New Hampshire Election Information (http://nhelection.info/) has the results posted of its 52-pick up page an effort to identify and track the replacement of fifty-two "of the most statist and the most vulnerable legislators in the New Hampshire House of Representatives."
The final accounting is impressive.
Only four of the fifty two reps listed survived the 2010 election season; Evalyn Merrick (Coos 2), Peter Ramsey (Hills 8), Daniel Sullivan (Hills 8), and Nick ‘The Nuke’ Lavasseur (Hills 11) survived. The other 48 got washed out in the roughly 296 seat sweep of the House.
There are several other democrats formerly known as "NH House Reps" who have been on my radar for a while that also lost their seats. Kevin ‘wicked cool’ Hodges was handed his walking papers. Hodges is on the 52-pick up list, his infamy resulting not just for his progressive politics, but also from a publicized conversation in which he used coarse language and insulted older Republican House members to a local constituent who then wrote a letter about it to the local paper.
Brian Poznanski, another rep on my radar was not on the 52 pick-up list but was swept out as well.
Poznanski (D-Budweiser/Nashua) may be best known for a November 2009 house party in Bedford at which the then underage House member was picked up with about two-dozen other underage drinkers for internal possession of alcohol. (see here, here and here.) Democrat leadership refused to reprimand him or encourage his resignation, despite his having violated state law in front of a house full of under-age drinker in violation of his sworn oath of office.
It later became public knowledge that Rep Poznanski had an LSR queued up for the 2010 session that would have excused him from the very offense he had been picked up for. First time offenders of underage drinking laws would have been able to seek "medical treatment" rather than have a public arrest record, an obvious sop to his peer group. The LSR disappeared right after the incident, Mr. Poznanski hung on until November 2nd 2010.
Conveniently, this mornings Sunday Telegraph ust happens to have a lengthy article about Mr. Poznanski and his take on the 2010 drubbing. It does not mention the 2009 incident, nor the LSR. Brian does however opine sideways over the progressive canard that the size of our State House makes it difficult for voters to make educated decisions about whom should serve. This follows on the heels of his pointing out that some good democrat candidates lost. For the less sensitive of our readers, this implies, perhaps even unintentionally, that many democrats very likley lost because voters are either too lazy or too stupid to make informed choices. It is obvious that Brian has in fact learned a few things from his experience in the democrat caucus. You can be above the law if you are a democrat, and losing is most likley the result of uniformed voters swarming the polls.
It is instructive to point out that this charge (loss by uninformed voter) is not one you will likley find anywhere in the 2006 or 2008 musings over the democrats surge that put folks like Brian in Concord. He does admit that Obama’s coat tails and ‘young voters’ played a part in his first and only term election in 2008, but I think we can see that for what it was. History shows us that the youth vote has never been much of factor, not even so much for Obama, but if it was, it contradicts Poznanski’s inference about informed voters making a difference. If college students surged to elect Obama, they did so at their own peril–a life of higher taxes, economic stagnation and chronic 25% unemployment, with public service as one of few chances at a job after college. If that’s evidence of an "informed" electorate I’ll take the stupid voters who want personal freedom and low taxes.
But the irony award from the telegraph article by Telegraph Staff Writer Danielle Curtis goes to this quote. "(But) I wish I had been able to sponsor a piece of legislation."
But you did Brian; LSR (2010-H-2523-R). But then your made an uniformed choice that made it go away.
