than party”. King was appointed Chairman of a powerful new Economic Development Committee and with the strong support of Hough, organized a statewide Economic Summit held at the privately owned Center of New Hampshire an all day event simulcast by both public television and public radio a first in New Hampshire. The Summit produced a series of four major economic packages that received broad support among the members of the Senate and would eventually become law in various forms.

1994 Governor’s Race: A growing frustration over the disparity of taxation and the inability of the State to provide an adequate education for its children led King to seek the Democratic nomination for Governor against the popular Stephen Merrill. King ran on a platform to establish a statewide property tax that would serve to level out the tax burden of providing an adequate education. Though he lost the election his major proposal, to establish a statewide property tax levy, would become law the following year.

Post Politics Years

After the 1994 election, King declared that he was finished with elective politics, though he continues to refer to himself as a “recovering politician”.

Personal Life:

In 1980 King married Diane Gehrung of Keene but the marriage was almost immediately at risk between King’s busy schedule and his wife’s job as a regional coordinator for the Alan Cranston Presidential campaign in a district that required her to live away from home. With the end of the 1982 presidential primary the writing was on the wall and it was only a matter of months before the marriage was over.

King and Wife Alice atop Cannon
Mountain in the White Mountains of NH

In 1984 King met Alice Vartanian, a consultant to the US Department of Justice, while meeting with Claire Ebel, director of the New Hampshire Civil liberties Union. King was smitten and for the next year the two of them carried on a long distance relationship each driving two hours between Portsmouth and Rumney to spend time together. On December 21, 1985 King and Vartanian were married in a civil ceremony beside the Stinson Brook in Rumney where they would build their home the following spring. King and Vartanian remain happily married today, still referring to one another as “my boyfriend” and “my girlfriend”.

On February 11, 1991 their only child, a son, Zachary Douglas King was born to the couple, delivered by King in a Concord Hospital midwifery center with a midwife looking on to assure the safety of the child..



The Artist
Though he devoted little time to his art photography during his years in politics, King took up his camera again in 1994 after the Governor’s election and developed a unique style he calls Mindscapes which combine elements of water color and oil painting with his photography.

In an artists statement published at the Xanadu Gallery Website King’s work is described as “a celebration of life, blending the real and the surreal to achieve a sense of place or time that reaches beyond the moment into a dreamlike quintessentialism designed to spark an emotional response. Using digital enhancement, handcrafting, painting, and sometimes even straight photography, King takes the viewer to a place that is beyond simple truth to where truth meets passion, hope and dreams.”

His work can be found in the collections of a broad range of people including Livingston Taylor, (the late) Peter Max and Koko Taylor, Richard Merritt, Bill Bradley, Bruce Babbitt, Bill Clinton, Adhiambo Odaga, Bill Russell and others.

King studied photography under Richard Merritt at the University of New Hampshire. UNH had only a few photography classes but in those days Richard Merritt developed a small and dedicated group of young acolytes who would become some of today's most renowned photographers including: Edward Acker, Steve Bliss, Christopher Polydoroff, Casey MacNamara, Hannah Stutz and others. King has had two one man shows and numerous group shows and his work can be found in galleries from Maine to California and with a healthy on-line presence.



Businessman

1993 - 2001 Moosewood Communications:
For a number of years after the Governor’s race King ran a consultancy under the name of Moosewood Communications.Consulting on marketing and communication as well as crisis management.

Mowglis School of the Open: Upon hearing that his beloved summer camp faced closure in 2001, King set aside his consultancy to work full time to help save the camp. In 2003, after a highly successful centennial celebration and with the Camp on its way toward firmer footing, King announced that he would be returning to his consultancy business.

Heart of New Hampshire Magazine: In 2004 King launched a magazine called Heart of NH, a regional lifestyle and art magazine. The magazine received critical acclaim but the timing for the launch could not have been much worse in light of the movement from print to digital media brought on by the Internet. The magazine closed in 2007.

