US House Races 2010

So that the other Groksters don’t get on my case (again) about dragging this out, and perhaps save you all some time in having to read the details (especially Pat Hynes – he’s such a busy dude):

Well, I got a couple more emails – from friends.  One in particular REALLY bothered me – it turned out that Pat Hynes WAS being a bully – he was using Chicago tactics on MY friend, intimating that he could end up involved legally with me because of this post.

In other words, by putting out the spectre of my friend having to get a lawyer and being brought to court, Pat Hynes hoped that to use my friendship with this person against me. 

For only political gain for his client.

Essentially, Pat Hynes is trying to shut me up about talking about Sean Mahoney’s false claim to be a big part of the TEA Party here in NH.  Seems that me saying that Sean Mahoney is trying to ride the TEA Party coattails has bothered them both mightily.

I may also add, a whole bunch of others too – Sean Mahoney should be expecting to be asked some really tough questions now – more than a few folks are not amused.

I ended up with my last post this way:

>> It is in your best interest.

Am I to take that as a threat, Pat?  You’ve now crossed a line you should not have; you are now making it personal; you REALLY want to go there?????

Apparently, he did.  To recap from my earlier post:

• The Prequel – April 15, 2010 – TEA Party event in Portsmouth.

• The Reminder: (7/16) Local paper article – "presser" (maybe 2 reporters?)

• The Claim: (7/17) I’m with the TEA Party!: "…having attended and spoken at many of its events around New Hampshire…"

• The Call: (7/19) Call to the campaign office.

• The Email: (7/19) The "clarifier" email

• The "YOU’RE IN THE WRONG" Emails

And they continued – a number of them on the 19th, 20th, and 21st (and he said I was the one doing the harrassing?) all demanding that I call him (one even called me "a foll" [sic])

• Calls with short endings

Let’s put this up (posted 7/21 just before I left for Las Vegas) as a reminder – I was losing patience with Pat Hynes:

I could have repeated this image a couple of times to more accurately depict the history, but once was enough (you get the idea).

And yes, I will add this "No, I am not recording this; it is against NH law to record someone without their permission."

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To recap from my earlier post:

• The Prequel – April 15, 2010 – TEA Party event in Portsmouth.

• The Reminder: (7/16) Local paper article – "presser" (maybe 2 reporters?)

• The Claim: (7/17) I’m with the TEA Party!: "…having attended and spoken at many of its events around New Hampshire…"

• The Call: (7/19) Call to the campaign office.

• The Email: (7/19) Having been effectively called a shill, I sent a "clarifier" email – it’s not about the campaign; it IS about making an unsubstantiated claim about being a mover and shaker in the TEA Party movement – and no back up for that claim.  And yes, I respond to a "challenge".

and I ended the post with this:

I never heard back from the staffer – but I certainly did from the "friend"!  It brought back memories of the McCain campaign ("McCain seemed tired…") – for the calls started up again.  

And then it got interesting….

Indeed.  Having been on a blogger call for McCain, my write up of that call included that line.  I thought nothing of it – look, McCain wasn’t a spring chicken than (or now) but had a lot more energy than most people a third his age; that said, sooner or later with the schedule candidates keep, ya gonna have a "power outage" sooner or later.  Well, given the calls that came in ALMOST immediately (who knew that the campaign was gonna monitor the ‘Grok??):

"Why did you say that?  What gave you that impression? He wasn’t tired – he was fine; WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?"

Whoa! Get that last part? I was immediately at fault – fix it.  At the time, I thought "OK, perhaps I did get it wrong"…but was surprised at the vociferous nature of the immediate pushback.  I filed it for future notation.

Glad I did; the attitude returned – with a vengeance!

• The "YOU’RE IN THE WRONG" Emails

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Well, I got sidetracked by the RightOnline conference and then by work, but now it is time to start finishing this sad tale.  So, as my fellow Groksters were telling me to get on with it, I shall – and the dripping faucet will proceed at a faster pace.  And this time, let’s proceed in a straight timeline instead of bouncing back and forth and giving everyone a good case of whiplash.

• The Prequel – April 15, 2010 – TEA Party event in Portsmouth.  It seems that the candidate decided to torque off a number of organizers during the actual event.  While indeed providing some ideas and assistance on some of the details, it turned out that the instructions to keep spoken speeches "on a patriotic" theme and not on campaigns" was oh so skillfully skirted. It didn’t help matters much that a professional looking camera crew showed up and the speech "crossed the line".  At this point, the "coattail hairs" rose on the back of my neck – something that most of us had decided that we would not let happen

As a co-founding member of the NH TEA Party Coalition, I know pretty much all of the organizers and main TEA Party / 912ers in the state, so I contacted the Portsmouth folks as well as all of the others that I knew. As far as I could ascertain, this was pretty much the very first event in which Sean Mahoney had participated.

