Exeter Town Hall before meeting. Note astroturfers in black costumes.
Tonight’s Town Hall style meeting in Exeter hosted by Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta, who is seeking the Republican nomination for NH’s 1st Congressional District, was well attended and featured a great deal of discussion and back and forth with the audience.
As regular readers might recall, several weeks ago, when it was looking like Carol Shea Porter, our current Democrat representative, would deny citizens of the 1st Congressional District a chance to speak about and consider the proposal to nationalize health care, Mayor Guinta stepped up and offered to provide a forum. While Shea Porter ultimately caved and held two very small, tightly controlled meetings, most observers agree the decision was in reaction to Guinta’s move.
And what a move it was. Unlike Carol Shea Porter who quite obviously fears her constituents and seeks to avoid any public interaction, Guinta put himself in front of all comers, allowing followup comments and remarks, and generally engaged in a freewheeling discussion that carried on for better than an hour and a half. Waving the huge stack of paper that is the health care proposal being considered presently in Congress, the Mayor assured everybody that he had, in fact, read the entire bill. During the course of the evening, he referred to specific details, and appeared quite familiar with much of its content and real meaning.
Among some of the familiar faces spotted in the audience that got to speak was the now-famous retired policeman Carol Shea Porter had ejected from her Manchester event Saturday, along with a woman who is a cancer survivor that was unable to gain access to that same event due to the small size of the venue. Also there were members of the opposition, including key footsoldiers of the DNC’s Organizing For America astroturf group that were spotted and observed in action at Saturday’s Shea Porter event in Portsmouth.
As has been the case throughout the whole period of debate involving the health care issue, ordinary Americans showed they had a good understanding of what’s at stake, and spoke quite intelligently to the subject. Several questioners who obviously favored the proposal took on the Mayor, challenged and pressed him on certain points, some of which make up familiar Democratic arguments (when they actually make any) often put forth in their rhetoric. Through it all, Guinta remained in command, with strong responses backed up by facts.
There was no doubt that tonight in Exeter, Guinta acted and appeared like what a good New Hampshire Congressman should. Too bad the same can’t be said of Shea Porter’s act on Saturday.
Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta referring to HR 3200 and its 1000-plus pages
