I don’t know why they sell them so cheaply, but for only $5 you can get two calendars to help out worthy causes in New Hampshire.
Keystone Press publishes a really great Manchester Yesterday and Today calendar for the New Hampshire Union Leader Santa Fund for the Salvation Army. It features cool historical photos of Manchester. The calendars are available in shops around Manchester, including the Currier Downtown shop and the gift shops at CMC and Elliot Hospital. Or you can come by the Union Leader and pick one up.
The other $5 calendar you might want to get is the New Hampshire Fish & Wildlife Calendar. Proceeds go to NH Fish and Game. (You can order the calendar through the link.)
You might pay three to four times as much for a calendar at the mall. And these help support good local causes.
His office won’t confirm it, but I believe Gov. John Lynch has asked Department of Transportation Commissioner Carol Murray to resign.
I asked Pamela Walsh late yesterday if the governor had asked for Murray’s resignation, and after a moment of silence and a no comment she said she’d have to call me back.
I couldn’t reach Murray yesterday, but when I got hold of her this morning and asked her if Gov. Lynch had requested her resignation, I was met with a long silence before she said, “I guess the way I’d answer that is that I’m always looking at options for what I’d want to do. I’m not going to stick around forever.”
When I asked again, she said, “I’d like to defer that, for you to ask that question of him.”
I did when I was finally able to catch up with Walsh, and her response was, “Gov. Lynch and Carol Murray have been and are having discussions over issues about the department.”
I asked again, and Walsh again said, “Gov. Lynch has been discussing with Carol Murray about issues about the department.”
That means one thing. Gov. Lynch has asked Murray to resign.
Walsh would not say if the governor had anyone in particular in mind to replace Murray, who has been with the DOT for 28 years and was nominated by Gov. Jeanne Shaheen.
Murray refused to speculate about her future. Her term ends late next year. She said she did have a job offer last year, which she discussed with the governor before turning it down. (She wouldn’t say who made the offer.) She would not discuss any recent conversations with the governor about her future, saying that he should be the one to address that subject.
Murray is a registered independent but said she’s been frustrated that people have closely associated her with Gov. Craig Benson.
“I’ve lived my public life in a very non-political fashion, which I think is the role of a public servant. I think my politics would be very hard to identify,” she said. “Gov. Shaheen did a nationwide search, so I don’t know how I got associated with Benson. I worked here for 28 years, and I don’t know what the future will bring.”
I asked her again if she could confirm whether the governor had asked for her resignation, “He needs to speak to it,” she said.
At this point, he’s not doing that.
On Wed., Jan 17, Dartmouth’s men’s squash team will play host to Amherst College’s men’s squash team. Amherst’s mascot is “Lord Jeff.” That would be Lord Jeffrey Amherst, the British general who won Canada for Great Britain and gained fame in, um, the French and Indian War — in which he killed lots of Indians.
Lord Jeff was no fan of Indians, whom he called “this Execrable Race.”
Lord Jeff evidently sought to wipe out the entire Indian population of North America, or at least the portion of it with which he was concerned.
“Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them,” he wrote in 1763.
Amherst wrote to the superintendent of the Indian Department about “Measures to be taken as would Bring about the Total Extirpation of those Indian Nations.” That’s 17th-century talk for genocide.
Lord Jeffrey’s past is recounted here.
Amherst College’s own Web site acknowledges Lord Jeff’s interest in wiping out Indians by giving them blankets carrying Small Pox, but attempts to distance itself from the general:
“No one defends this part of “Lord Jeff’s” record. In fact, however, it’s the town of Amherst, not the college, that is named for the British general. That occurred in 1759, after he commanded British and American forces in the conquest of Canada. Sixty-two years later, in 1821, Amherst College was named in honor of the town, whose citizens had contributed funds for the new institution and pitched in to construct its first buildings.”
Right, but then why call your athletic teams the Lord Jeffs?
While Dartmouth’s Indian activists are protesting that an athletic team named after Sioux warriors is coming to campus, a team named after a slaughterer of Indians gets a pass.
On March 17 of next year, the Dartmouth College men’s lacrosse team will play host to the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish. As of yet, Dartmouth AD Josie Harper has not apologized to Dartmouth’s Irish community.
Rep. Paul Mirski is co-chairman of the House Republican Alliance. But not for much longer. Here are his thoughts on the Republicans’ defeat.
