2024 wasn’t that long ago, but there might be new readers and people new to NH among us, so here’s my old article following that primary and a quick recap. Lily won her primary; Vikram made the phone call in a minimalist manner, or should I say “with minimal manners?” Think of Jennifer Aniston wearing the minimum number of pieces of flair, even though the rest of the waitstaff wear much more, or their patrons only tipping 15%. At least a phone call was made with more than one hour to spare before the clock struck midnight.
Tuesday night at Chez Lily, campaign volunteers were treated to an evening of socializing, her home-cooked Chinese food, and other refreshments and libations. After some technical difficulty firing up the big screen TV in her living room, election results started coming in, and coverage was unsurprisingly focused on that darling OTHER district and the enemy camp.
A few reporters came and went, by appointment, and the evening wore on as we tuned into the TV between Lily’s on-camera statements. I started watching the clock and wondering when Victor would make the call. I even got caught calling Victor “Vikram” a few times. Yeah, my bad, even though their names do indeed sound alike.
People started saying their goodbyes and trickling out the door, onesies and twosies, but Tim Finney and I stayed on the couch watching more numbers slow-drip in. I said “I wonder when Vikram, um I mean Victor, is going to make the call.”
When the larger group was gathered in the kitchen for a group picture hours earlier, I asked aloud if Victor had Lily’s phone number, and nobody could give a definitive YES answer. Be that as it may, as Attorney Gens would often say, Lily’s media team was on duty and reachable to field requests for contact in response to her press release. If Victor didn’t have Lily’s number before Tuesday night, he certainly had plenty of opportunities to obtain it.
If I’m not mistaken, Vikram made his phone call around 10:45 pm on primary night and shortly after that, the Damn Emperor called to congratulate Lily. I certainly didn’t even consider the possibility of a call from Ayotte, and it was no surprise that there wasn’t one, but as it got close to 10:45, I observed the number of party guests dwindling in a nonlinear way as I heard Lily and her husband cleaning up in the kitchen. I said to Tim, “I don’t want to be THAT party guest who ignores those signals that it’s time to call it a night, but I want to witness the phone call.” Tim agreed, predicting it wouldn’t happen.
Ayotte did give Lily her congrats, albeit mentioning her 3rd in a Tuesday night tweet, an acknowledgment of all 3 federal office primary winners, but Victor Orlando has been radio-silent on social media since prior to the closing of the polls.
Lily is out of town at the moment, but as of my most recent word from her yesterday morning, he has not called her. The closest he came to doing anything even close to Vikram’s phone call was telling the Concord Monitor, “We as Republicans need to unite; we need to support our candidates for the general.” Whether or not you or I or the next person agrees with that quote, it appears that it’s the best lip service that will come from his mouth.
I would like former alderman Joe Kelly Levasseur to call Victor Orlando a snotty little crybaby just like he did to Vikram. As Rep Lori Korzen, who happened to endorse Victor, often asks in her tweets, “agree or disagree?”
