State House Dome: Senate candidate seeks clean elections pledge

Jul. 24—ONE OF THE NEWEST and least-known Republican candidates for U.S. Senate fears a Sept. 13 primary win will be meaningless if the carping between opponents continue.

That's why Lincoln entrepreneur Vikram Mansharamani has signed a clean elections pledge and challenged his nine GOP opponents to do the same.

"This campaign is getting increasingly negative, and I think Republicans need to stop slinging mud at each other and instead focus on beating the Democrats in the fall," Mansharamani said.

The pledge is similar to the Ronald Reagan 11th Commandment pledge not to speak ill of another Republican, but Mansharamani said he would answer any assault against him.

"While I am committed to running a positive campaign, some of the other candidates have already shown their willingness to sling mud. I am nobody's punching bag, and if I am attacked, I will fight back," Mansharamani said.

You can expect Vikram's rivals to question this as a bit presumptuous, coming from someone who has never run for any elective office and not even lived full-time in New Hampshire for very long.

But he's right that Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and her team take great delight and are sharing the popcorn while watching the food fight.

Morse team belittles rivals

GOP Senate hopeful and Senate President Chuck Morse's campaign doesn't think much of the financial and political clout of Mansharamani, bitcoin millionaire Bruce Fenton of Durham and other primary foes.

In a recent memo, consultants Dave Carney and Jim McKay said the two "newcomers" candidates failed to get any in-state financial backing, with Mansharamani having only six New Hampshire donors on his first quarterly report.

"The two newcomers in the race have put in significant personal resources into their campaigns but have shown no appetite to spend it. Together they have raised less than $15,000 from people who live in New Hampshire," Carney and McKay wrote.

"The best way to see the strength of a campaign is how much they can raise in-state, and no one comes close to Morse who has raised 85% of his money from New Hampshire. The more than $1 million he's raised from New Hampshire is nearly double what all of the other candidates have raised combined."

The pair ran down the balance sheet of former Londonderry Town Manager Kevin Smith.

"Kevin Smith has hit the fundraising wall. He ended the quarter with $349K in the bank, but $140K of that is earmarked for the general election, leaving him with just over $200K in primary funds. He's already burned 2/3 of the primary money he has raised without doing any voter contact," they wrote.

The Smith campaign notes the Super PAC Stand for NH will multiply the impact of his message.

On that score, top supporters of Morse, two-time nominee for governor Ovide Lamontagne and former GOP Chairman Steve Duprey announced they will soon be raising money for their own Super PAC backing Morse, the Granite State Prosperity PAC.

Morse disavows smear

The Senate race got especially bitter when Smith's campaign insisted Morse admitted campaign adviser Carney was behind a Huffington Post story about a sex harassment lawsuit settled while Smith was Londonderry town manager.

Initially, Morse declined to answer when asked about that.

He outright denied it, however, during a recent question-and-answer session at a Government Integrity Project event.

Here's the relevant portion of that transcript.

Questioner: He (Carney) tried to get the Huffington Post to write a hit piece defaming Kevin Smith. Why is that? OK, it seems like you've got no control over your staffers.

Morse: Well, it's nice to you to believe that. But Dave Carney assured me he he had nothing to do with The Washington (sic Huffington) Post. I asked him. So, I'm not afraid to ask tough questions. I do that my whole life. So, no, I don't believe that's right. And I said that.

Q: Why did you tell Kevin Smith that yes, it was your campaign, and blame the Bolduc campaign?

Morse: You are misstating that.

Q: Is he (Smith's campaign) lying? He wrote that on Twitter.

Morse: I mean, what I said to Kevin Smith was that it was unacceptable, and I meant that. I said to him it was unacceptable, and I'd look into it and I did.

A Dartmouth College Republican also confronted Morse, claiming a Morse staffer had called his group "un-American and authoritarian."

"This is the first time I heard of this, and I certainly am acknowledging that I believe in a lot of what you believe in," Morse answered.

Three senators back Griffin

State Rep. and Senate hopeful Barbara Griffin, R-Goffstown, has gotten three state senators to pick sides and endorse her for the District 16 seat over Rep. Michael Yakubovich, R-Hooksett.

The trio are Senate President Pro Tem Sharon Carson, R-Londonderry, Senate Transportation Committee Chairman Regina Birdsell, R-Hampstead and retiring Senate Capital Budget Chairman John Reagan, R-Deerfield.

"We have an opportunity to take back District 16 for the first time in a decade, but we need to make sure that we nominate the best Republican candidate who can win in the general," Carson said.

"We need someone that can connect with voters. We need someone that is electable. We need a serious candidate that will get the job done once elected. Barbara Griffin is that candidate."

Senate redistricting has made Dist. 16 much more GOP leaning and convinced Manchester Democrat Kevin Cavanaugh to bail and run for Executive Council this fall.

