Seeing that I didn’t have a campaign home page, this article serves as my thank-you note to everyone who voted for me and/or supported my candidacy. I hope these words make it to all Howard Pearl critics who are being misrepresented by him in the upper chamber.
My race was not completely in vain, as the numbers should serve to prime the pump for the next primary. Consider other Senate challengers, like Anthony Clements (District 16) and Emily Phillips (District 23 in 2024). They received 28% and 33% of the votes, respectively, and both of them are or were in one public office or another. I received 38% of the votes, and I’ve NEVER been elected to any office, not even dog catcher. Having a higher number than Anthony and Emily does not make me a better candidate; it means that Howard Pearl has more critics than Senators Murphy and Gannon.
As the late Rep Mark Alliegro said at the 2021 My Pillow Symposium, I want to bring a message of hope. Even though Howard gets his ballot access on his 61st birthday, November 3, the message of hope is that it does NOT have to be that way 2 years from now or every 2 years for the rest of his life. I mention Howard’s age to illustrate that he could easily become a “Granite State Strom Thurmond,” but only if we let him! Not voting in the primary is a passive way of accepting Howard’s continued time in office.
As I said in my June 13 article titled “My Decision To Primary Howard Pearl,” I waited until the last minute to allow for someone else to step up and be the one. We don’t have to have an “Election Cycle Groundhog Day” 2 years from now, and I will tell everyone right now that I will not be the Bill Murray. I’ve run for office 4 times, and 2028 is someone else’s turn to primary Howard.
It can be done. Just look at the numbers and picture what a District 17 primary would be like with a superior challenger who had been planning their campaign for several months! Who will be that someone else? I nominate Rep Jose Cambrils of Loudon as my first choice and might even consider writing a future article titled “The Case for Jose,” but there are others I would be just as happy to vote for and campaign for. My campaign was not about me; it was about Howard, and I know that votes for me were votes because they were votes against Howard.
Back to the numbers, numbers don’t care about anyone’s feelings. They show that 3 out of 8 voters in Republican primaries are NOT Howard Pearl fans. We should not be accepting the unacceptable, and HL Mencken said people deserve the government they get. I don’t think I deserve Howard Pearl. Ask yourself if you do.
Keep the faith and remember that we do not and should not have to accept a default Howard Pearl constituency until he dies or gets as old as D’Allesandro and calls a press conference in the LOB reception area to announce his retirement. Your assignment, which I hope you’ll choose to accept, is to be thinking of who you want to be Howard Pearl’s next opponent and encourage that person to agree to the challenge.