Blue Hampshire

Open Thread: Midsummer Nights

Dean Barker — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:05:51 GMT

Bird just wants to be friends:

At the time, the hardcore be-boppers thought it was a sell-out, but Mr. Parker placed it among his favorites. I think it captures all that's relaxed and grand about a midsummer night.

This is an Open Thread.

"Ex-Gays" Target Shaheen's Support for Hate Crimes Bill

Dean Barker — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:21:45 GMT

Heavens to Betsy. You'd think now in my third year of running a blog I'd be immune to the absurdity of conservative special interest groups and their grievances. But it appears that it is a bottomless well.

PFOX, a group that spends its time promoting ex-gaydom, or something, is working to defeat the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and is targeting Senator Shaheen's support of it.

I bring this up less for the bizarro-world of that previous paragraph, but more to point out something that hasn't received a lot of press: heck yeah, my new senator from New Hampshire co-sponsored the Hate Crimes bill. You can read her floor remarks here, in part:

...Matthew [Shepard's] murderers were not charged with a hate crime because no such law exists in Wyoming or on the federal level.
It is impossible to know for certain the full effect of crimes motivated by hate on the communities they target. What is certain is that hate crimes rob the members of these communities of a sense of security. And the impact is real. Among LGBT youth in this country, the suicide rate is four times higher than their straight peers, as many struggle to find their place in their families and communities. While reducing bigotry and increasing tolerance will require a comprehensive effort that will take time, addressing our out-dated hate crimes law is one important component.
As Governor, I was proud to sign legislation that expanded New Hampshire's hate crimes law to include sexual orientation. Unfortunately, many states still lack such laws, which is why this bill is so critical. By expanding the definition of hate crimes and by easing access to resources for local and federal law enforcement officials to prosecute these crimes, we can hopefully help prevent these crimes and send a message that hate and bigotry in any form have no place in our society.

What a different world from the days, a decade ago, when then Governor Shaheen ended our shame of being the last state in the union without an MLK day. Our even a few years ago, when Gregg and Sununu couldn't be bothered with an anti-lynching Senate resolution.

Thank you Jeanne Shaheen.

Democracy Lives In Manchester & mini mayoral poll

JonnyBBad — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:08:46 GMT

Manchester rocks. In the last few months I've rethought my 'vicious' comments, and spent more time getting to enjoy the wonderful city.

You know, when Peter went off on JKL about death threats... etc., we had our fun at his expense. All that 'people want to run me over' stuff...so this is my mea culpa. If I've used terms or phrases that "fell flat" I regret it as Sonya Sotomayor said at her hearings.

more below
Not only is Manchester a great place to see a show, have a brew, get great pizza, or attend a blues jam*, but it is also alive with activity of the Democratic sort. There were not enough chairs for everyone who turned out for the regular City Dems meeting this morning!

The City Democrats office is now at the old Obama/Coord. campaign office on Elm St. Hodes for Senate took the space and gave the City Committee the front of the building from now till November. Its a great place from which to launch their campaign to take back City Hall.

3 Candidates for the Mayoral nomination, Rep. Richard Komi, Alderman Mark Roy, and former State Senator Bobby Stephen were all there and all said a few words. Lou D. gave the State House update, Mike Lopez the City Hall update, and Mike Brunelle the State update. Chairman Buckley was there as well. I was there to sell my print wares, and many were interested to talk. This on a funky Saturday in July.

Go Democrats. Take Manchester back !

* Sunday nights at 900 Degrees 5-8 pm.
rated best Pizza in NH by NH Chronicle

* Sunday nights at Strange Brew 9-1
rated best food and beers in NH by NH Chronicle

sometimes we do both !

Carol Shea-Porter and the (Gas)light Bulb Moment

Dean Barker — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 13:01:40 GMT

Sometimes, timing is everything with a light bulb moment. I was thinking this morning how often the conventional national press about Carol Shea-Porter is that she doesn't raise as much money as other House incumbents.

But what I don't hear in the press is how hardworking she is. Like how she just secured funding for Manchester's Gaslight District. (email release):

Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter today announced that her request for $1,000,000 to help revitalize the Gaslight District is included in the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Appropriations bill. The funding will be used for construction and streetscape improvements. The bill is expected to be on the House floor next week.
"This funding is important for new business development and will help create new jobs in Manchester," said Congresswoman Shea-Porter. "I am proud of New Hampshire's largest city and I look forward to seeing the continued revitalization of the Gaslight District."