“I was elected to the NH House in 1994 and will, by the end of this year, have served five terms. I was defeated for re-election on November 7 along with 58 other Republican incumbents. After arriving to sit in our “most Republican legislature,” in 1995, I became amazed at how many bills contrary to Republican ideals were being passed by the House and Senate and then being signed into law by our “Republican” governor. Big issue items having to do with taxes, guns and property would come out more or less on the right side but these issues were no more than shiny apples atop a barrel of agitated worms. ‘Where are the Republicans?’ I asked.
“Later, I became associated with the Republican State Committee. The folks who worked in the Main Street office in Concord were dedicated Republicans and worked hard to promote Republican ideas. When it came time to fill House seats in 1996, though, I found the state committee scrambling to fill a hundred seats in the last week before the election. I realized then that the composition of the NH Legislature and the importance of legislating NH laws on the basis of Republican ideas was no more than an afterthought to those in the party’s hierarchy.
“The state committee cared about congressional seats and the governor’s race. It had little concern for the composition of the NH House and Senate. Any ‘R’ for state office was OK. The party sought numerical but not philosophical superiority. Consequently, we’ve predominately elected “process” Republicans rather than philosophical Republicans to state offices. We’ve relied on Republican governors to veto the worst legislation but we’ve done nothing systemic to prevent awful bills from being delivered to the governor for signature in the first place.
“If the ‘Republican’ House and Senate have seemed without a compass — its because they’ve been without a compass. Voters sensed it and acted accordingly this November.
“The recent election revealed the New Hampshire Republican Party to be a Potempkin village — a facade without substance. To fix this, New Hampshire’s Republican Party needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. We need to empower rather than ignore our grassroots. We need to fix the disconnect between the state committee and those who attend our state convention and vote on our platform. Our state committee has, for too long, seemed embarrassed by our platform. Republicans have the right message. We need an active membership and hierarchy which lives and breathes our fundamental ideals.
“The most active group of Republicans in New Hampshire are those who serve in the NH Legislature. The most active of these are in the House Republican Alliance. The party needs to be rebuilt around elected House Republicans and their districts. We need a permanent, active, core operation within the state committee dedicated to reaching and invigorating our base and getting our supporters to the polls. We’d better learn from the other side.
“Finally, we need active political leaders, not smarmy talking heads, speaking for New Hampshire Republicans. New Hampshire isn’t D.C. Better first to tend to our garden here at home.
“The 2006 elections have shaken the idea that New Hampshire is a Republican state and have caused others to wonder if there has ever been a Republican core in New Hampshire at all. Republicans have two years to affirm or dispel these thoughts.”
Dartmouth students apologize to the University of North Dakota for Dartmouth Athletics Director Josie Harper’s apology to Dartmouth students for inviting UND to participate in next month’s hockey tournament. (Got that?)
Meanwhile, Siouxsports message board members have fun mocking Harper.
Inside Higher Ed covers the controversy in a broader context here.
Insidecollegehockey.com is the first site I’ve seen to comment on the controversy by bringing up Dartmouth’s unofficial mascot, Keggy.
Why is Walter Peterson a Republican?
In a New York Times story on the vanishing New England Republican, former Gov. Walter Peterson is quoted at length. He continues his usual Republican-bashing and Democrat-praising. I wonder when was the last time he voted a straight Republican ticket.
The story also quotes NH GOP Chairman Wayne Semprini, who pulls a mixed-metaphor hat trick, managing to cram three different cliches into a single sentence.
There have been three U.S. poets laureate from New Hampshire. Name all three, and take home a poetry collection by one of them.
UPDATE: As if I hadn’t done enough this weekend to upset folks at Dartmouth, I forgot that longtime Dartmouth professor Richard Eberhart, who passed away last year, was U.S poet laureate from 1959 to 1961. That makes it four New Hampshire poets laureate, not three.
There were several good guesses (UNH’s Charles Simic has won the Pulitzer Prize, but was never U.S. poet laureate), but the only person who knew all four U.S. poets laureate connected to New Hampshire (Richard Eberhart, Robert Frost, Maxine Kumin and Donald Hall) was state Rep. Jim Splaine, D-Portsmouth.
He wins a copy of Maxine Kumin’s latest collection, Jack and Other New Poems.
The winner of the previous trivia question — who was the last House majority leader from Ohio — is Rep. Peter Sullivan, D-Manchester. He knew that the answer was Nicholas Longworth, who served as majority leader from 1923 to 1925 before his three terms as House speaker. The Longworth House Office Building is named after him.
Hutchins takes home a copy of Sen. John Danforth’s book “Faith and Politics: How the ‘Moral Values’ Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together.”
