I get stuff – all the time. Someone sent me the below but wanted to be anonymous and I’m fine with that. The problem is that everyone has a given writing style, a “grammar/vocabulary” cadence, that can, if you’re familiar with the person, identify them. So, I have “Skip-ified” it to make that identification a bit harder (hopefully MUCH harder). However, the intent remains the same but know that I’ve put a few things in there as well.
So is this rumor true? How about “what IS that rumor”, Skip? Whispers, little birdies, spies with hidden drops ended up with a lot of dots unconnected. So which combos make the dots not only make connect correctly but also tell the correct story? And know, that these dots are getting larger as time progresses.
First, the context (beyond what I and other writers have already put on GraniteGrok) of the sinkhole of politics that the Gunstock Area Commission, Gunstock Mountain Resort, and the Belknap County Delegation. It all seems to swirl (word of the day) around former CEO (several times) and current Gunstock Area Commissioner Gary Kiedaisch (having been elected to Vice-Chair, launched a lawsuit to prevent being fired (once again), promoted to Acting Chair, and now demoted to just Commissioner). He’s never held back from telling everyone how great his CEO skills are and the size of his wallet.
According to him, he’s BFFs with Baby Huey (NH Governor Chris Sununu) and his much better half – so boasting about his connections (“Do you know who I am and who I know?”). And he’s not all that reluctant to let people know he’s got money to grease things. However, for all of that, he’s now distinctly alone from a political aspect on the GAC – his base on the GAC is now gone replaced by those that want Gunstock to succeed by knowing, at the end of the day, it’s a Government agency and not a private business and must be run as such.
And we come to the politics – Commissioners that he doesn’t approve of and doesn’t want (he can’t act like a CEO and push them around). Not his “kind” of folks. So he went all-in on a failed lawsuit. And the latest was to completely change the political ground out from underneath the present makeup of the Belknap Delegation and take away their Power to elect new (or replacements) by making the GAC a countywide election. This would turn the whole thing upside down and inside out. And NH State Senator Bob Guida, NH State Reps Tim Lang, Bordes, and the rest of the “Lang Gang” went all-in with him because the more conservative / Liberty-minded folks refuse to “go along to get along”.
And that Amendment to do all that was simply because “his side” is losing right now.
Which takes money – and Kiedaisch, by his own account, has lots of it. Think retaliation and retribution. And some of that was used, the rumors say, in doing a well-financed PR campaign “Citizens for Gunstock” ad in the Laconia Daily Sun denigrating the current Delegation member (the NH State Reps) because they are an existential threat to his governance model (him running things). The goal was, in my mind, intimidation to shut the Reps up, for them to give up, and bow down to his magnificence.
And it failed spectacularly. In identifying his political enemies, he made the fatal mistake of not understanding them.
With that failure, it is further rumored that he persuaded State Senator Bob Giuda and State Representative Tim Lang to put forward that Amendment (they were the Prime Sponsors) that, as I said, put the 1959 law into a blender:
- dramatically change the terms of the Gunstock Commissioners;
- remove the power of appointment and removal of Gunstock commissioners from the 18-member Delegation, which has held those powers without problems for the past 63 years.
- would have those powers vested in the 3-member county commission, in which decisions would be made by at least 2 individuals.
- It would also effectively then cut all connections from the County and move it into being more of an independent entity.
You know, like a private business. This is what Kiedaisch wants and thinks, if it passes, he’ll put in the money to get the “right” people elected. Not all that far from Crony Capitalism – with a hotel in the background but that’s yet another rumor to be dealt with later.
So the above is one rumor and one speculation. Here’s another and a much more underhanded and insidious one for those that want openness and transparency (and this is the flip side of that):
Why is this amendment and its approach being proposed and what might be the actual motivation of those proposing such a radical change?
So I’ve talked about the Kiedaisch/GAC angle/rumor. There’s another one that gets into political horse-trading. With 2020 came the redistricting of not just the Federal districts of Congress and Senate but also the NH districts for Executive Council, State Senate, and NH House Reps. The redistricting fouled a few things up. If it holds, Guida’s State Senate district gets a redo – and Lang has talked about running for Senate. He and his gang in the Delegation are tired of losing and he wants to jump up the political ladder to get away from always being on the losing side of the Delegation’s major issues and voting.
And then the rumor starts to get into some horse-trading
More detail: Giuda would continue to be a placeholder for Lang and would withdraw at the last minute, throwing his support to Lang. Of course, as part and parcel of this rumor is that Lang’s candidacy would receive campaign financial support from Kiedaisch and his cronies (like Rusty McLear in retribution for being put out to pasture and perhaps another well-known developer interested in that briefly mentioned hotel above).
So what does Guida get out of this?
Before the Giuda-Lang arrangement became rumored, another one was that maybe Giuda had been promised campaign financial support from Kiedaisch, or given Kiedasisch’s boasting with the tightness of his connection/influence with Baby Huey, a gubernatorial appointment for Guida somewhere in the Administration. You know, like former Speaker of the House Shawn Jasper did in getting that Agriculture Commissioner job? Pays a lot better than a State Senator, right?
It’s also known that Sununu believes that the Belknap County Delegation and hates the Libertarians in Republican clothing. So he might play ball in hopes that Kiedaisch & Cronies’ money would muddy up the waters in Belknap to get a more compliant, less conservative, Delegation that would be willing to do the “thank you sire, may I have another” (think Animal House). Maybe a good tradeoff in his eyes and let Kiedaisch have his toy back -> letting Gunstock return to operating without transparency and accountability.
So connecting the dots, you start with Kiedaisch and go to Giuda, then to Lang, and then to the Sun King.
But I also hear that HB1397 is most likely dead in the Senate Committee and would fail if a House floor fight, led by the Lang Gang, were to happen.
But of course, these are all mere rumors. And they say that politics is boring???