“Let me tell you I take issue with that.

We came out here early on, there were a lot of sacrifices made, the team did an extremely great job.”

– Guv Sununu responds to a reporter’s description of his weekly Covid briefings as “TV events.”

Of Primary consideration

Considering what we’ve all gone through over the past year and (almost) a half, you’d think the political class might have gotten a grip on what actually constitutes an existential crisis.

But you’d be wrong. Just check out the rapid-fire reaction to word that the state of Nevada now has a law that says it will be holding the first presidential primary in 2024. Which, as any schoolchild in NH knows, is against the law in the State of Granite.

So far, there hasn’t been talk of sending troops to the desert to occupy Vegas, but the wagons are already circling as Guv Sununu and Dem Chair for Life Ray Buckley issued almost instant reassurances to the state’s citizens that everything is under control. Add to that the tweet from Sen. Maggie Hassan, who calmly sought to bolster morale: “Nobody does democracy better than NH — and that’s why I’ll keep fighting to protect our primary.”

And, of course, the Grand Poohbah of the Primary, SOS Billy Gardner, let the state know via Fox News that he had everything under control.

“Our law hasn’t changed. I’ll follow the law like I always have – like the oath of office I take says.”

So, luckily, no State of Emergency has been declared yet. But, as NH knows, there’s a long presidential campaign season ahead of us.

Career plans

You may have noticed a month or so back that US Rep Annie Kuster revealed in a TV interview that she suffered from and was treated for PTSD after the 1/6 Capitol insurrection had on her. In fact, she told WMUR, she thought she was going to die during the attack.

Well, imagine her reaction when learning that one of the very people who is being charged for his role in the insurrection is planning to run for the very congressional seat that AK holds.

Yes folks, Jason Riddle – who is charged with federal counts of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, theft of government property (including tapping into a bottle of wine from a lawmaker’s office), as well as violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds – has told NBC in Boston that he’s running for the GOP nod in the 1st CD.

Seems odd that a guy whose bail conditions say he’s barred from entering the city of Washington, DC, would be running for a job that requires you to be in DC, but times lately, you know, are peculiar, to say the least.

“Despite my ongoing legal problems, I’m supposed to live my life as I want to live it,” says the ex-Postal Service employee and corrections officer.

But JR does seem to have a basic grasp of politics that has served others in the past.

“In the long run, if you’re running for office, any attention is good attention, so I think it will help me,” Riddle says of his participation in and arrest for the insurrection.

The bull in the record shop

You in the market for a Harvard Business Review-level seminar in how not to deal with employees and customers? Just consider the recent abject (yes, that’s the word to describe ‘em) lessons offered by Brett Wickard, founder of the Maine-based Bull Moose record store chain.

You may have heard about BW’s well-publicized wrangling with employees over what we might call a “failure to communicate.”

It started last month when BW decided he was lifting mask requirements for customers, with little or no input from employ ees.

This particularly miffed employees at the Bull Moose store in Salem – who had told tales of being harassed by customers over masks and voiced concerns about the decision, particularly because they said they’d been harassed by customers during the height of the pandemic.

It’s safe to say most bosses would take the situation as a hanging fastball and knock it out of the park, especially in light of a brutal labor shortage.

But not BW. Instead, he decided to knock all 10 of the Salem employees out of the store and fire the lot of them. And, boy, did he learn the power of bad publicity — all over NH and Maine, where the chain’s 11 stores are located.

It took BW about three weeks to come to the realization that firing the staff of an entire store wasn’t necessarily a good idea.

In a Facebook post, BW acknowledge that “we strayed from our values and have to set things right.” (Funny that he didn’t use the first-person singular, but we digress.)

Then he added: “Over the last few weeks, we listened to our staff and got to work on fixing what we could, changing what needed to be changed, and demonstrating a concrete recommitment to our values.” And, BTW, he’ll also be raising employee pay to a $15/hr minimum by next June.

It turns out most of the fired employees are returning, although it’s safe to say they’ll be keeping a close eye on management for the foreseeable future.

And BW learned something from the experienced.

In the Facebook post, he wrote, “falling flat on our faces was humbling, but we’re determined to have our mistakes become a transformative event for Bull Moose.”

MAKING THE ROUNDS

That abortion ban after 24 weeks that’s in the budget the guv’s gonna sign is not gonna help him at all if he decides to run against Maggie Hassan for Senate.

Did Mike Pence’s statement in NH that he would never see “eye to eye” with the ex-prez over his 1/6 antics seem like something a regular person would say who had been through hours of avoiding being attacked, with the threat of extreme violence, by a mob?

So the guv didn’t like it when a reporter referred to his weekly Covid briefings as “TV events.” But the reporter was accurate, because what else can you call them?