Compare those Queen City priorities to the Mayor who wants to unseat her and his recent (in)activities.

One gets the sense, from the voluminous activity coming out of her congressional office, that when there's five minutes to spare, either to fundraise or to represent the first district, Carol more often chooses the latter.

This is a good thing! Yet at the same time, it makes her representation all the more important to protect. And that's where we can come in.

I've decided: every time I get an email or go here and see Carol working for us, I'm going to give a little to her. Now, I'm treading water most of the time, so my contributions will be almost insulting. But I think it's important, even if only symbolically, to show our gratitude for her public service as it is happening.

And if we all chime in, we could start to make a difference...

Bully Pulpit

Dean Barker — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:04:05 GMT

The bully pulpit - an advantage we lacked for eight long years.

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States of America, on why we can't wait any longer for real health care reform:

Note how he takes direct aim at Bush-deficit enablers, like Judd Gregg, who spend all day fearmongering the costs on the TeeVee (even though the CBO estimate of the House bill shows a surplus).

And this is the best part:

That's why any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange: a one-stop shopping marketplace where you can compare the benefits, costs, and track records of a variety of plans - including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest - and choose what's best for your family. And that's why we'll put an end to the worst practices of the insurance industry: no more yearly caps or lifetime caps; no more denying people care because of pre-existing conditions; and no more dropping people from a plan when they get too sick. No longer will you be without health insurance, even if you lose your job or change your job.

If the Obama Administration and the Democratic majority in Congress enact meaningful health care reform and mark the beginning of the end of the health care catastrophe in this country, it will be as multi-generationally beloved as FDR realization of Social Security.

Whether or not we are pleasing Susan Collins or Joe Lieberman during the process is far less important a goal for the well-being of the commonweal, I think.

Adding: Consider the massive impact to the pursuit of happiness of just one detail of this health care reform - no longer tying quality, affordable insurance to employment. Think of what this will do for American entrepreneurship. So many thousands of Next Big Ideas sitting in garages never being realized because people stay in jobs they don't like solely for covering themselves and their families.

The Tax Cutting Mayor of Manchester

Dean Barker — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:44:32 GMT

It's taken me most of the day to comprehend fully the new Guinta brouhaha. It took me that long because I find it hard to believe a campaign can stumble that badly, repeatedly.

Let me see if I can get this right:

* Mayor Guinta is present at bar during brawl. Man in bar gets leg broken in seven places. Mayor fails to talk to the authorities until days later. Bad national press.

* Candidate Guinta, paraded as a top tier pickup by the NRCC, can't break six digits in his first fundraising quarter, and has to front his own campaign 20K just to get over that hurdle. The UL does its best to spin it as a great quarter, but the national political press notices the lackluster progress.

* Frank Guinta fails to pay his tax bill... again. (This is not the first time this has happened!)

* Team Guinta responds, in part:

The Mayor paid his bill before the Democrats even thought of making this false charge, so perhaps they should check their facts

* Kathy asks for some clarification about what exactly is the false charge, and we get a more revealing story:

The bill was paid in full yesterday, prior to today's attacks and prior to us having or knowledge they were imminent. It amounted to nothing more than a simple oversight that was corrected. I am sure most families can relate to this type of occurrence.

Now earlier in the day, I asked the NHDP if they had screenshots of the deliquent tax bills. They did, and they sent them along to me with the additional information that that's how they looked "this morning." The screenshots are below the fold, with tax id and address redacted (even though the Manchester tax records are a matter of public record, and Google-able).

The screenshots are to underscore the delinquency date, April 23, 2009. If it became delinquent at that time, how long in total was the bill overdue before then?

Here's the thing: Team Guinta claims this is a "simple oversight" that "most families can relate to." It's true! There are times when, even with the best intentions, bills don't get paid for one reason or another, including, yes, simple oversights.

However, I don't know any families that leave tax bills to go delinquent for several months while at the same time loaning 20,000 dollars to one's own campaign.

If those are the kind of spending priorities we can expect from a Congressman Guinta (added to the kind of accountability we can expect from him through the lens of the bar brawl incident), New Hampshire's choice in 2010 ought to be crystal clear for Carol Shea-Porter, perhaps the most genuine, modest, and pennywise person I've ever had the good fortune to meet.
Here are the NHDP screenshots as they looked "this morning":

New DSCC Ad: "Quitters"

Dean Barker — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 18:25:26 GMT

B-b-b-b-but it's terribly, horribly, unfair to compare Sarah Palin to Kelly Ay... oh wait. Charlie Crist is a quitter too.