Continuing the comments about the NH GOP’s post-election prospects, we turn to one of New Hampshire’s best-known political bloggers, William Smith, better known as Conservative Blogger:
“If you’ll excuse the pun, no one in the Republican Party wants to talk about the elephant in the room. Whether we want to admit it or not, the New Hampshire GOP has real problems.
“Our beloved state has turned a bright shade of blue. That’s something that’s pretty unsettling to me because it likely means that we will lose the New Hampshire Advantage. Our low-tax way of life has helped illustrate why New Hampshire is the greatest state in the Union. Faced with a July deadline, the Legislature will *have* to do something about education funding. Legislators don’t have the luxury of putting off a decision any longer — and they aren’t considering many options. The only question is which tax they’ll look to implement.
“Like it or not, living in New Hampshire is about to become more expensive — and there’s nothing that the Republicans can do to stop it. Truth be told, there was little they did to prevent it in the first place — and that’s really the issue, in my opinion. The New Hampshire
Republican Party is a ship without a rudder. It’s time for the old guard of the state GOP to step aside and let the next generation take the reins. The future of New Hampshire may very well depend on it.
“Lastly, the GOP needs to re-embrace its conservative roots and get back to basics. The more the party flounders in the center trying to appease the middle, the longer the GOP will stay out of power — and deservedly so.”
Stephen DeMaura is founder of NHInsider.com. Here are his thoughts on the situation Republicans face after this month’s election.
“When asking a Republican about how the 2006 midterms went one could easily summarize their sentiments as: We lost — they won. It’s President Bush’s fault.
“Yet, this is not the (complete) explanation here in New Hampshire. Democrats were better organized, unified and motivated and did a better job of communicating the GOP platform than did the Republicans. The question now is how will the Democrats govern? It was easy for Gov. John Lynch to champion bipartisanship when he had no other choice; it is going to be much more difficult when his party controls both chambers.
“The Democrats’ majority in the NH House is unsustainable in the long term — leaving them with two options: 1. Accomplish all of their dreams in two years and have a short-lived run in power or 2. Moderate their positions and attempt to maintain control. Either is a losing strategy for Democrats.
“During this legislative cycle Republicans in the House and Senate must work together to pass an agenda. Until the Republicans become unified in their approach to legislating no progress will be made.”
Editor’s Note: More comments to come tomorrow.
Rich Killion is vice president of Elevare Communications in Concord. He is former director of the Marlin Fitzwater Center for Communication and the Franklin Pierce College Polling Institute. Here are his thoughts on rebuilding the NH Republican Party.
“It is a challenge – and quite possibly a fool’s errand – to make preliminary judgments about this month’s landmark election without fully reviewing, interpreting and digesting the results. What is crystal clear, however, is that Democrats are now in firm control of every lever of New Hampshire’s state government: the Governor, the Executive Council and the state legislature.
“Republicans were facing a challenged political climate generated by dual factors.
“The uneasiness of the war in Iraq and the general public’s lack of confidence in the current administration to manage the situation was palpable at the polls. This clearly drove a number of voters out on a mission
“Secondly, a very popular incumbent Democratic governor took away the Republicans’ favored state electoral issue — the income tax — and used very robust personal favorability and job approval levels, clear financial and identity advantages to overshadow a well intended but under-funded and unknown Republican nominee.
“These twin forces set the stage for the electoral choices of many on Tuesday. What cemented these forces, however, into a political tsunami, were the successful tactics Democrats utilized to seal up the historic outcome in New Hampshire.
“For Republicans to become the majority party again in New Hampshire, they must acknowledge what transpired and fully commit the party to not letting it happen again. To do so, changes need to be made.
“First and foremost, message matters. Republicans have long struggled with message management without the presence and influence of a Republican governor. During the last decade, Republicans have only had the corner office for a single term. Even then, intramural fighting between elected party leaders often dominated the term rather than defining and attaining a clear and well-subscribed agenda.
“Republicans need to be clear and consistent with their message and not shy away from what made them the staple majority party in New Hampshire: the guardians of low taxes, limited government, personal responsibility, maintaining safe and healthy communities, and understanding the importance and effects that limited regulation and less interference into free enterprise have on our state’s economy. This needs to be felt and demonstrated in a clear and narrow agenda that is pushed forward by the minority party. When achieved it will not only energize the base to be fully committed, it will also lead to electoral success.
