Jeb Bradley - "Family comes first" - Granite Grok

Jeb Bradley – “Family comes first”

I just caught the news from WMUR (have been out most of the day) that Jeb Bradley has ruled himself out for state wide office; on the news he said that he has two ailing family members.  “Family First” – a moral imperative that should be taking first place in his life regardless of what could have been his political future(s).  Certainly he has politics in his blood and his avocation for office, to put up with all of the crap that comes with it, is high on the scale.  To basically say “no more” to what you identify with and, to a degree, defines him?  Not easy at all.  Not clear that he would re-run for his current Senate seat (a “district” vs “state-wide”?).

Certainly, we worked hard for Jeb during the special election here at the ‘Grok and our radio show “Meet the New Press” when he beat a very progressive Democrat Bud Martin (aka, “Bathroom Bud”).  He said all of the right words that caused me to believe that, opposed to his reputation as being a fairly moderate Republican while in DC, that he had taken a hard turn Rightward.  We carefully watched his votes in the NH Senate – those checked out (but we also note that the Republicans were in the minority at the time as well – that generally does have a material effect on one’s votes).  However, once becoming the majority party, however, we were quite disappointed – the conservative chrysalis was left behind.

I point that out for only one reason – we all can disagree about what makes for good politics and values.  But this transcends the politics – and would hold true even if the news was coming from Martha Fuller Clark, a real political opponent upon the political scale.  My prayers go out to him and his family at this time – this is the right decision even though it must have been very difficult to make.

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