Paul Hodes for Senate

Dean Barker — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:01:00 GMT

Now on Facebook.

Mayor Guinta Delinquent on Sewer Taxes AGAIN

VABBY — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:29:31 GMT

For the second time in two years, Mayor Frank Guinta has failed to pay the sewer bill on his apartment building on Youville Street in Manchester. Last year, the City of Manchester put a lien on the Republican Congressional candidate's investment property after he failed to pay over $3,300 in real estate and wastewater taxes. Now the city tax collector's web site shows that the Mayor has again neglected to pay his sewer taxes and has an outstanding bill with the city for $441.86.

This news comes on the heels of a federal elections report which showed that the Mayor failed to disclose to the press a $20,000 personal loan made to his floundering Congressional campaign. Guinta's spokesman touted the Mayor's fundraising numbers as a coup for the candidate, but subsequent reviews by the media revealed that nearly 20 percent of his total fundraising was actually a personal loan from Guinta.

Guinta has also been the subject of recent news accounts regarding his failure to call the police when a brawl broke out at a local private social club, in which a local alderman was allegedly assaulted and another local Manchester resident suffered injuries resulting in 4 1/2 hours of reconstructive surgery.

(Posted by Victoria Bonney, Communications Director at the New Hampshire Democratic Party)

DailyKos R2K Poll on Senate Race

Dean Barker — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:26:23 GMT

As mentioned earlier, there's a new Daily Kos Research 2000 poll out about the Senate race.

My thoughts on it are more or less what Laura said, so I'm going to cheat a little and quote her:

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 7/13-15. Likely voters. MoE 4%.

Charlie Bass (R) 37%
Paul Hodes (D) 42%
Kelly Ayotte (R) 39%
Paul Hodes (D) 38%

All three candidates [Hodes, Ayotte, Bass] are in positive [favorable] territory. Ayotte's favorables are the highest by a slim margin, as are her "no opinions." This points to an important task for Paul Hodes and the New Hampshire Democratic Party. Never having faced an election, she has never been defined negatively by an opponent. Her name recognition comes from the relatively depoliticized role of an appointed attorney general. The task for Democrats is to define her now, before she has the chance to do so...Bass and Hodes, by contrast, have faced campaign opponents (including each other), so their negatives are relatively defined.

I agree. Ayotte is as generic an R candidate can get without the stigma of prior losing campaigns or known positions, and she's basically pulling even. For the purposes of the poll, she's also had the benefit of numerous news cycles lately about her potential run. Once we actually learn her positions (on choice, especially), numbers will likely shift from this baseline.

So it's especially important for all of us, blogger hobbyists like me and party officials all the way up the chain, to highlight those positions.

I will add one thing, though since I'm clearly a partisan blogger I expect this advice won't be taken seriously by the other side. The person who comes out best in this poll, imo, is Charlie Bass. He's much closer to Ayotte's numbers than I expected he would be (and this is a poll with a reliable demographic sample). To me, this is this strongest encouragement for him yet to jump into this race.

NH-Primary: Whither Those Not Named Mittens?

Dean Barker — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:41:19 GMT

Where's SarahPAC? While Sanford, Perry, Ensign, and the former Mayor of Wasilla all make fools of themselves, Mittens is quietly laying the groundwork for owning New Hampshire in 2012:

Romney's PAC has chapters in five important primary states - Alabama, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire and South Carolina. In the Granite State this year, Romney's PAC gave $1,000 to state Sen. Jeb Bradley and $10,000 to the state GOP.
The fund-raising numbers come as a new Gallup poll shows Romney jumping ahead of Palin in the race for the 2012 GOP nomination.
Twenty-six percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents favored Romney to 21 percent for Palin.

In the absence of McCain, I really don't see at the moment how anyone else in the (currently insane) national GOP could capture the majority in the Granite State for the Primary.

But here's the thing: in 2008 New Hampshire essentially delivered the nomination to McCain, but the rest of the country's GOPers, especially its most ideologically leading area, the deep south, got buyer's remorse. Romney seems an easy fit for our state's Rs. But will the rest of the country go along this time?

