Warmington Announces Granite State Integrity Commitment, Pledges to Place Stocks in Blind Trust

MANCHESTER, NH — In Case You Missed It, Cinde Warmington announced her Granite State Integrity Commitment, pledging to place “stocks in a blind trust, push for more detailed financial disclosures of elected officials,” and commit to “never join[ing] a for-profit corporate board” after leaving office.

No one embodies the corruption of the revolving door between corporate boardrooms and government better than Kelly Ayotte. After raking in millions sitting on the board of Blackstone, the nation’s largest predatory landlord, she signed legislation that gives landlords another tool to evict their tenants. Ayotte still has yet to disclose whether or not she has sold her stocks in the company.

Last week, The Lever uncovered that Ayotte sat on the board of Bloom Energy, a data center technology company that stands to benefit directly from legislation she signed allowing data centers to use off-grid energy. Ayotte was paid $112,500 during her tenure at Bloom, and the Bloom stock she held could now be worth nearly a million dollars. She has yet to disclose whether or not she has sold the stocks.

Warmington also renewed calls for State Supreme Court Justices Melissa Countway, Patrick Donovan, and Bryan Gould to step aside from the court to allow a complete investigation into their complicity in conduct that forced the resignation of Justice Gordon MacDonald and has left a cloud of corruption over the state’s highest court.

Democratic nominee for governor Cinde Warmington said if elected she will place stocks in a blind trust, push for more detailed financial disclosures of elected oﬃcials and after leaving oﬃce will never join a for-profit corporate board.
During a news conference in Manchester Wednesday, Warmington again tried to apply pressure on Gov. Kelly Ayotte to get the Judicial Conduct Committee to confirm whether three sitting Supreme Court judges are actively under investigation.
Associate Justices Melissa Countway, Patrick Donovan and Bryan Gould all signed a letter that they cooperated in the controversial personnel move that led to Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald’s resignation last month.
“The grift is staggering. People recognize the system is rigged and it has been for some time but it has gotten so much worse,” Warmington said. “The culture of corruption we have seen in Washington has come to New Hampshire” Warmington, a former executive councilor from Concord, called her proposal the Granite State Integrity Commitment.
Warmington said she’d back legislation to require governors to sell their individual stocks or place assets in a blind trust.
“While they serve as governor, they should only own mutual funds or index funds outside the trust,” Warmington said.
The current financial disclosures every year should require elected oﬃcials to list all their owned assets and not simply “sources of income” of over $10,000, she said.
Warmington criticized Ayotte for joining the board of Blackstone, one of the nation’s largest corporate landlords, after losing her U.S. Senate seat in 2016.
Warmington said Ayotte then signed into law a bill that private equity companies like Blackstone wanted, a no-fault eviction statute.
“That revolving door of coming in and out of oﬃce, it’s confusing which interest you are serving,” Warmington said. “I would not serve on a for-profit board upon leaving oﬃce.”
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“If Kelly Ayotte wants to ride off into the sunset and serve on for-profit boards to make more millions, that is her right,” Warmington said.
“But she can’t be using the position she is in right now to pave the way for that.”

Granite Post: Warmington’s closing message takes aim at spiraling corruption under Ayotte

