Listening to twenty or so people give political speeches in succession may well be worse than being water-boarded. Listening to twenty or so political speeches in an air-conditioned room with close to 300 people who (more or less) are on board with just about everything that is likely to be said at that kind of event is choir practice. But having that kind of access to that many candidates for three hours is priceless.
That is the CNHT annual picnic, in a nutshell–plus an all you can eat buffet of picnic fare, with P.J. Rourke as a guest speaker right in the middle of it all. From noon to three today, at the VFW hall in Hillsborough New Hampshire, the 12th annual Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers picnic attracted dozens of candidates for every level of office and hundreds of people who were looking for an opportunity to meet and talk to the candidates who want to represent them. It’s like a House party for every candidate all at once, and if you missed it you missed a chance to get personal attention in a very important election year.
And while we were unable to live blog, we were able to talk to the candidates and do an interview or two ourselves. And Granite Grok was on site recording the speeches, which will be making their way on to the front page soon, but as I said, that’s not the best part. Being able to conduct your own personal interview allows you to ask questions you want the answers to that no one else may ever ask. If you missed it this year, make a note for next year. It’s always the weekend right after the Independence day. Until then, here is a short list of most of the candidates who were available–and the speeches we’ll be posting–in somewhat random order.
Jack Kimball (Governor)
Peter Bearse (CD-2)
Jennifer Horne (CD-2)
Dennis Lamare (Senate)
Charlie Bass (CD-2)
Bob Guida (CD-2)
Bill Binnie (Senate)
Frank Guinta (CD-1)
Jim Bender (Senate)
Ovide Lamontagne (Senate)
Richard Ashooh (CD-1)
Chris Booth (US Senate)
Karen Testerman (Governor)