It is true that the distance to the Manchester airport from FOX News studios in NYC is much closer than the distance from Anchorage. So Sarah will have that going for her soon. Though, truth to tell, it's not as close as the Mittens' vacation home on the lake. Though again, on the other hand, I have a friend who won a spot on the moose hunt lottery. Maybe she could tag along?

NH-Sen 2010, 2014, 2016, etc...

Dean Barker — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:20:33 GMT

We already knew this for 2010, and I suspected it for other cycles, but fwiw:

When asked if he would ever run against Ayotte if she chooses to run for U.S. Senate in 2010, Lynch replied, "I will never consider running for Senate against anybody."

DailyKos R2K Poll on Marriage Equality

Dean Barker — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:03:16 GMT

DailyKos released the results of its Research 2000 poll today on the NH-Senate race (Laura's take here.) I love R2K polls, which the Concord Monitor has also used, because they take a much more demographically representative sample than UNH or ARG.

The poll also asked the following question:

As you may know same-sex couples were granted the right to legally marry in New Hampshire. Do you approve or disapprove of this decision?

The results had 41% approval, 49% disapproval, and 10% unsure.

While I'm sure this will give the anti-marriage haters fuel for their fight, I do think that's actually a decent public approval number for what's basically new civil rights legislation.

What's more interesting to me, though largely unsurprising, however, is the severe generation gap on this issue. Voters aged 18-29 approve of marriage equality in New Hampshire 53 to 39 percent, much higher than any other age group. To put it in simpler terms, the law passed this year speaks to where the country is headed. Support for marriage equality should only grow and become less controversial as time rolls on.

Also, and just as importantly, independents favor marriage equality 46 to 44 percent, showing that despite the GOP base holding firmly against, they are not dragging along those not in the Rush Limbaugh/Kevin Smith circle of hate.

What was surprising to me was the marked difference in approval based on gender. Men show 37 approval vs. 55 disapproval (8 undecided), while women betray a great deal more tolerance at 45 to 43 (12 undecided). The last thing I could claim to be is a specialist on gender studies, but this disparity is significant enough, imo, not to pass by. There's all kinds of easy stereotypes I could throw out there to answer that question, but I'm not going to jump into culture wars that will, as the poll shows, be moot in a generation or so.

Open Thread: Carrots and Little Sweet Peas

Dean Barker — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:11:05 GMT

You guys are going to have to bear with me as I go through my Iris Dement phase. I'm a total sucker for a strong, distinctive voice:

This is an Open Thread.

Frank Guinta's Fundraising Flounders

Kathy Sullivan 2 — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:18:06 GMT

I just saw a press release from the NHDP, which points out that reports of Frank Guinta's $110,000 fundraising did not mention that $20,000 of that amount is a loan from - Frank Guinta. In other words, Mayor Guinta, who was designated as the Republican candidate in the First District by the NRCC, only raised $90,000 in the quarter.

The press release quotes CQ Politics as saying,

Republican Frank Guinta is challenging two-term Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter in New Hampshire's 1st District, and GOP officials are touting the mayor of Manchester -- the state's biggest city -- as one of their top recruits for the 2010 elections. But Guinta, whose campaign has had a bumpy start, filed an initial campaign finance report in which the numbers fell short of stellar.
Guinta reported receipts of $110,000 at the June 30 conclusion of the year's second quarter. That included a $20,000 loan he made to his campaign from his personal accounts after he formed his campaign committee at the end of April, nearly a month into the second quarter.
So Republican strategists are counting on Guinta to produce one of their strongest takeback bids, as the party seeks to regain some of the major ground it lost to the Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles. But he has received negative press in recent weeks.

Again, I wonder about the Mayor's political chops. He should have faced up to the bad news of his fundraising yesterday, and said, "My report is not what I would like it to be, but -" and provided some sort of reasonable explanation. Instead his spokesman did not mention the loan, saying,

This good fundraising quarter, combined with an equally good grassroots outpouring has made the first leg of this campaign a huge success. We have exceed [sic] all our early milestones, you really can't ask for more than that.

It was not a good quarter, it was a lousy quarter, and the campaign is floundering, not a huge success. The candidate and the campaign again showed two flaws that made the incident at the Fish a big story - a lack of political judgment and a failure to face up to bad news and deal with it openly and honestly. Instead, he sends out a release trumpeting his fundraising, when nearly 20% of it was a loan from himself.

The NRCC must be really scrambling for Plan B - or beginning to wonder if maybe this race should not be targetted after all.