I can’t tell you how much joy it brings me to see Stefany Shaheen struggling in her Democratic primary for NH CD1. Somehow she managed to take a name known statewide (Her mom was a State Senator, Governor, and US Senator) and make it mean less. Maura Sullivan, equally awful, but not a rhetorical member of the Five Families, is ahead of the Stefasaurus in the polls.
Sullivan likes to say Shaheen was born on third base as a euphemism for her silver-spoon status, and yet here we are a week from the Primary and it didn’t buy her the nomination (yet). She’s down five points.
Is it possible that the NH Dems are getting tired of the dynasties because Congressman Chris Pappas, a member of Congress for several terms, is rapidly losing ground to even further left-wing primary challenger Karishma Manzur? He still has a 13-point lead but recently shed 5 points to Manzur, and if he loses five more, we’re in the statistical dead heat zone.
The Bernie Bro Granite State base probably sees Pappas and Shaheen as meat puppet establishment goons while Sullivan and Manzur, the latter in particular, are more to their far-left preference. Primary voters tend to lean much further left, and while neither Shaheen nor Pappas would be any sort of bulwark against the rise of radical socialists (because they share the same agenda), they’ve traditionally run broader-appeal campaigns because the New Hampshire general electorate doesn’t typically elect candidates who run as commies to Congress.
Sullivan would have less trouble in a general than Silver-Spoon Shaheen, I think, but Manzur would probably get shellacked in the Senate Race by almost any Republican. None of which is exactly my point.
Shaheen and Pappas are relevant in that they are running against Republicans with their primary messaging, while Manzur and Sullivan are running against Shaheen and Pappas. This presents an interesting opportunity. The Pappas-Shaheen ads are all about grift, graft, and corruption either in Washington (Congress) or ‘cuz Trump. Shaheen has a particularly aggressive ad that might, in other circumstances, get her sued for libel and slander, but the opportunity both provide is that neither of them has mentioned the corruption in their own party, and now we can add this.
Platner’s cousin marrying, women as target practice, replacement “Cosponsored (a) Bill Sending Millions of Taxpayer Dollars to His Son’s Lobbying Client.”
As president of the Maine Senate, Troy Jackson, now the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate against Republican incumbent Susan Collins, cosponsored a bill sending millions of taxpayer dollars to a state academy that employed his son as its designated lobbyist, a Washington Free Beacon review found.
The bill, which Jackson cosponsored in January 2024, during his final year as president of the Maine Senate, called for $13.4 million in additional taxpayer funding to the Maine Maritime Academy between 2024 and 2025.
Troy’s son is a paid and registered lobbyist who appears to have a special designation as a legislative liaison that coincided with a significant influx of taxpayer money.
A longtime Maine legislative staffer told the Free Beacon that the arrangement suggests “the son of the Senate president received preferential treatment.”
“I can’t think of another time that has happened,” the staffer said in reference to Chace Jackson’s dueling roles as a legislative designee and outside lobbyist. “You can look at the University of Maine system, you look at the Maine Community College—they’re all employees. It’s proof that he was skirting the rules.”
We won’t hold our breath or wait patiently for Shaheen or Pappas, especially the latter since they are running for the same office in neighboring states, to yell foul, or demand an investigation or even scold their fellow Democrat for the very sort of behavior one might suggest is contrary to their anti-insider corruption rhetoric.
And as we’ve made clear elsewhere, “The MediaTM” can’t be expected to ask them, but we can grab some popcorn and enjoy the schadenfreude. Oh, and share this insight on social media with the cackling Dems when they flex their false sense of superiority.