I let a "friend of the campaign" know of peoples’ ire, and then let it sit.

• The Reminder: In my local paper (7/16) was this article of a Mahoney press conference inside the former showroom of a local car dealer that got shut down by Obama’s Auto Task Force.  I know the building well, having put up a picture of it a while earlier (7/12). Must have been some event; knowing the size of the show room, it must have been packed with local reporters – 2 maybe?

• The Claim: (7/17) and then the line was crossed again – this time with the editorial board of the Laconia Citizen:

Asked about his participation in the Tea Party movement, Mahoney said that having attended and spoken at many of its events around New Hampshire, he understood the frustration of many of its members with government. He said the energy of the Tea Party has caused the GOP to focus back on "the very founding principles of our government."

Now, did any of the local media challenge Mahoney on this claim?  Of course not! Remember, in The Prequel, I had already established that no such thing had been done.  I contacted folks again – no such memories existed.  Pretty much, this was A Claim spun out of thin air and cloth (think: Emperor’s New Clothes).  I’ll apologize if I’m wrong, but unlike the media, I decided to research it more – at the source.

• The Call: (7/19) …

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One is the $$ guy and the other is trying to run on TEA coattails?  Does this mean monied coattails?  Kinda seems that way

I had started to go into some of the details but got sidetracked by both the RightOnline conference and then long hours for work in San Diego.  So, once again, time for a restart and continuing.  After all, leaving things undone is just so….unsightly and messy.  And engineers hate slipshod.  So let’s recap, via a timeline,  shall we?

• The Prequel –  April 15, 2010 in Portsmouth.  TEA Party organizers torqued off as an invitation to speak (and to be fair, helping with some details for the event) turned into a campaign video.  After being specifically told that this was NOT to be such.  In talking with the organizers of the Portsmouth event, they felt they had been hi-jacked. Period.  I personally called or emailed every TEA Party organizer I knew (and being a co-founding member of the NH TEA Party Coalition, I know them all), not one had any memories of Mahoney speaking or offering to help prior to this event.  Not one.  Period.

• Making It Local – 7/16 – I recognized where this presser was held – after all, I had posted up the outside earlier.  I also chuckled at it being "a press conference" – knowing the size of the former showroom (as it is only about 10-15 minutes from my house and have passed by it for years) – there must have been a whole raft of media people there – 2 maybe?

• The TEA Party Claim: from my local paper was this:

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(A GraniteGrok photo, taken by a friend of the ‘Grok)

"…having attended and spoken at many of its events around New Hampshire…"

 I have a REAL big problem with this, a la Charlie Bass.  yet, it seems that the GOP insiders can’t seem to understand my motivation for pursuing this – it has nothing to do with who I support in which race.  It is ALL about what politician-wannabe is, from my standpoint, trying to co-opt the TEA Party movement for their own benefit.

**********

I know this is starting to be disjointed (when the other Grokster are saying "get ON with it", I guess it is) but have no fear, some of the blocks will start to fall into place.  I hadn’t really planned on this, but when the video of Sean Mahoney was posted about his incoherent answer on immigration (really, semantically or from a themantic standpoint, Steve is right – there’s a bunch of sentences strung together that say….what?  The title of the post does fit. 

And now a pattern is starting to develop – he speaks, we report, you decide. Now, don’t get me wrong, Sean IS a nice guy – really!  Warm personality, a ready smile, and a willing handshake – and that was before he started running.  But when you run for elected office, especially Congress, words start meaning things – and quickly and seriously.  And we here at the ‘Grok are known to take on those that speak "unwell", (to coin a word), even those that we have supported either in the past or presently. Our motto remains:

Thank’em when they’re right, and spank’em when they’re wrong

And we’d be hypocrites to do otherwise. So, what’s the problem here?  A word, a single word.  But words have meanings and so does context. So a spanking (public flogging?) is in order.

Here’s the context – GraniteGrok was a co-founding member of the NH TEA Party Coalition (we have recently pulled away; not on principle but on direction of action [er, really, the lack of inaction quickly enough for our purposes – we still agree wholeheartedly in the principles]).  At the beginning, NO one wanted anything to do with politicians and the GOP which was rightly blamed for failing their principles (even as a number of us were and still active in Republican politics – ONLY in that the GOP seems to be closer in philosophy than the Dems, even with their failures).  As time progressed, some of the anger dissipated as one thing emerged (at least here in NH) – it was unlikely that a third party was the way to go (even if it would have likely been "ideologically pure").  It became clear that it would be a case of "if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed…".