Six days before Election Day, Democratic nominee for governor Cinde Warmington is closing out her campaign by tearing into Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) over Blackstone and data center stocks the governor won’t say whether she still owns, a state Supreme Court rocked by an ethics scandal, and an attorney general whose trips were paid for by a group tied to Jan. 6.
“Frankly, they’re sick and tired of people getting rich off of their public service,” Warmington said of the Granite Staters she has met on the campaign trail.
“This corruption and self-dealing from Washington has made its way to New Hampshire,” she said.
Under a new plan Warmington launched Wednesday, any New Hampshire governor would have to sell their individual stocks or put their investments in a blind trust, where an independent manager controls the money and the official doesn’t know what’s in it. Governors could hold only mutual funds or index funds outside the trust.
She also wants yearly financial disclosures listing every asset and debt held outside a blind trust to be posted online. Right now, New Hampshire officials only have to list sources of income over $10,000. They don’t have to list what they own or what it’s worth.
Warmington said she would put her own assets in a blind trust if elected governor, and she pledged never to sit on the board of a for-profit company after leaving office.
“Granite Staters deserve public servants who are in this fight for a reason, to make life better for those they serve, not to pad their pockets, not to look out for their corporate donors,” she said.
Asked whether she was equating corporate board service with corruption, Warmington said, “Absolutely not.” Ayotte is free to join boards after she leaves office, she said, but “she can’t be using public service for personal gain.”
After losing her US Senate seat in 2016, Ayotte sat on the boards of Bloom Energy from 2017 to 2019 and Blackstone from May 2019 until days after she won the governor’s race in 2024.
“When Kelly Ayotte left the United States Senate, the first thing she did was to cash in,” Warmington said.
Blackstone is the largest apartment owner in the country, and Warmington called it “America’s largest predatory landlord.” A 2023 Securities and Exchange Commission filing showed Ayotte held more than 16,500 Blackstone shares worth about $2.2 million, the Union Leader reported in 2024. Ayotte dismissed the bipartisan criticism that followed as lies from Democrats, and she has not said publicly whether she sold the shares.
“We have no idea if she is still holding that stock today,” Warmington said.
Warmington said Ayotte is now “doing [Blackstone’s]bidding” as governor, pointing to House Bill 60, which Ayotte signed in 2025. It lets landlords refuse to renew most leases without giving a reason, as long as they give 60 days’ notice.
She also said Ayotte hasn’t stood up for manufactured housing residents like those she visited in Hopkinton, where lot rent for new residents at one park jumped from $680 to $1,285 a month after a Michigan investment firm bought the park.
Bloom Energy makes fuel cells that generate power on site, and data centers top the list of industries it serves. Ayotte’s last disclosure as a Bloom board member, in 2019, showed more than 4,400 shares worth about $42,000. Those shares were worth just over $1 million when The Lever reported on them last week. Ayotte won’t say whether she still has them.
In 2025, Ayotte signed House Bill 672, which lets qualified “off-grid” power companies build and strike deals without oversight from the Public Utilities Commission, the state board that regulates utilities, though they remain subject to applicable laws. That same year, she made New Hampshire the first state to let its treasurer invest up to 5% of public money in precious metals and digital assets like Bitcoin, under House Bill 302.
As recently as July, Ayotte had not called for a data center moratorium. She backed one in August and then proposed a multiyear pause in her next budget, which couldn’t take effect before July 2027. Warmington was the first candidate in the race to call for one, has repeatedly attacked Ayotte’s data center record and has promised to pause large data center construction by executive order on her first day.
“Kelly Ayotte wants you to think she supports a data center moratorium now, but that is just because it has become politically unpopular,” Warmington said.
Warmington also took aim at what she called a culture of corruption that has festered under Ayotte’s leadership.
Former Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald resigned Sept. 15 after admitting he broke the state’s code of judicial conduct. The case involved a personnel move that laid off top court administrator Dianne Martin for about two days, letting her cash out nearly $50,000 in unused time off before she was rehired into another court job.
In October 2025, MacDonald and three justices still on the court, Melissa Countway, Patrick Donovan, and Bryan Gould, signed a statement calling Martin’s layoff part of a cost-saving reorganization.
The Judicial Conduct Committee, the panel that investigates complaints against judges, found that characterization misrepresented what happened,
The committee won’t say whether the justices who signed off on the layoff are under investigation.
Ayotte appointed Gould, her former campaign attorney, to the court last year. She has said little about the scandal beyond expressing disappointment in MacDonald.
Warmington spent four years as the only Democrat on the Executive Council, which approves the governor’s judicial nominees, and cast the lone vote against confirming MacDonald as chief justice in 2021. Since Oct. 1, she has called on Countway, Donovan and Gould to step aside while any investigation plays out and urged Ayotte to do the same.
“It’s the only fair thing to do for the litigants before the court,” Warmington said, adding that some attorneys fear the court could retaliate if they ask the three justices to sit out their clients’ cases.
She was also asked about a Boston Globe report that Republican state Rep. Bill O’Brien, a former House speaker, asked Attorney General John Formella to investigate a judicial ethics event at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law. Warmington called O’Brien’s complaint “an effort to silence people who point out the kind of corruption that’s been going on.” The event was moved to Nov. 10 after he complained.
Warmington also accused Formella of taking “lavish” trips paid for by a group tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
InDepthNH reported this month that the Rule of Law Defense Fund, the policy arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association, paid $24,100 for eight Formella trips to the association’s meetings, where attendees could golf, visit a spa, or go whale watching. Citing the Associated Press, InDepthNH reported that the fund paid for robocalls urging Trump supporters to attend the rally before the attack.
Formella’s office said no taxpayer money paid for the trips and that Formella doesn’t condone the Jan. 6 attack, which came before he took office. Ayotte did not respond to InDepthNH’s questions about the trips.