I write you all today because I must. I am no stranger to controversy – I do not shy away from it. However, I also do not actively pursue it. It just seems to find me. It has done so again.
Much of my controversy is of a partisan nature – fighting across the aisle. Some, however, is, at least ostensibly, Republican on Republican violence. This is necessary at times. As I have said many times before, it is not the Democrats delivering defeats to the Republican base and platform. It is a portion of the Republicans themselves that deliver those defeats to their own base. At least some of the time this is clearly ideological: Woke Republicans, union Republicans, New-Deal Republicans, and so on. Sometimes, however, the motivations seem to come from other places: self-interest, wallets, self-aggrandizement, aspirations to greater power, and so on. Nonetheless, I expect I will receive considerable hate for what comes next in this article. Yet, the only way out is through. We will be stronger for it in the end.
I recently wrote a fairly significant piece on the reality of “play-based” pedagogy (education), and how it tracks perfectly with Woke, Progressive, and Marxist institutional takeover of the field of education. (This, by the way, has very little to do with “play,” and everything to do with an education philosophy explicitly rooted in constructivism, which rejects the transmission of western values and culture as a principle, and imports notions of child-led learning, equity, diversity, inclusion, belonging, oppressor-oppressed power dynamics, and such).
My prior piece was written as a direct response to the allegations Senator Victoria Sullivan made against members of the Republican House, and in particular the Education Policy Committee, of acting against children in petty spite. These allegations were singularly extreme, seemingly far outweighing the merits of the bill she introduced. You can find various threads demonstrating the highly emotional, and highly sharp reaction by Senator Sullivan to the GOP House taking a position against her bill at the end of this article. Sullivan shared with me, publicly, multiple works regarding “Play-Based Pedagogy,” and suggested I had not done my due diligence before taking a position against it. Well, I read them, and the Senator may now wish that I had not done so, because the puzzle pieces I put together, which began with the very materials Sullivan shared, paint a damning picture.
The first clue was in the published work by UNH faculty on Play-Based Pedagogy through grade 3 – which was very clearly designed to be a commercial tool-kit for which the program could generate substantial income – referred to Sullivan as an employee. Then, it was bragged in the work by UNH employees that the NH play-based legislative mandate resulted in nearly 40-million federal taxpayer dollars flowing to the university. I found a public website for the university that included Sullivan as a “play-based learning consultant” with the university and the NH department of education. The alarms started going off in my mind, and this question had to be asked and answered: “did now-Senator Sullivan in 2017-2018, as a member of the NH House, really advance a bill to regulate kindergarten education with a mandate that resulted in taxpayer money flowing to her pocket?”
Well, the university system has significantly stonewalled my information requests to date, but they did provide these barebones facts: yes, Sullivan did go to work for UNH only months after the grant-money arrived – also just months after losing her seat in the House – receiving taxpayer grant money that she directly enabled by her legislation. Over the several years that grant money flowed to UNH, Sullivan would see six figures of it directed to her own pocket (according to calculations of the 91a information). No statement of financial interest or ethical disclosure for this money has been found despite extensive searching.
The fact of non-disclosure alone may constitute a violation of NH Law, as the 2024 financial disclosure filing for her Senate run contained no mention of UNH employment or income despite UNH affirming she was paid through December of 2023 at a rate far exceeding the legal threshold for mandatory reporting. There is also a section at the bottom of the 15-A disclosure form that arguably should have checked off as well, under the special interest in the “education” field given her substantial historical income from UNH and affiliation with the grant program. I also learned that Sullivan, seemingly while not in office, and perhaps as early as 2020, was appointed by the governor to the Council on Thriving Children – the executive body named as the direct oversight body of the federal grant program from which Sullivan was personally paid. That position, arguably, should have also come with legal obligations for disclosure. I have not been able to locate any such disclosures.