MOP Environmental Solutions, Inc.: in 2007 King was hired as Vice President of MOP Environmental Solutions by the company’s CEO Charles Diamond. Upon Diamond’s death in 2011 King was elevated by the Board to the CEO position and immediately set to work on finding a suitable company for a merger or acquisition. In 2013, MOP Environmental entered into a management agreement with JPO Absorbents of Fairfield CT with a defined pathway to a merger or acquisition.As a part of this agreement King resigned his position as CEO and Chairman of the Board.


West Africa

King Presenting Computers and printers
to West African NGOs in Senegal West Africa

In 1997 King was asked to head a team of Social Entrepreneurs to establish a training program for Non governmental organizations in West Africa. The Ford Foundation had determined that these 250 NGOs would benefit from computer technology and training as well as professional development. King and his colleagues Philip K. Bates III of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Dr. Chidi Nwachukwu of Milwaukee Wisconsin, made a preliminary recon mission to West Africa - where at one point they were held for 5 hours at gunpoint in a Nigerian prison by the forces of Nigerian dictator Sanni Abacha, being released safely only after King “convinced” the leader of the group that it would be the wisest course of action. The team returned with recommendations that included providing over 350 computers, printers and software to the NGOs and providing them with the training necessary to make them an integral part of their mission. The Ford Foundation concurred and for the next three years the team, soon to be joined by Osita Aniemeka and Anndy Omolaubi of Nigeria, would crisscross West Africa to set up computers, train the NGOs and provide support services to them.

In 2003 Dr. Chidi Nwachukwu died unexpectedly from complications associated with Leukemia but King and Bates vowed to keep on in memory of their friend. Since that time King, Bates, Aniemeka and a number of other consultants have engaged in work with the World Bank, USAID and others. Most recently they have proposed a project called The Phoenix Project - Niger Delta, an innovative concept combining Oil Spill cleanup and poverty alleviation and enterprise development in the hard hit Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

Honorary Chairman, International Chamber of Economic Development Conference on Technology and Economic Development, Accra, Ghana.

In 2004 King was chosen as the Honorary Chair of International Chamber of Economic Development Conference on Technology and Economic Development, Accra, Ghana. Osita Osita Aniemeka joined him for the conference and together the two authored “The Ghana Declaration” adopted unanimously by the conferees calling for greater transparancy in Government activities, free and universal elementary and secondary public education and a broader use of technology to empower and involve citizens in building their own future.

Other
In 1991 King was selected as a part of a delegation of young political leaders for a 2 week mission to Japan at the invitation of the American Council of Young Political Leaders, and the Japan Foundatione: King was one of eleven individuals nationwide chosen for this special trip to Japan to meet with Governmental and private sector leaders, including: The President of the Bank of Tokyo; The Director of MITI; The Director of International Operations, Kobe Steel Corporation; LDP Secretary General, Keizo Obuchi; The Publisher of the Japan Times; The President of Sony Corporation; The President of Sumitomo Corporation and many others. Continue to maintain contacts with many Japanese leaders in government , industry and the media.

1991 Chosen to receive the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of New Hampshire.
1994 King received the Hero for Children award from the New Hampshire Children’s Lobby.
Additional awards and honors:


1996 - 2008 International Men of Achievement,

1995 - 2008 Who's Who in the World

1994 - 2008 Who's Who in America

1988 - 2008 Who’s Who in American Politics

1991 Meritorious Service Award, New Hampshire Women's Lobby1

1991 New Hampshire Nursing Association, Legislator of the Year Award

1992 New Hampshire Realtor’s Association, Legislator of the Year Award


Ethnicity
King’s paternal great grandmother and grandfather were both raised as orphans in a Canadian orphanage for Native American Indian children. His great-grandmother of Iroquois and Algonquin ancestry and his Great-Grandfather a Blackfoot. His Indian heritage has always been an important part of King’s life and he regularly attends Pow wows and other cultural activities. His mother claimed lineage from the Mayflower as well as with the early American explorer Martin Pring a direct line ancestor.