“That’s a lot of locker-room talk. They know they’re going to lose and are trying to pump themselves up for the big game. It’s very eighth grade of them, and it has really hurt the Republican brand.”
— New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman Ray Buckley, responding to former Republican Party chairman John H. Sununu predicting a Republican win in November.
Tuesday, Democratic House and Senate leaders held a press conference to review the recent legislative session. Here’s a little of what they had to say.
House Democratic Leader Terie Norelli:
“This Republican majority has had the wrong priorities for New Hampshire’s middle-class families and the wrong priorities for our economy. Instead of working to strengthen the economy, they pushed an extreme agenda that was more focused on taking away birth control than on helping our families succeed, an agenda that was more focused on hurting the workers in our state than on building for the future of our state. For the last two years, Bill O’Brien and his Tea Party allies have advanced a laundry list of out-of-touch legislation that shows just how wrong their priorities are for New Hampshire.”
Senator Lou D’Alessandro:
“In the context of New Hampshire’s budget, the Speaker’s proposed reductions and the current cuts already in place by the Tea Party legislature are enormous and devastating.”
Senator Molly Kelly:
This legislature has, at every occasion, chosen to side with radical special interests instead siding with New Hampshire’s middle class families. Nowhere is that more true than in their misplaced education priorities. Simply put, Bill O’Brien’s Tea Party legislature has made it easier to break the law and buy cigarettes, but harder to afford an education.
House Assistant Deputy Democratic Leader Steve Shurtleff:
For a group of people who came in to office at the start of 2011 promising to focus on the economy like a laser, we have to ask: Do they really understand how a laser is supposed to work? The only laser-like focus I’ve seen this legislative session has been in advancing a radical and far-right social agenda.
House Democratic Floor Leader Gary Richardson:
The only protection against people like Bill O’Brien is the ballot box. In November the voters will have a clear choice: Do they want a continuation of this legislature’s radical and out of the mainstream ideological agenda, or do they want leaders who will return us to sanity?
Ordinarily this is a pretty state in the autumn, all bright colors and crisp air and the bracing coolness of fresh apple cider at every farm stand. But this fall will not be pretty. … As New Hampshire goes, so goes the nation — or so the theory goes in early summer. Pass the blueberry milk and prepare for battle.
— David Schribman, (Easton, MD) Star Democrat, on the upcoming presidential campaign for New Hampshire’s four electoral votes
State House Democratic Leader Terie Norelli spends sixty seconds with PBS NewsHour.
Last week, GOP state Rep. Bob Kingsbury explained that he believes there is a direct link between the growing inmate population at the Belknap County Jail and the state’s mandatory kindergarten program.
Today, Kingsbury sat down with The Huffington Post and provided details. ”In general,” the 86 year old Laconia lawmaker said, “the towns with a kindergarten have 400 percent more crime than other towns in the same county. In every county the towns and cities with kindergarten had more crime.”
In Kingsbury’s world, kindergarten is not the only factor that contributes to a higher crime rate — but he does not blame day care or preschool programs.
“Children go to kindergarten at the point of a gun,” Kingsbury said. “Children go to day care and it’s not the same; there is no point of a gun.” Kingsbury said he believes that teachers are partially to blame but the rise in crime is not the fault of teachers. Instead he blamed attorneys and the courts for what he called a lack of discipline and rules in schools and for prohibiting teachers from disciplining students as in previous decades.
State House Speaker Bill O’Brien has been accused of being a bully, a tyrant and a dictator. Today he lived up to his reputation.
O’Brien today unceremoniously licked Rep. Kathleen Taylor off the committee that will oversee the state’s implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act. Taylor, the Joint Health Care Reform Oversight Committee’s lone House Democrat, was given no reason for her dismissal.
“The Committee will make recommendations for healthcare coverage — or not — for citizens with diabetes, heart disease, mental health and many other issues,” explained Taylor. “It is obvious to me that Speaker O’Brien is working hard to not allow New Hampshire to implement an expansion of Medicaid benefits for our vulnerable citizens.”
“The Speaker has taken an action to limit full public discussion and has removed an experienced voice from the table,” complained House Democratic Leader Terie Norelli. “Once again the Speaker has demonstrated that he will not tolerate viewpoints that differ from his own opinion and he dismisses the representative voice of a significant segment of New Hampshire voters.”
“I’m sure voters will remember this Speaker’s actions when casting their votes in November,” Norelli warned.
