I would like to talk about the Executive Council and the District 5 primary race in particular. I am a proud, but relatively recent Granite Stater (6 years). If I had known about the free state project, I would have signed up before moving, having originally taken a job in Maskachussetts only after confirming I could handle the commute from up here in America.
We’d like to thank Colton Skorupan for this Op-Ed. If you have an Op-Ed or LTE
you would like us to consider please submit it to Skip@GraniteGrok or Steve@GraniteGrok.com.
All that is to say that I am one of you, through and through. Full disclosure, I know Dave Wheeler personally (though not awfully well), and like the man. As a politically involved reader of the Grok, I’ve been following a back and forth between surrogates of Dave Wheeler and Bob Clegg that, to be plain, seems a bit sordid, and needs sorting out. Please go read each of these articles so you don’t have to trust my summary. But to make my point, briefly:
5 Aug – Beth Scaer: Bob Clegg Was Paid to Lobby Against a Bill to Increase Penalties for Those Who Pay to Rape Children. This basically says what the title does.
6 Aug – Susan Olsen: Scaer’s salacious charges The gist of this article is that the proposed law is too broad, and people would be charged with child sex trafficking who were completely innocent.
11 Aug – Beth Scaer: A Survivor of Child Sex Trafficking Responds to Bob Clegg Personal and heart-wrenching survivorship story aside, the gist of this article is: That’s absurd and a diversion, and the hearing for HB 201 was hijacked for the purposed of decriminalizing prostitution.
Then throw in a little…
13 July – Jim Kofalt: Let’s Elect Principled Conservatives, not Democrat-Donors Where Jim lists all the democrats and leftist causes that Clegg gave money to.
Add in some vague accusations that Wheeler is a bully and not REALLY all that pro-life, and a libertarian-leaning conservative like me could be at a loss. Which is right? Here is how I sort it out:
First, the sordid bit. There are websites out there listing things Wheeler approved in the past that authorized spending on weird stuff like turtles, or migration of birds in Canada. Take them with a grain of salt.
Government is government, and there is always a give and take. While I personally would prefer an absolutist attitude on not spending our tax money, an absolutist would never be elected, and I am a realist. On top of this, there are unsubstantiated rumors that Dave has been threatened people and other accusations that he was only pretending to be against Planned Parenthood when last on the EC. Really?
The Christian homeschooling (grand)father who runs a small Christmas tree farm and makes maple syrup is actually a bully and is just faking his pro-life stance? Sorry, doesn’t pass the smell test, and doesn’t line up with the guy I know. The guy who humbly let a nobody newcomer to New Hampshire grill him in my kitchen for an hour about his politics.
Second, my take on the facts. Is HB 201 a good bill meant to protect children, or a vaguely written dangerous bill that could entrap innocent people the way 15 year-olds get put on sex offender registries for sending selfies to their girlfriends? Believe me, my libertarian soul is very open to the argument that laws can be too broad, or open to being too broadly applied.
I myself had a law incorrectly and too broadly applied to me not so long ago, which I’ll address at another time. On its face, the defense sounds completely reasonable. But here is the rub. Clegg’s rebuttal is… not true. HB 201 changed absolutely nothing about the definition of the crime. Nothing at all. HB 201 was to literally change one letter in New Hampshire law. One. Letter.
The trafficking in persons law – already on the books – was to go from a Class B to a Class A Felony. B to A. That’s it. Read it yourself here. There was literally no other change to the law that would worry a person about over-application. Oh, there are good arguments out there that we have too many felonies.
Felonies should be reserved for the most heinous of crimes, and there are plenty of crimes that should not be felonies at all, let alone class A felonies. Like recording a person without telling them. Or *ahem* animal cruelty. In my opinion, selling children is not on that list. But regardless, this was not Clegg’s argument.
He argued that HB 201 could cause a person who accidentally saw a kid changing at the beach to get charged with a felony. This is ridiculous. The law requires you PAY to watch a sexually explicit act or performance. So yes, the argument is a diversion. He was a lobbyist with a client… a client called “Decriminalize Sex Work” who wanted to decriminalize – I can only surmise – underage and unwilling sex work? And he did their bidding for money.
Which brings me to the other great topic here, from the Kofalt article above about all the money that Bob Clegg has given to Democrats. I don’t have a link for you, but Clegg’s general defense has been that he was a lobbyist, and that was his job. That a lobbyist’s clients pay him to give money to politicians of their choosing, so that is what one does.
Bull.
That is called sacrificing your principles for money. Nothing more and nothing less. That is openly declaring that he was and is for sale. Helping an evil cause is evil, whether it is your day job or not. If my employer required me to give money to Democrats, I would immediately quit. But Clegg WAS the company, and he took that money to run his business. If he was willing to go against his supposed principles for money in 2019, why would we believe that he wouldn’t do it again in 2021? Or more to the point, why are we to believe that these are actually his principles at all?
I know who I will be voting for in the primary, and, God willing, the general for Executive Council this year. Dave Wheeler is who he has been every other time he has honorably served New Hampshire. Let’s let him do it again.
