New Hampshire’s Largest paper, our paper of record, may not have had a lot of choices for a citizen of the year, or there may have been hundreds. But rather than pick a citizen, it picked a politician. Chris Sununu.
I am not implying that elected officials are not citizens, but shouldn’t an institution like the one left behind by the Loeb’s – the founders of that daily, make some effort to find someone outside the political sphere to recognize?
I’m not familiar with the criteria, but I’d be inclined to find a different sort of public servant. A police officer, EMT, firefighter, nurse, plumber, electrician, or other ordinary schmo who did something exceptional or persisted in a thankless task to benefit others.
Yes, you could call being elected thankless, but that’s in the job description. No matter what you do, at minimum, a third to perhaps two-thirds of citizens will not like it. That’s what his excellency gets paid to put up with. But this is a guy who let too many opportunities to choose liberty pass, and not just in 2023.
He has managed to sit atop an unusual time in 21st century New Hampshire. A Republican Governor with successive Republican majorities in the Executive Council and Legislature. With his signature, he has allowed tax cuts and the elimination of taxes to become law. But he has done too little to ensure election integrity. He endorsed Nikki Haley for President after Haley said she’d force private social media companies to make the names of every contributor public, which must include whistleblowers who could not otherwise speak.
Parents will be scratching their heads. Sununu was not their biggest ally and, in previous years, was quite the contrary. While Sununu supported school choice, he has compromised women’s safe spaces and left room for third-party associations to advance unconstitutional policies like JBABA, which encourages compelled speech. And done nothing in this year or any other of which I am aware to fight that injustice.
He has allowed his DoJ, without public comment, to chase cases that suggest a deeper commitment to interfering with free speech and support for more government control of speech.
Sununu chose the Biden administration’s election interference tactics over a former Republican president who was well within his legal right to possess classified documents and those he’d declassified. If it was a political hit on a guy he’d sworn to oppose, not much seems out of bounds.
Illegal border incursions from Canada went on for too long before Governor Sununu lifted a finger to do anything about it.
Sununu is always quick to take federal money, insisting there are no strings or federal demands attached when nothing comes out of DC without conditions. A commitment to growing fiscal dependency on the Feds, which is a crime against state sovereignty.
There are more, and by all means, please fill them in below as comments because I’m stopping here.
Mr. Sununu has done some good things in each of his terms, in every year in office as Governor, but he could have done better in 2023. More than a few opportunities to side with liberty passed him by either because he blocked them or failed to use his office to rally legislators in support.
Nobody is perfect, and we cannot let perfect be the enemy of the good, but naming a politician as Citizen of the Year is a cop-out and wholly inappropriate for a media organization whose role should be to find elected officials from any party, in any office, at the bottom of any or every such list. Your job is to hold them accountable, not put another accolade on their mantle.
As for The ‘Grok, we don’t name a citizen of the year, and by all means, offer suggestions in comments if you have them, but if I had to choose one off the top of my head for 2023, I’d go with Danial Richard.
But that’s just me.