Family planning is back

The New England Performing Arts Center in Henniker will be the latest New Hampshire battleground on abortion rights Wednesday.

The Executive Council will meet there, and the family planning contracts are back on the agenda from state health officials, including for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England and two other providers that perform abortions.

The council turned back spending of $1 million for these groups in June 2021.

Overseas ballot deadline

Secretary of State David Scanlan said after plenty of sweat from his staff, the state would make the federal deadline this Saturday for New Hampshire to send out all primary ballots to those serving in the military or living overseas.

"The ballots will be coming back from the printer this week," Scanlan said. "We took great care in proofing the ballots, and I'm pleased to say we're going to make the federal deadline."

State law requires on the ballot equal rotation so Democrats, Republicans and third-party candidates have the same number of races in which they get the best ballot position. According to election research studies, the prime real estate is flush top left on the ballot.

Last Thursday, Scanlan hosted the drawing which decided which races Democrats would be top left, which one Republicans, etc.

Due to a minor glitch, they needed a do-over Friday for some of those positions.

Shaheen backs reform

U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., is one of 16 bipartisan senators getting behind a proposed change in the way states appoint presidential electors.

This is to avoid a repeat of 2020 in which leaders of some states supporting Donald Trump tried to send slates committed to him even though the state went with Democrat Joe Biden.

The bill states only governors can certify a slate of electors. The only exception to that is if a specific state's law gives someone else that power.

This would also raise the threshold in Congress to raise an objection to a state's electors.

The threshold to lodge a protest now is only one member each of the U.S. House and Senate.

This bill changes that threshold to at least one-fifth membership each of the U.S. House and Senate, and it narrows the grounds for filing objections.

Libertarian ads are viral

Okay, maybe Libertarian Senate hopeful Jeremy Kauffman will fail to even get the 4 percent threshold that would automatically give his party a primary in the next election.

But Kauffman's playful ads are catching on with social media. There have been nearly 300,000,000 views of his online ad entitled "War is Gay" in which he falsely claims to having served as "diversity officer" for Halliburton, the private contractor that's profited big-time from foreign wars.

"I'm gay for this message," Kauffman concludes. "Vote like your pride depends on it."

Prescott wins backers

Several, prominent business leaders have gotten behind the 1st Congressional District GOP bid of Russell Prescott, the former executive councilor and state senator and the last hopeful to enter this crowded nine-person race.

The leaders of biz for Prescott are auto magnate Andy Crews, Marian Noronha, president of TURBOCAM International, and Bob Preston, owner of Preston Real Estate.

Others on board included Matt Connors, president of Gemini Electric, Auburn; David Dube, president of O. E. Dube & Son, Inc., Merrimack; Rick Hartmann, managing general partner with Hartmann Enterprises of Exeter and ex-state Senate hopeful Dan Philbrick of Dover, a former sports store owner.

Pot policy voter guide

The Marijuana Policy Project announced its Voter Guide is out.

The supporters of legalizing cannabis sent a four-question survey to all state Senate candidates since this legislative chamber has been the political graveyard for this issue over the past decade.

Polls have shown up to 74% support legalizing recreational use of pot.

New Hampshire remains the only state in New England yet to take this step.

Gov. Chris Sununu said recently "now is not the time" to legalize pot as the state has just gotten control in recent years of the opioid epidemic.

Former guard charged

A grand jury last week indicted former Department of Corrections Commissioner Craig Come, 34, of Hooksett on felony counts of theft and attempted theft. The charge is that from November 2019 to April 2020, Come falsely claimed on his time card that he had worked overtime shifts.

According to the Union Leader's database, in 2020 the state paid Come $19,378 in salary for his job and $16,256 in overtime in that period.

An arraignment on the two felony counts will come at a future date.

State, towns eye grants

The Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee last Friday approved the Department of Environmental Services getting $4 million to make lead line service replacements.

DES Commissioner Robert Scott said the grant would make the state eligible for $110 million in federal grants and loans.

The money coming from the federal infrastructure bill is widely available for states and community water systems that need to comply with a federal mandate to reduce lead and copper in their lines.

Anti-vax debates set

The group opposed to vaccine mandates and seeking more personal freedom has set its planned forum/debate to show off its slate of candidates.

The event will be Aug. 5 at the Kingswood Arts Center in Wolfeboro.

There's one glitch.

Their followers have only six of 24 candidates for state Senate, two running for the five Executive Council seats and no one running for governor.

Two of the group's well-known activists, Terese Grinnell of Loudon and Anne Copp of Nashua, are the council candidates.

The only incumbent who has already won the support of this group is Sen. Kevin Avard, R-Nashua.

Kevin Landrigan is State House Bureau Chief for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News. Reach him at klandrigan@unionleader.com