When someone says “The Squad,” most people think of AOC and three other far-left young women of color in DC, but why should they have a monopoly on those words? Old white men in NH who call themselves Republicans appear to want in on it. They just don’t know it. Look at this fearsome foursome (or should I say “Four Horsemen”) in the picture above; what they have in common is not limited to sextagenarianhood, fatherhood, ex-husbandhood, swampdom, golf, and contempt for 91A.
Tiny Tim was the captain of that golf team, and he’s the Senate Ways & Means chair, the deciding OTP vote responsible for keeping HB 451 alive, having recently voted with the enemy camp. HB 451, which is a paint tax, has two cosponsors on Tim’s golf team, but what about Dan Innis? He sometimes marches to his own drummer. We all know that Dan “plays for the other team,” to use Seinfeld parlance, in his personal life. He also does his own thing in other ways. Note that he’s the only one not wearing a green shirt on the green. He’s also known to wear a bow tie instead of an ordinary tie, some of the time, but some senators have worn no tie at all. Let’s move on from fashion to Senate stuff regarding Dan Innis.
As big a Tim Lang and Howard Pearl critic that I am, I will still recognize them for their good attendance in the Senate chamber in the same manner that Louisiana’s John Kennedy praises Susan Collins on Page 21 of his new book that I just started. It’s much better than that of Kevin and Dan, who both played Hooky more than once this past year and missed out on roll call votes on important bills. Kevin did not participate in the HB 649 roll call, a vote, thanks to Dan Innis, to re-refer it to the Commerce committee (which he chairs). Dan did not participate in the roll call for Senator Murphy’s minimum lot size bill (SB 84), for which I praise Kevin for speaking out against and voting correctly on. Don’t be fooled by Dan’s absence that day because he made lots of what I call “housing bill madness” comments and press releases. We all know what side of zoning and local control issues Dan is on, but what about other stuff?
In 2024, Dan outraged a lot of school policy watchdog activists and groups by sponsoring SB 343, relative to school-based health services. I’ve mentioned before that the Senate circles the wagons, and Kevin came to Dan’s aid by claiming it was a misunderstood bill. Kevin invited Dan to the studio to discuss the bill on his show, Speaking with the Senator, though most of the 27 minutes of airtime was on other stuff. To Kevin’s credit, he got that bill tabled.
Dan was going to run for federal office, but when an old Uniparty establishment retread from the State Royal Family suddenly appeared from out of state and after several years of irrelevancy to announce candidacy against Scott Brown, Dan withdrew and endorsed the Damn Emperor’s big brother in the same announcement. A Dan Innis sympathizer might be quick to point out that endorsements of federal candidates are outside the purview of state senate operations, but let it be known that it’s still evidence that Dan is a Uniparty establishment guy. I don’t remember who tweeted it, but s/he said that any bill that’s marketed as bipartisan is really a Uniparty collaboration against We the People. HB 451 is a good example.
The question at hand right now is whether or not Dan Innis will vote the right way, which is NO, on HB 451 when the Senate meets on January 7. Every vote matters, especially seeing that all 8 Dems and Tim Lang are going to vote YES. All the paint tax bill needs is four more votes from fake Republicans to move forward. Denise is a cosponsor in addition to Howard and Kevin, so that’s potentially three more bad R votes, though Kevin has repeatedly claimed to have voted NO on past bills he has cosponsored. We’ll see about this one, but if those three vote YES, Dan could very well be the 13th vote. Or maybe NH will get lucky that day, and he will call in sick or blow off the senate for whatever other reasons(shuffle deck) in his rotation of excuses for his absence.
