When Mike Soucy was running for mayor in 2023, he made a few preemptive disclosure statements to friendly audiences to prepare his potential and future supporters for dealing with the Donchess Donkeys and their defenders. One of them had to do with his county commissioner record. The mayor regularly complained (and presumably still complains) that Soucy regularly votes NO on Nashua requests for county funds, but the biggest ace-up-the-sleeve for the mayor was that Soucy had voted for some 1% or $1 increase in some budget or tax vote before the 2023 mayoral campaign.
While having a conversation with Adam Sexton about Colin Van Ostern(CVO) prior to his primary with Goodlander regarding some old management decisions at Stonyfield, I had to agree with his comment. Adam said that when you’re called out on something, the best thing to do is own it and either defend it or quickly make a “that was then, this is now” statement about how you have changed or times have changed. Or you can apologize if you regret it. Soucy took the early voluntary disclosure route coupled with defending his vote, but I learned something new. The new thing (to me) is that it’s not just county commissioner votes that matter, but rep votes also, and I just took a look at a Hillsborough County tax increase roll call.
Democrats are going to do what they do best, which is to do whatever they can to raise taxes. At this point, I will praise Jonah Wheeler for not participating in that vote. We all know by now the good things Jonah has done from his side of the aisle, though I don’t know if his absence was premeditated or not. However, I am just stunned by how many Rs either played hooky or voted the wrong way. Let’s look at this Wall of Shame:
Absent list:
- Mannion Brothers
- Panek
- Tenczar
- Gorski
- Gould*
- Labrie
- Noble
- Scully
- Notter*
- Dumont
- Prout
- Peeples
- Gagne*
- Kesselring
- DuPont
- Corcoran
- Fedolfi*
- Creighton*
- Kelley
- Sirois
- Suiter
- Rice
- Warden
- Post*
- Berry
I happen to like some of the people on that list, but I’m not going to give anyone special treatment unless they’re ENEMIES OF 91A. If they voted for the RTK tax (HB 1002) last year, then their names are tagged*.
Now for the select list of Rs, these reps voted for a tax increase:
- Erf (a Finance chair and member of Education Funding and the recent budget committee)
- Ohm
- Proulx (fireman, EMT and probably a Group 2 sympathizer)
Another little side note is that Nashua only has Kevin Scully and Bill Ohm out of 27 seats in the House and property taxes are exceptionally out of control in the city. Yeah, I know it’s a problem almost everywhere, but you’d think they’d do better. Let’s look at the numbers:
- 26 Rs didn’t participate in the vote
- 3 Rs voted the wrong way
- 89 votes were cast
- 58 voted the wrong way
- 31 voted the right way
The wrong result prevailed because of 27 bad votes. That 31-58 result could have been 57-58, no I mean 60-55. Read that again. Had the 3 rogues voted correctly and the 26 absent Rs participated, this could have been stopped. If any of the above named reps are yours, I encourage you to have a conversation with them about this.
Edit: Brian Labrie has called attention to misinformation in the embedded document. Dem Rep M Murray, the clerk, recorded him as absent when he was indeed present and had voted correctly. I’m awaiting the availability of a link to the updated data.