In a Governing magazine study of how governors are working with legislatures controlled by the other party, Louis Jacobson writes that Gov. John Lynch has “largely been overtaken by events.”
“In New Hampshire, the reform push is coming from the Legislature, and Lynch has not had enough legislative backing to keep several of his vetoes from being overridden,” said Andrew E. Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. James Pindell, the political director at WMUR-TV in New Hampshire, puts it bluntly. He calls Lynch — who is not running for another term — “insanely popular and insanely irrelevant.”
Earlier this year, Larry Sabato described both New Hampshire congressional races as toss-ups. That hasn’t changed. Sabato’s Crystal Ball editor Kyle Kondik reports that only 15 of the 435 congressional races are true toss-ups — and two of them are in the Granite State.
All the top races in New Hampshire, that most politically active of states, are toss-ups this year: president, governor and both House seats. Guinta and Bass, elected in 2010, will likely face rematches: Ex-Rep. Carol Shea-Porter is challenging Guinta, and Ann McLane Kuster will take another shot at Bass. Going into the election season, Guinta seemed like he was in a stronger position (he won by about 11.5 percentage points in 2010, while Bass only won by 1.5 points), but public polling has seemed to indicate he is in slightly worse shape than Bass, and both rematches are tight.
Just before the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, Gov. John Lynch signed legislation prohibiting the state from implementing one of its key provisions, a state health care exchange. Writing in the Portsmouth Herald, Executive Council candidate Bill Duncan says it’s not too late to reverse course.
There would be great advantages to setting up our own exchange to serve the needs of our own citizens. Most importantly, New Hampshire could have regulatory control over the insurance plans offered through the exchange. Our insurance commissioner could regulate benefit levels and eligibility. We could establish our own health care priorities, such as reforming how payments are made or development of “medical homes” and accountable care organizations.
But the Executive Council and Legislature have opted out of creating our own strategies and priorities. The result will be confusion for New Hampshire citizens, some purchasing insurance from the federal exchange and others purchasing insurance regulated by the state. We will have a jumble of differing policies for individuals and small businesses purchasing insurance.
New Hampshire is one of only three states to take this radical position. There is an opportunity to turn this around. The Obama administration has expressed a willingness to work with states like New Hampshire that have rejected participation so far, but change their policies to make the most of the Affordable Care Act. We should elect Executive Councilors and Legislators who will commit to doing that.
The most popular posts with our readers last month all featured online attacks by Republican politicians accosting other political leaders. In case you missed them the first time around, here’s a recap:
Quote of the Day: A Bloviating Buffoon
GOP state Rep. Jon Richardson didn’t mince words describing House Majority Leader Peter Silva after Silva publicly attacked fellow Republicans who voted against the education funding amendment.
Jack Kimball’s Vile and Offensive Email
On the eve of President Obama’s visit to Durham, the former chairman of the New Hampshire GOP distributed an email using derogatory language to refer to the president.
N.H. GOP Rep: Dump Secretary of State Bill Gardner
GOP state Rep. Seth Cohn called for the removal of New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner after Gardner moved up the deadline for third parties to identify their candidates.
There are a couple of interesting news items today regarding the state’s new voter ID law.
Gary Rayno reminds us that before the law takes effect, it must be approved by the U.S. Department of Justice for compliance under the Voting Rights Act. (The background on how New Hampshire came to be the only Northern state required to obtain Justice Department “pre-clearance” for election law changes is, in itself, an interesting story.)
Rayno writes that it is unlikely the Justice Department will grant unqualified approval.
Nobody believes the DOJ will simply approve the new law. The department has already found several state photo identification laws in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
It has blocked similar laws in Texas and South Carolina. South Carolina is suing over the ruling. [added link]
And Marc Fortier reports that James O’Keefe could be back in the state this week. On Saturday, convicted filmaker is scheduled to address the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers in Hillsborough.
O’Keefe, you may remember, ducked out of his last New Hampshire engagement to avoid being served a grand jury subpoena. He is under investigation by the Attorney General’s office over his attempt to show “Dead People Vote in New Hampshire” but which, as Media Matters notes, “largely shows the logical incoherence of the right wing’s voter fraud paranoia.”
Mike Malzone, former Merrimack Town Councilor, is angry that the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act — and he doesn’t care who knows it.
In a profanity-laced tirade first reported on Merrimack Patch, the founder of the Merrimack Tea Party wrote that he hopes the five Supreme Court justices who voted to uphold the law “get colon cancer, and then get mercer [staph infection] after their treatment.”