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As Steve has pointed out here, Carol Shea-Porter has been voting pretty much in lockstep with the Democrat leadership:

Do you know why Carol only votes with her party 98% of the time? She’s missed 2% of the votes.

Independent thinker?  Only from a definition that might be found in Nancy Hussein Reid’s talking point books (LARGE colorful print edition)!  Now, let’s add some more context to the background for Carol’s "going to be a wicked hard slog" run for re-election.  Steve has pointed out that the GrassRoots Carol no longer exists – just call her PACgurl now – with most of that coming from the "invisible" special interests – unions.  In fact, Carol LOVES the unions – and they have shown they love her.  But like all money, it comes with strings attached – just ask Governor Lynch!

And payback for her having a hard time is gonna be quite the something for the rest of us – as in "shut yer yaps, knaves".  Certainly during her Town Hall event held in Laconia in early April, she pretty much acted like a teacher scared of the crowd (like when she imperiously told a Sr. Citizen "you’re done" – Tricky Dick Nixon couldn’t have done better – and in doing so, she didn’t answer him just like she’s stonewalling now!).  Thus, why should we be surprised that she supports the DISCLOSE Act.  Remember this little phrase from our Bill of Rights?

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Open and Transparent. 

I heard her say that multiple times during her Laconia Town Hall event – Open and Transparent.  Problem is, like many Progressives, she’s all about the proclamation and not so hot on execution.  Which, seemingly is why Dean is going apoplectic at Blue Hampshire over the issue that is just going drip, drip, drip.

Yup, in summary (and as I talked about on WGIR with Jeff Chidester last week here and here) almost TWO weeks ago, Carol Shea-Porter is as locked up vocally as what BP wishes it’s oil well would be.  The Union Leader still is locked onto the story:

The 1st District U.S. representative sent congratulatory letters to graduating high school seniors in some, but not all, school systems in her congressional district this year. This has been public knowledge for weeks. But despite repeated media requests, she refuses to identify the school districts in which the letters were sent.

What an exceptionally odd secret to keep. What in the world is she trying to hide by refusing to disclose that information?…

…Shea-Porter’s office won’t say which districts’ graduates got letters, but her staff did take the time to point out to this newspaper that she, as a member of Congress, is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. How thoughtful of her.

All Shea-Porter has to do to make this story go away is name the districts. Why she refuses to do that is a mystery. 

Open and Transparent.  Gee Dean, it must really hard to keep up that stiff upper lip as your Exalted one keeps throwing you under the bus by…

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Found

Our friend Terry Stewart attended Carol Sheas Porter’s visit to Alton, NH this morning, where she faced some 30 or so residents. Apparently nobody there was all too pleased with the Congresswoman or her fellow politicians’ actions down in DC. I asked Terry to write a quick take on the event… 

I had a chance to attend the meeting today at Alton’s town hall in which congress women Carol Shea-Porter was invited to speak. 

I will immediately admit that I am NOT a fan of Shea-Porter’s ideology. I do however give her credit for answering the questions she was asked. The attendees and Ms. Shea-Porter were very polite and respectful however not one speaker spoke in favor of the current direction of our government and in particular the health insurance bill that was recently passed by the house. Ms Shea-Porter respectfully disagreed and stated her position.

The first question came from a local lady only identified as “Barbra”. She gave a very good 10 minute outline of the various spending proposals that have occurred since Obama was elected. My attempt at reiterating her passionate speech simply would not do it justice. In capsule form she, like so many of us, simply doesn’t trust any of these proposals coming out of Washington. We were told that we wouldn’t have government run car companies or banks and now we do. “I no longer trust what you say.” She concluded. She received a huge round of applause from most everyone in the room.

Shea-Porter responded that everyone could agree that Wall Street millionaires left to their own devices caused this crisis along with over paid CEO’s. She said that she voted for the auto bail out because the CEO’s put the company out of business and the workers were out of a job due to no fault of their own. “We needed to put them back to work!” She also added this statement; “I also supported the auto industry bail outs because if this country ever goes to war, we must have the ability to manufacture automobiles. It’s a national security issue!” (I guess no one told her that we’re in a war)

The next question came from a local small business owner who also believes that the massive stimulus spending and the health bill initiative will be the death of small businesses across the country and raise taxes on all working families.

 

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