Tag: maggie hassan

Maggie Hassan doesn’t think she can win NH-SEN next year.

Seriously, this is pretty much diagnostic.

Gov. Maggie Hassan said the federal government should “halt acceptance” of Syrian refugees until U.S. authorities can assure the vetting process keeps Americans safe.

The governor’s position is a harder line on the issue than a statement from her office Monday morning, reflecting a growing concern among New Hampshire and U.S. elected leaders after the terrorist attacks in Paris Friday night.

Either that, or it reflects a growing concern among the Maggie Hassan for Senate campaign that taking a soft line would be effective political suicide next year. To the best of my knowledge, Gov. Hassan is practically unique in being a governor running for an elected office next year – but not as an incumbent. I wonder what she would have said if it was just her governor’s seat at risk. I wonder if she wonders, too. Continue reading Maggie Hassan doesn’t think she can win NH-SEN next year.

Hometown paper rips into Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) for heroin showboating.

Gov. Maggie Hassan (D), of course, is running for Senate in New Hampshire next year.  Complicating that?  New Hampshire’s heroin epidemic… yes. Yes, there is one in New Hampshire.  It’s been going on for a while now, right under the nose of one, well, Governor Maggie Hassan.   Continue reading Hometown paper rips into Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) for heroin showboating.

New Hampshire Governor Maggie “I took illegal PAC contributions!” Hassan (D) to run for Senate.

Possibly you may remember the Northern Pass story from last year: in a nutshell, Maggie Hassan’s campaign took forty-five thousand in illegally same-day campaign contributions from three Big Labor unions (SEIU, UFCW, and IBEW). This was generally considered to be at least suspicious, as all three unions want New Hampshire’s proposed Northern Pass transmission line project to go through, while radical environmentalists of course instead want people in New Hampshire to be cold, hungry, and in the dark.  Was it a bribe? Nobody knows! Was it illegal? Well…

After the state Republican Party filed a complaint, Attorney General Joe Foster was tasked with deciding whether the $45,000 in union donations to Hassan’s campaign were legal. He decided that a person becomes a candidate at midnight on the day he or she announces. Under that rather creative interpretation, the two $10,000 donations were legal, but the $25,000 contribution was not.

Further complicating the story, the PACs had not registered in New Hampshire, making their donations felonies. Foster ordered the PACs to register, but did not punish them for the violations, which was very lenient of him.

Continue reading New Hampshire Governor Maggie “I took illegal PAC contributions!” Hassan (D) to run for Senate.

NBC/Marist: Kelly Ayotte at 50% in New Hampshire Senate race.

That’s a real nice poll result.

…poll here*.  Governor Maggie Hassan is still popular in New Hampshire – although that trendline is interesting – but she’s not going to beat an incumbent with numbers like that, and that is the way of it. If the Democrats lose her as a candidate then Senator Kelly Ayotte will have a smooth glide path for re-election.  Heck, even if the Democrats keep Gov. Hassan as a candidate then with those numbers Senator Ayotte will still have a smooth glide path for re-election. Continue reading NBC/Marist: Kelly Ayotte at 50% in New Hampshire Senate race.

Potential scrum in New Hampshire-GOV race over possibly illegal campaign contributions.

Not the best news in the world for incumbent New Hampshire governor Democrat Maggie Hassan:

The state Attorney General’s Office says it will review a complaint received from the New Hampshire Republican Party Wednesday charging that a union strongly favoring the Northern Pass project made an illegal campaign contribution to Gov. Maggie Hassan’s campaign committee – and that the Hassan campaign illegally accepted it.

The NHGOP says the $25,000 contribution on June 12 from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers political action committee “dramatically exceeded” the state contribution limit. The Republicans also say the IBEW campaign spending report of June 18 is questionable because although it lists total receipts of $143,667, it does not list any itemized receipts.

The Northern Pass project is, for those wondering, a project to bring in Canadian electrical power via a big, honking set of power lines. The unions like the idea: environmentalists (and Maggie Hassan) do not. I have no opinion about the project itself (I never even heard of it until now), but it does look at least a little problematic that the unions are throwing so much money into Gov. Hassan’s campaign coffers. That’s one traditional way to buy influence, and everybody involved knows it.

Moe Lane

PS: Was it illegal? Honestly, based on the article: nobody actually knows, given that the legality hinges on any number of arcane and byzantine conditions happening in a certain time and order. You can tell, by the way, that nobody’s really sure by the way that Democrats avoided being rude about the GOP in their quotes; Democrats only do that when they’re not sure that the branch limb really will hold their weight.  Welcome to the wonderful world of campaign finance ‘reform:’ here’s your accordion.