They didn’t start the fire
Some NH Dems were sure wringing their hands over the decision by national PACs spending big bucks to boost the most extreme and Trumpiest GOP candidates in the primary. They were playing with fire was the consensus.
Apparently they knew a thing or two about controlled burns, considering that the strategy to boost GOPers Don Bolduc, Karoline Leavitt and Bob Burns over candidates deemed more palatable to a wider electorate paid off big time on 11/8.
Not that there weren’t nervous Dems pacing the floors Election Day and Night as the results trickled in.
“I don’t think anyone really cares, and he does not clear the field. Anyone who thinks it’s a smart idea to announce a potential presidential bid after the election but before Christmas, it’s just the worst time you could possibly do it. My sense is the former president needs better advisers if that’s really what his strategy is going to be.”
– Guv Sununu opines on the then-expected 11/15 candidacy announcement by the guy who lost the 2020 election.
Persona non grata
In a vivid sign that the NHGOP has yet to accept reality, the NH Institute of Politics at St. A’s found itself having to provide the party and its NH Journal megaphone with a quick remedial course in reading the 11/8 election results.
Just a few days after three of the party’s four major candidates — the Trumpies — were slapped down by NH voters, the institute backed out of allowing an election post-mortem to be held at its building.
Why? Well the guest of honor at the event — sponsored by the Journal — was nunuther than the already-impeached “America’s Mayor,” Rudy Giuliani, the man with the loudest voice at the microphone who continues to push the lie that someone named Trump didn’t lose the prez election in 2020.
Giuliani: Change of venue?
The UL reported that, on hearing Giuliani would be on the panel, Institute of Politics Director Neil Levesque decided to refuse to host or participate in the panel.
“The New Hampshire Institute of Politics is in the democracy business,” Levesque said in an emailed statement. “We chose not to provide a platform for an individual who has actively worked to undermine the integrity of our elections.”
On the bright side, considering that it’s off-season, the Journal could call Four Seasons Landscaping in Lancaster to see if their space is available.
Showing ‘em the door
They didn’t bat 1.000, but the Citizens for Belknap group that emerged after the Belknap House delegation’s complete failure to allow the county-owned Gunstock Ski Area to operate as a going concern, sure took a few scalps since their founding.
In the primary, you may recall, the trio of GOPer Reps. Michael Sylvia, Norm Silber and Gregg Hough were kicked out rather unceremoniously by voters, who heeded the advice of the CfB group.
And in November, voters didn’t stop, ousting GOP Reps. Dawn Johnson and Richard Littlefield, who were also in the sights of the CfB.
More Facebook frolics
Not that it means much now, but a day or so before 11/8, the veil was pierced on how much actual love there was between the Sununu and Bolduc families. Or at least the feelings of the pasturized general spouse became clear.
A post on Facebook by an apparent CD1 voter urged support for Don Bolduc for Senate and Karoline Leavitt for House. But it didn’t say to support the guv, who the poster — obviously paying attention to DB’s previous claims that the guv was a “Chinese Communist sympathizer” and that the Sununu family’s business “supports terrorism” — wrote that the guv “is involved with foriegn corporations and nations. Not our nation.” (Yes, that was the poster’s actual spelling of “foreign,” just to provide a complete picture of who we’re dealing with.)
Sharon Bolduc, her husband Don and his briefly famous arrow-laden shield.
Of course, DB — who, to be honest, can’t necessarily be trusted with statements he’s made one day to the next — recanted his claims about the guv minutes after winning the GOP nod. Or did he? Because, spelling issue or not, Sharon Bolduc, DB’s wife, took the time to like the comment, which sent a completely different message.
MAKING THE ROUNDS
With the guv becoming even more of a national media darling after the election — and with talk about a potential prez run actually being seriously bandied about — one question: If he does run, would that do to the NH primary what Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin’s prez run did to his state’s caucus in 1992? You may (or may not) recall that the Iowa Dem caucus was essentially ignored by the other candidates that year.
D’ya think maybe it’s finally time to rethink this whole fixation the media has with polls? It might even be that we could reach a bipartisan consensus on the matter.
Yes folks, Kingston GOPer Ken Weyler, the disgraced former chair of the House Finance Committee — who was ousted after emailing other reps all kinds of false and scurrilous info about Covid conspiracy theories and claims that Covid deaths were part of a plot orchestrated out of The Vatican and the U.S. and British governments — pretty easily won re-election in Rock. Dist. 13.
Speaking of the guv, he sure was giddy during his election night victory speech at PiNZ Bowl in Portsmouth. You’d almost think he hit a 7-10 split or something.
Chances are Jeremy Kauffman — who ran as a Libertarian for US Senate (and, as CEO of crypto company LBRY, was on the losing end of a judge’s ruling that it was engaging in selling unregistered securities) — hasn’t changed his opinion of the way Americans choose their government. Back in Sept. he wrote in an email to The Boston Globe that “Democracy is a soft form of communism that basically assures bad and dangerous people will be in power.” The election results speak for themselves.