“Nationally, the shift from this commitment was clearly felt. The national Republican Congress fully felt the absence of motivated Republicans going to the polls due to the absence of Congress’s commitment to this message. I believe that base Republican activists would have driven out in record numbers to offset this most challenging political climate if they believed their vote was an attempt to save a Congress that was committed to curbing runaway spending – and not leading it.
“In New Hampshire, looking forward, Republicans should feel complimented that so many Democratic candidates took the pledge on the income tax -– it is a tangible indicator that Republicans have been proven right for their decades-long defense and protection of the New Hampshire Advantage. Now is time to pay close attention and inform these newly elected officials that paying lip service to the long-standing Republican stance is not good enough.
“Secondly, the Republicans were blown away by their Democratic counterparts who were better funded and better organized.
“The Democratic Party and associated Democratic political action committees spent historic levels on state races that clearly defined a number of races to tap into the evident twin forces.
“Many will point to the historic levels of spending on lower ballot races — and its clear advantage over Republicans -– but what may be lost is how a good portion of this spending was spent: on staff people committed to working throughout the election cycle on behalf of the party.
“Elections cycle are now perpetual and the Democrats understand this. The Republican State Committee is vastly understaffed and underfunded. It is also affirms the painful grip the financial drains from the 2002 phone jamming episode have on the state party.
“For the state party to move forward it needs its Granite State Republicans to step forward and be re-engaged. To do so, Republicans in state and, most importantly, the Republican National Committee, need to be fully engaged in providing the resources and assistance necessary to ensure that New Hampshire remains a vibrant organ in the national body Republican.
“Finally, absent the dominance of Gov. Lynch’s historic electoral percentage, the Democratic victories on Tuesday became a true “lateral” landslide due to dominance in straight-ticket voting. In taking full advantage of this storm, Democrats sealed numerous lower ballot victories through a near 23,000 state-wide vote advantage in straight-ticket voting. This advantage was particularly poignant in Strafford County (as a whole, 3-to-1 Democratic advantage), and the Seacoast (Portsmouth had greater than 4-to-1 Democratic advantage).
“What may be overlooked is how important Democratic straight-ticket voting was in key Republican communities. In reliable Republican communities such as Gilford, Democratic straight tickets outperformed Republicans, 419 to 416. Even in a key bedrock Republican community such as Merrimack, Democratic straight-ticket performance proved to be downright sterling, with Democratic straight tickets exceeding Republicans, 1460 to 1448. In other bedrock communities, they were staggeringly close: (1,363 Republican to 1250 Democratic); Salem (1,408 Republican to 1,317 Democrat).
“Granite State Republicans need to learn from the lessons of the ‘06 election season and expediently move forward to overcome their newfound status as the minority party.”
I’ve asked some knowledgeable observers what this month’s drubbing at the polls means for the New Hampshire Republican Party and what the party can do about it. I’ll be posting their responses today. First is former state senator and candidate for the GOP gubernatorial nomination Bruce Keough.
“Republicans throughout New Hampshire and across the nation are asking ourselves ‘What went wrong?’ after this month’s utter failure at the polls. While it is obvious the voters wanted President Bush to know they want an alternative to ’staying the course’ in Iraq, they also seemed willing to take the chance that Democrats won’t do any worse than Republicans at managing the economy, running the government and staying on the right side of the law. By failing to control federal spending, by botching the response to Katrina, by climbing into bed with crooked lobbyists and by protecting those who tried to climb into bed with Congressional pages, Republicans in Congress proved they were no more likely to act like grown ups than the Democrats.
“Most observers agree that the elections did not represent an ideological lurch to the left. In New Hampshire, finding a Democrat candidate who supports an income tax was like trying to find a pumpkin in June. Republicans need to accept the fact that New Hampshire Democrats have become more clever, and defeating them is not going to be as easy as it once was. Nevertheless, important differences between Republicans and Democrats do exist. As the new Democrat majorities in the State House work to enshrine judicial oversight of education funding, eliminate all restrictions on abortions, expand health insurance coverage through government programs, impose new benefit mandates on New Hampshire businesses and bring casino gambling to our state, Republicans will have lots of opportunities to engage the public in a discussion of our differences and to explain why the Republican approach is better.
“To coordinate these efforts, the Republican State Committee needs to hire an effective, professional communications director. The last two years have shown we cannot rely on Republican legislative leaders to do our explaining for us. The New Hampshire Republican Party contains many strong, clear voices that are eager to explain why New Hampshire will be a better place if we keep taxes low, keep spending decisions local and protect individual liberties. A professional communications director will help make sure those voices are heard.”
