Please humor me for a moment, close your eyes, and picture the Mr Bean meme. It’s a quartet of him standing with his hands on his hips, looking at his watch, sitting Indian style, and lying down. The caption says, “Me waiting for (insert long-awaited item here).”
I’m starting with that exercise because, just like Tim Lang refusing then-Rep Melissa Blasek’s visual presentation in an 11/8/21 committee hearing, the copyright e-police might forbid using it here. The caption for you to visualize is me (Julie Smith, not Al Franken) waiting for Kelly Ayotte’s commitment to putting out some Nashua dumpster fires.
Oh, Look! We’re good!
While many interest groups have grave concerns about an Ayotte regime, I’m not going to get into the weeds of ones better covered by respected subject matter experts, such as Claire Best. I will stick with Nashua issues, particularly 91A and masks.
I will start with 91A because she could not wholly avoid discussing it at the February 8 NRCC meeting, where she was stumping that night. Serendipity would have it that the House sent HB1002 back to the Judiciary Committee hours earlier that day, so I pounced on the opportunity to ask in a room full of witnesses despite recording being forbidden. I asked what she would do if HB 1002 landed on her desk, and I wanted to hear the word “veto” in her answer, but I had to settle for something like “Um, no, I don’t care for that bill,” after she asked me what HB 1002 was. Being a Nashua homegrown politician, she disappointed me in not being familiar with a monster Nashua issue, and I’ll offer another disturbing encounter from months earlier.
I ran into her at the 2023 Amherst German Christmas Market just weeks following our train wreck of a city election. During some unplanned small talk, she said something like. “but at least Tyler got reelected.” Tyler Gouveia is the Ward 1 alderman and now represents the new governor in the city hall chamber. His most famous accomplishment was his 2001 unseating of Jan Schmidt, which earned him a standing ovation at the November 2021 NRCC meeting when he entered the room. I walked away astounded by her abysmal level of knowledge and interest in city hall shenanigans.
Speaking of shenanigans, Mask Madness 1.0 and 2.0 are something NOT to be forgotten. Even after the sunset of 1.0 and months before 2.0, it was a contentious school board issue that attracted many out-of-town agitators. Most readers already know that HB1131 and 1093 were vetoed in 2022 and 2024 by the tyrant whose path his successor regularly says she plans to follow!
On the campaign trail, she avoided talking about HB1093, even when I asked her in person at the annual Pine Tree Riot party with several witnesses present and Chuck Morse in attendance. Nashua students, faculty, staff, parents, and taxpayers deserve protection against Mask Madness in the schools we’re forced to fund. I am calling on her to take that exit ramp from “the Sununu path.” Again, picture a meme that’s likely copyrighted also. You see the highway with a car making a sharp turn from the left lane to the exit ramp at the last minute. The big green overhead sign says “the Sununu path,” the exit ramp says “HB 361,” and the erratically driven car says “Governor Ayotte.”
I know she won’t “follow the Sununu path” on landfill issues and even paid lip service in a joint ad with Rochefort while campaigning together in his district, home to the Casella site in Dalton. Landfills don’t have to have a monopoly on deviations from “the Sununu path.” Another desired exit ramp is HB 114, sponsored by Rep Louise Andrus, seeking to undo HB1002.
The ultimate opportunity to “come about,” to use nautical parlance, would be her undoing a bill that His Excellency signed last year. Nashua is the worst place in NH when it comes to emboldened opposition to 91A, and signing HB114 would be one of the best things she could do for the city she has called home all her life.