Malzone complained that now he will “have to buy fucking health insurance for the illegals that Obama let in the other day.” And he had a parting message for all 535 members of Congress, the President and the Supreme Court: “Fuck you with no apology.”
Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded free market advocacy group, is blanketing New Hampshire with robocalls soliciting support. The calls are part of a national $9 million campaign targeting President Obama and his health care legislation following the Supreme Court decision upholding the law.
You’ve heard about the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the new health care law. Here in the “Live Free or Die” state, we don’t like the government telling us what we must do. That’s why I’m asking you to join Americans for Prosperity to stand up and fight against legislation like the health care take over. Americans for Prosperity is organizing New Hampshire citizens that are willing to stand up and fight for economic freedom.
Press one now to join the fight against this disastrous health care. American for Prosperity can be reached at 603-894-5881
Bill Duncan writes that a court challenge to the new educational tax credit law is in the works.
The New Hampshire ACLU is committed to challenging the constitutionality of vouchers in New Hampshire on the basis that public money cannot go into religious education. [email]
Article 83 of the New Hampshire Constitution states, “no money raised by taxation shall ever be granted or applied for the use of the schools of institutions of any religious sect or denomination.”
Students attending sectarian schools can receive the so-called scholarships under the new law. Supporters claim the system of tax credits and scholarship organizations evades the Constitutional prohibition. The ACLU apparently disagrees and will ask the Courts to decide.
A Patch survey of 102 influential New Hampshire Republican activists, party leaders and elected officials finds broad support for House Speaker Bill O’Brien, who has been called one of the most controversial leaders in state history.
Nearly two-thirds of the respondents said they would like to see O’Brien return as House Speaker next year. The Speaker’s greatest achievement? “Keeping the nuts in line,” replied one realist.
Democrats will probably not object to having O’Brien lead the party in November. In the latest WMUR/Granite State Poll, only 15% of New Hampshire adults had a favorable opinion of O’Brien, compared to 27% who expressed an unfavorable opinion of the House Speaker.
I’m a law-abiding kindergarten graduate. GOP state Rep. Bob Kingsbury says I’m the exception that proves the rule.
I went to kindergarten, I learned to tell the time
And that was the beginning of my life of crime
(Chorus:) Oh kindergarten, kindergarten is to blame!
I went to kindergarten and I have never been the same.
A new survey from NBC News/Marist Poll shows the contest between President Obama and Mitt Romney for the Granite State’s four electoral votes is a close one. The President and Romney are locked in a 45%-45% tie according to the survey of 1,029 registered New Hampshire voters.
Obama has a double-digit lead among Democrats (90-6), liberals (84-7) and moderates (49-39), women (50-40), young people under 30 (52-40), and voters living in the New Hampshire’s southern counties (51-38).
Romney leads by double-digits among Republicans (91-3), conservatives (81-13), men (51-40), voters in Hillsborough county (54-39), and evangelical Christians (73-21).
NBC News/Marist Poll surveyed 1,200 New Hampshire adults, including 1,029 registered voters, on June 24-25, 2012. The survey of adults has a margin of error of +/-2.8%. The subset of registered voters has a margin of error of +/-3.1%.
While pundits debate the political implications of the Supreme Court upholding the Affordable Care Act, the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute focuses on the benefits for New Hampshire residents, who will have access to more affordable health care and will be protected from insurance company abuses.
I suppose we should thank Kelly Ayotte for the small part she played in today’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act.
The Court ruled that the overall Act is constitutional — despite finding that one section involving Medicaid expansion isn’t. Justice Ginsburg explained that ruling by citing the decision from a New Hampshire parental notification case that was argued by then-Attorney General Kelly Ayotte.
When a court confronts an unconstitutional statute, its endeavor must be to conserve, not destroy, the legislation. See, e.g., Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New Eng., 546 U. S. 320, 328–330. Pp. 60–61.
Ayotte brags that she fought Planned Parenthood all the way to the Supreme Court to protect the state’s parental notification law. What she generally doesn’t tell you is that she lost the case and the state had to pay Planned Parenthood’s legal fees as a result.
The state of New Hampshire must reimburse Planned Parenthood of New England for a lawsuit, in which the group challenged the state’s 2003 parental notification law, a federal judge has ruled. In his ruling last week, DeClerico said PPNNE effectively won the suit and deserved to be reimbursed a “reasonable award of legal fees and costs.”
h/t: Kevin Landrigan
