Dunces. The one thing I will utterly defend is our reputation. They are about to learn that lesson.
We received the following yesterday afternoon after the Winchester Republican Committee held a candidate stump speech event that George Hansel attended (I’ve “Skip-ified” it to protect the helpful innocents).
I got there late and missed his remarks but at the end of the event I asked the moderator if we could ask any remaining questions. Very few questions had been asked up to that point and my understanding is that George wasn’t asked any after his remarks.
I asked George about his refusal to sit down with Granite Grok
That would be here: GrokGauntlet Update: We have our first “We decline the opportunity”.
BTW, the emphasis below is mine:
His retort was that GraniteGrok had sent 19 questions and decided it was a gotcha interview and refused to be interviewed. He said, for what it’s worth, that he might reconsider if they changed their attitude. Not exactly his words, but that was what it amounted to. So you may want to publish the offending questions.
Thought I’d pass this along.
WELL NOW, ain’t that the bee’s knees!
Right off, we can’t publish the “19 questions.” Not because they are part of our “secret sauce” but because they don’t exist! Nada, nein, nothing – can’t publish what does not exist.
I will admit, however, that we can have a snarky and sarcastic online style (at least Steve and I do being bloggers from when the blogosphere was the Wild, Wild West) but any GrokGauntlet attendee can attest, that we are nothing but polite as our “in-person” personas are nothing like our online ones.
The purpose of GrokGauntlets is not for us to shine but to shine Big Flashlights on the answers we get for our readers. They have, on multiple occasions, told us that we say the things that they can’t – and it is appreciated. That is why we were not just going to record the interviews for other Groksters this time but post those videos up afterward for all to see. Perhaps not ready for Prime Time?
So, here is what I sent first thing this morning (emphasis mine for posting):
—— Original Message ——
From: “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
To: “kevin@georgehansel.com” <kevin@georgehansel.com>; george@georgehansel.com
Cc: “Steve Mac Donald” <steve@granitegrok.com>
Sent: 7/5/2022 8:09:25 AM
Subject: So George is claiming that we sent him 19 questions? PROVE IT!Kevin,
This is a follow-up to the voice mail that I left you last night concerning some disturbing news that some of our readers sent to us from a recent campaign event. Your candidate has now invoked “my attitude” in claiming that we sent him 19 questions that he said are “gotchas” as the reason why he refused to accept our GrokGauntlet invite. NOT a smooth move.
Sorry, he’s LYING – we don’t send out surveys or questions and you can ask past attendees about that. Our GrokGauntlet questions are almost always spun up “on the fly”. We also don’t do gotcha questions either. We DO ask hard/multi-level questions to test people – and everyone gets those types of questions.
So, I’m expecting a written apology by 5 pm today. As I stated to you earlier, our online reach is larger than the Union Leader’s so we don’t screw around with our reputation. Nor do we allow others to do so, either.
SO, send me that list of 19 questions that Hansel claims I sent. That list will be REAL interesting (/sarc). The Hearst Corporation, the parent company of WMUR, tried something similar years ago; that turned out to be rather embarrassing for them as well.
I dryly note when you and I spoke (I keep a call log), you only said that the campaign was “going in a different direction”. Twice. No mention of 19 questions or any disagreement with our ROEs. Add to that, I do not have any record of sending any questions – only the GrokGauntlet Rules of Engagement (see below).
I have CC’d Steve Mac Donald on this email. He is our Editor and my business partner in GraniteGrok. And yes, this email will be published on GraniteGrok later this morning.
As Patrick Swayze said in “Roadhouse”: “I want you to be nice until it is time to not be nice.” You should have done your homework before lying about us AND, thus, picking a fight: https://granitegrok.com/blog/2011/04/blogger_to_fear_really. Just remember that James Pindell, the author, was not a “‘Grok Friend” – but at least he respected us.
Take those last two items as you wish.
-Skip
Skip Murphy
Co-Founder, co-owner
GraniteGrok.com | Skip@GraniteGrok.com | 603-630-6644
Dominating the political Bandwidth in New Hampshire
And here is what I DID send to Kevin Chrisom, George Hansel’s campaign manager after we had talked on the phone about coming in for a GrokGauntlet:
From: “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
To: kevin@georgehansel.com
Sent: 6/27/2022 4:26:55 PM
Subject: GrokGauntlet Invitation for Mr. HanselHi Kevin,
Thanks for taking my call a few minutes ago. As promised, here are the Rules and Purpose of a GrokGauntlet: https://granitegrok.com/blog/2022/06/grokgauntlet-it-is-time-and-lots-of-people-to-grill
Rules of the Gauntlet:
- Given the timing, we’re going to do two sessions a week – Wednesdays in Gilford and Thursdays in Hollis if at all possible.
- Time: 6:30 to 8:30 pm. Yes, it will be two hours long. No, there are no breaks.
- Bright Lights: Yes, we will be recording it.
- Staff: that’s our “staff” – not yours. For some candidates, they generally have staff that travel with them. They will not be allowed in the room. One candidate in the last cycle had a staff member make a scene over this restriction. He was finally told that if he continued, we would write about his candidate but not in the way he’d like. Tough noogies.
- All official Grokster writers are invited (implored??) to attend with questions. No, we will not let candidates see them before you hear them from us. Heck, many are made up on the spot given an answer you give us. Remember, bloggers often act like we all are ADD – we can take a point B and go to point Q seamlessly, so be prepared. Especially with regards to both the US and NH Constitutions.
- It’s ok to say “I don’t know” – trust me, we don’t have all the answers either. However, if we detect that you try to blow smoke up our butts in trying to appear that you know the answer but don’t, we will be merciless. You can ask us to clarifying questions, though, as some questions can go in a number of different directions at the same time.
- We will have food and drink there – hey, we wanna have fun with this, too!
Purpose of the Gauntlet:
- These GrokGauntlets used to be for one and only one purpose – to see IF we would hand out an official endorsement. GraniteGrok, in a combined vote, would issue an endorsement in a given race based on the votes received. The recordings that we have done in the past have only been used to allow Groksters who could not attend one (and it generally is a musical chair scenario as to who can show up at any given one event of many). And yes, we add one additional name to all the candidates that we grill: “No Endorsement”. Top vote getter gets our endorsement. That said, history shows that we give out very few endorsements, so be warned.
- This cycle will be different – I’ve decided to change things up. Not only will the recordings be seen by “unable to attend Groksters”, when we are done, we will put them all up on GraniteGrok by race (e.g., all of those vying for NH Governor will be in one post, US Senate another, et al). Although we have the capability of livestreaming them, we don’t wish to give our questions away as some are asked of ALL candidates and others are meant for individual races, and sometimes, individual candidates.
Most Wednesday nights are open in July and August. We have the 4th, 18th, and 25th in August available for Thursday nights.
We hope that the campaign would accept this offer!
Kindest regards,
-Skip
So, the Hansel campaign KNEW what was going to happen and how things were structured. Was it, perhaps that “we will be merciless” bit? Sorry, you can ask prior attendees about that as well – Steve Negron tells it quite well (just don’t give away the answer, Steve!). But that’s about it.
So I look forward to their response – and writing about it. Of course, if there is no response, we’ll write about that as well.
From our perspective, this is a serious deal. The only thing we have is our reputation and we have spent 16 years enhancing it and protecting it.