Another cautionary tale

Here’s another angle on the often fraught relationship between politicos and the online world.

This involves NH Sen Bob Giuda, a Warren GOPer, who recently disclosed that he has been the target of extortion and violent threats by a woman he had befriended online.

The extent of that relationship will be left to your own speculation, considering that he described the relationship involving “private conversations about our lives and photographs, some of which were inappropriate.”

“I realized that this online relationship was going places I didn’t want it to go, and I decided to end it,” Giuda said. “What I thought was two friends having conversations about their similar life experiences was in fact an extortion scam.” And now the FBI is investigating.

He said he was looking for some kind of companionship, particularly during Covid — which brought him to a place of “sadness and loneliness.” His wife Christine — they’ve been married for 39 years — has been in a facility in southern NH for the last four years, where she has been in a “vegetative state” after suffering a severe brain injury.

In desperation, he turned to the site, he said, and unfortunately realized later that the person he thought was his friend was running an extortion scheme.

The result, he said, was threats of violence by the woman against him and other family members, including his wife, unless he provided “significant sums of money.”

“Her demands were violent and continued to escalate,” he said in his statement.

He later added: “I learned from the FBI that this type of victimization happens thousands of times a year, as these criminals target the vulnerable and especially our elderly. It is my hope to bring something constructive out of this experience to assist other victims of these crimes and to hopefully prevent anyone else from ending up victims of extortion.”

“I’d rather have people wear pants outside than masks.”

— Billy Cuccio, owner of the Lobster Trap restaurant in Conway after a protester mooned the crowd gathered to greet Donald Trump Jr. on a campaign visit.

The shallow bench

That’s a cautionary tale taking place in real time over in Cheshire County, where Aria DiMezzo, a Free Stater and self-described anarchist/Satanist, became the first transgender person to win the NHGOP nod to run for Cheshire County sheriff.

First, the short-form bio you just read of AD isn’t exactly one of your run-ofthe-mill GOP candidates for sheriff.

Or any other office, actually. In fact, it’s likely not the short-form bio of any other registered NH GOPer.

Second, AD swept the nomination not because she ran a great campaign — but because no one — not a soul, nada — was running against her.

And, seriously, it couldn’t have been hard — at least on paper — to keep her from winning the nod. That’s because the paper we’re referring to includes her lawn signs and other campaign material, which feature the anarchist symbol (an A in a circle) and the phrase, “F*** the Police.” (With not even a hat tip to NWA.) Oh yeah: her campaign website is effpolice.com.

And she won the nod of a party that’s trying its hardest to cuddle up with the law enforcement community.

One more time: She won the GOP’s Cheshire County sheriff nod because she was the only person seeking it.

Sure, the county GOP is now scrambling to drum up support for the writein campaign of Earl Nelson of Marlborough, who has run for the job several times before.

But the fact remains that it’s not exactly a sign of a healthy political party when you can’t find a candidate for county sheriff, even at the last minute, to oppose a candidate like AD.

Just ask the NH Dems what it was like back in the ’80s, when they watched the number of candidates and officeholders fade from view throughout the decade. It certainly wasn’t pretty.

A clam chowder write-in?

You can say what you want about the accuracy of polls, but there’s a solid ring — actually gong — of truth in one that just emerged form UMass Lowell’s Center for Public Opinion.

In a survey of 657 likely NH voters, they gave Biden a 52%-44% lead over Trump, with even bigger margins for Sen Shaheen (57%) and Guv Sununu (60%) over their rivals.

But the big winner? Hannaford Supermarkets, which received an 82% approval, followed by, in order:

• Clam chowder (67% approval)

• Corn chowder (65%)

• Stonyfield Yogurt (63%)

• Shaw’s Supermarkets (63%)

• The Common Man Chain of Restaurants (63%)

• Tony Fauci (63%)

“I thank God for slavery, for America, so I could be born free. This country owes me nothing and I have been Black all of my life.”

— The pseudonymous Black author “Barbara from Harlem,” expressing gratitude for slavery at a speech she gave at Seacoast Republican Women/603 Alliance event in Portsmouth.

MAKING THE ROUNDS

The guv sure isn’t trying to win any friends in the healthcare biz, considering his recent dismissal of claims by hospitals that the Covid losses they claim to have are really “a small shortfall.”

Dems may be on a hollow fishing expedition in seeking the guv’s taxes, but you know why they’re doing it.

Just watching events unfold at the White House and Walter Reed, you really gotta question what’s going on in the minds of folks, including elected NH pols, who won’t follow basic protocol regarding Covid and PPE.

Sure, stranger things have happened, but with each passing day Dan Feltes’ guv campaign is looking like an exercise in futility.