The company we keep

For some perspective on New Hampshire, per AG John Formella and Guv Sununu, joining 10 other states in their suit against the federal government over the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for large employers, federal contractors and healthcare workers, consider the company the Granite State is keeping.

• Alaska, population 733k: 145k cases, 813 deaths

• Arizona, population 7.15m: 1.22m cases, over 21k deaths

• Arkansas, population 3m: 520k cases, over 8,500 deaths

• Iowa, population 3.19m : 504k cases, over 7,100 deaths

• Missouri, population 6.15m: 890k cases, over 13k deaths

• Montana, population 1m: 185k cases, over 2,400 deaths

• Nebraska, population 1.9m: 297k cases, over 2,800 deaths

• North Dakota, population 779k: 155k cases, over 1,800 deaths

• South Dakota, population 886k: 160k cases, over 2,200 deaths

• Wyoming, population 476k : 108k cases, 1,300 deaths

And New Hampshire? Population 1.3m: 147k cases, over 1,600 deaths.

This decade in history

Here’s something to mull as the temperature heats up over the NHGOP’s bare-naked plans to squeeze everything it can out of the gerrymandering — er, redistricting — process: If practice makes perfect, they really are just about perfect at it. And if they ever got a shot at doing it, NH Dems would be doing it for the first time in history.

And that, of course, is because they’ve never had a majority in the Legis. at the start of a new decade. And, judging by the last few of those decades, it’s a trend that’s likely to continue. Because, even when ya think they have a chance, it always seems that the Dems just take their eye off the redistricting ball every 10 years and pretty much phone in a statewide campaign to grab Legis. seats. Need proof? Even when they sweep, or nearly sweep, statewide offices, they somehow forget about the races down the ticket.

So the result, as always, is the same carping and moaning about GOPers controlling the process and drawing up “political” or “partisan” districts to their hearts’ content.

Which is not to be unexpected, considering that it’s the GOPers who remember the stakes that are being played for every 10 years.

Unlike the Dems, who’ll once again be starting their offense from their own one-yard line for the next decade.

It even might make the US Senate look good

It is likely that Guv Sununu could actually be kicking himself a little over a year from now, even if he does win reelection to the corner office in ‘22.

That’s because it sure looks like the Craziness Level we’ve been seeing in the Legis., the House in particular, may actually be turned up to 11 in ‘23. It may not be what NHGOP redistricters specifically have in mind, but that will more than likely be the result of their “finetuning” of legislative maps.

Which means whoever’s the guv will once again have to figure out a way to deal with the crazy, just like Guv Sununu has been doing, and will be doing next year.

Not for nothing, but his father, the OG Guv Sununu, sure read the writing on the wall back in ’87 when he didn’t run for another term knowing full well that the state’s finances were in shambles and, while he may not have known it at the time, NH was headed to a near-depression in the late ’80s and ‘90s.

What’s the opposite of laissez-faire?

Be prepared for yet another “pro-business” edict bubbling up from the NH General Court. This one is yet another shot at giving the state the power to tell a business what it can and can’t do. In other words, a mandate.

This mandate is proposed by Haverhill GOP rep Rick Ladd. And it forbids any government entity, college, corporation, nonprofit organization — heck, any employer, including healthcare facilities — could require that employees be vaxxed against Covid.

The measure orders that “no entity in New Hampshire shall compel receipt of a Covid-19 vaccine by any individual who objects to such vaccination for any reason of personal conscience, a religious belief or for medical reasons, including prior recovery from Covid-19.”

Talk about the heavy hand of government.

MAKING THE ROUNDS

Do ya think it’s possible that GOPers are already making plans for a post-Gardner Secretary of State office?

In case you didn’t get the message from the PUC after its 11/12 vote to tank the state’s energy-efficiency plan — which was supported by utilities and enviros, no less: They cast their under-coverof-darkness vote just in time for the Glasgow summiteers to issue their agreement to combat climate change.

It sure says something about what they think about the state of the party’s bench when a whole lotta Dems got all tingly over even the idea of John Lynch running for guv again.

So what’s Ed Commish Edelblut gonna do now that the guv says he’s running for reelect? After all that time the last six years running for guv, is he really willing to wait another 2?