The next part of this gets substantially worse, and it connects directly to the first part of this article, as well as the prior article on the topic. Namely, the Senator became enraged after the NH House decided to not advance her attempt to expand the Play-Based program mandate from Kindergarten alone all the way to grade 3. Once more, this program represents a near-complete oppositional stance to the Republican Party platform, and a near-perfect alignment with the Democratic Party platform regarding education policy. Then, there is the fact that the grant money that flowed to UNH – from which Sullivan had received a six-figure payday – ran out not too long ago. Had Sullivan’s legislation to expand the mandate become law it is perfectly foreseeable that further grant money – federal taxpayer money – could have been authorized to flow to UNH and, further, to Victoria Sullivan herself. This requires no leap in logic whatsoever. This is exactly what occurred the first time. It is entirely predicable that such legislation would result in the Senator being paid yet again.
Now, numerous 91a requests have gone either unanswered or only answered in part. Many questions remain outstanding. UNH described her role with the university as an “administrative assistant” in a 20-hour per week capacity. Well, not a lot of administrative assistants are placed on a televised Brookings Institute (a major Left-wing think tank) forum with leading national education policy persons to influence national policy. Every piece of evidence from the university and NGO’s discovered identified Sullivan not as a mere administrator, but as a policy expert and as the legislator responsible for bringing the whole program, and the grant money with it, into NH. They identified her value to the program as her legislative role and her advocacy for the program in policy circles. All, seemingly, while acting in an official capacity overseeing the grant program.
Another question remains regarding the hours worked. I could find no evidence of an actual day-job type schedule for the position with UNH. Though they described it as an “administrative assistant” role in their 91a response, the website listed her as a “consultant.” So, a major question remains as to whether this was a genuine half-time position, or if this was simply a way for UNH to structure the job on paper to avoid raising any eyebrows with the federal ethics body overseeing the grant – perhaps a way to structure a no-show type sinecure position. It is not clear as to why the university has so far refused to share the requested documents with me that could answer these questions. A request to the governors office to clarify the exact date of appointment to the body overseeing the grant is also outstanding, and has been for some weeks.
Now, from where I stand it looks pretty indefensible for a Senator who made 6-figures off of prior “Play-Based” legislation to advance another bill to the same effect. This is again made substantially worse because UNH is pushing precisely that expansion to 3rd grade that the Senator is pursuing in legislation, having already committed substantial funding to the effort and clearly expecting legislation would be enacted to support that investment because, as it stands, there is no market for their product. The appearance of a revolving-door is compounded further in that this new legislation comes just shortly after her own income from the prior legislation was concluded with the end of the grant money. The personal income stopped and a new bill was immediately forthcoming.
By my own ethical compass it seems pretty indefensible to have profited by 6-figures of taxpayer funds from her 2018 legislation in the first place. Though, that case would be considerably stronger with evidence that the Senator knew, back in 2017-2018, that advancing this legislation might result in the multi-million grant receipt, and her paid position, in the first place. Unfortunately, to date such requests for communications via 91a have gone unanswered. I had considered waiting for this information before going public, my oversight investigation into this has gone on for months now, and it does not appear that I will receive the information I requested without more eyes on this situation compelling their release.
Whatever defense might exist for the initial legislation and income, there can be no such defense against the charge that further legislation in 2026 on the same item can be reasonably expected to result in another payday for Senator Sullivan. Now, I cannot say to you plainly what the motivation here is. In fact, I cannot say it because the rules of the House of Representatives, as broadly interpreted as they presently are, forbid me from doing so.
However, I do think the Senator owes New Hampshire answers to the following three questions:
1. Why did a legislator who consistently positions herself as a conservative on education policy become the primary champion of a constructivist, child-led pedagogy framework that aligns with progressive education priorities and against conservative ones?
2. Was the 2018 legislation advanced with knowledge that it would unlock significant federal funding from which she would personally benefit?
3. Did the timing of SB 578 — introduced after the original grant funding had ended — reflect an effort to restore a personal revenue stream?
A request for comment, an op-ed, or a rebuttal was emailed to Senator Sullivan two days before publication. We will provide her with equal access to our readers should she choose to respond.
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