Andy Smith, the pollster for UNH, has a curious view of New Hampshire. Perhaps his existence in Durham has confused New Hampshire with Massachusetts for Dr. Smith. His survey data bear little resemblance for the state in which he actually resides and presents a rather odd view of the state and the taxpayers who, in part, fund his salary.
An example of this is on display in the current series of polls that he will be releasing over this week and next. They show little, if any, similarity to New Hampshire and are much more reflective of other New England states than the Granite State.
For example, according to the New Hampshire Secretary of State, the voter registration in New Hampshire looks like this:
Total Voters: 791,249
Republicans: 259,968 (32.9%)
Democrats: 226,720 (28.7%)
Undeclared: 304,561 (38.4%)
However, according to Smith’s survey, the state takes a very different perspective:
Total Surveyed (with registration): 476
Republicans: 118 (24.7%)
Democrats: 139 (29.2%)
Undeclared: 219 (46.1%)
More importantly, when the voters he asked were asked which party they affiliated themselves with, they indicated the following:
Total Surveyed: 522
Republicans: 190 (36.4%)
Democrats: 230 (44.1%)
Independent: 102 (19.5%)
This means that, according to Smith’s survey, almost 3/5th of Undeclared who were actually affiliated with a party were Democrats. This flies in the face of reliable polling, which traditionally shows that these voters split fairly evenly among Republicans and Democrats.
What does this mean? It shows, first and foremost, that the numbers that show that Barack Obama has a solid lead over Mitt Romney are unreliable, and that we should expect a series of unreliable polls over the next two weeks.
In her biweekly diatribe against anything having to do with the New Hampshire House, former Democratic Party chair and Current Democratic National Committee Member Kathy Sullivan jumps down several rabbit holes, exploring several accusations against the House and Speaker O’Brien that have already been debunked or are just plain unfounded.
Claim 1:
“Rep. Tony Soltani, announced he is seeking redress because of O’Brien’s refusal to assign him an accessible seat. Soltani’s physical condition requires him to use a cane and, on occasion, a wheelchair, so he needs a seat close to an aisle. O’Brien, however, has assigned Soltani to a seat in the middle of a long row.”
Fact Check 1:
Rep. Soltani sits in the third seat of a row of 15. It is nowhere near the middle of the row. Rep. Soltani’s prior seat was in a less accessible spot. The Speaker made what accommodations he could to get Soltani a better seat, closer to the aisle. In fact, if every representative who claimed that he or she had a disability received an aisle seat, the House would have to radically reconstruct Representatives Hall to accommodate each member. Of course, dealing with facts and not fiction has never been a problem for Kathy Sullivan, as reality has little impact on her beliefs.
Claim 2:
The seating controversy follows the fallout over O’Brien’s constitutionally dubious procedure muscling through an override of Gov. John Lynch’s veto of the House redistricting plan. The plan had statewide, bipartisan opposition. It was opposed by Ted Gatsas, the Republican mayor of Manchester, and Jim Bouley, the Democratic mayor of Concord…
Fact Check 2:
The plan also had statewide bipartisan support. In fact, the House and the Senate passed the bill by margins large enough to override the Governor’s Veto: 246-112 in the House, 17-7 in the Senate. Unfortunately, Kathy, Mayors do not vote in the legislature. They do lobby, though, as Mayor Bouley is a full-time Concord lobbyist as well as a part-time Concord mayor. It’s no surprise that mayors would want a plan to aggregate power, however, so that they can tilt the playing field in their direction when it comes time for cities to lobby for more taxpayer funds.
Claim 3:
Selectmen in a number of towns were equally angry because even though their populations are large enough to support having their own representatives, the plan forces them into districts with larger towns. The towns had expected the redistricting plan to comply with an amendment to the New Hampshire Constitution that requires towns of sufficient size to have their own representatives. But, as Gov. Lynch pointed out in his veto message, the plan denies 62 towns, such as Pelham and Meredith, individual representation.
Fact Check 3:
Representation is not denied for any town. Towns such as Pelham and Meredith share representation with surrounding towns in order to comply with federal constitutional requirements of equal representation. Neither the Governor nor Kathy Sullivan, nor any town or city produced or lobbied for any redistricting plan that they thought was better. In fact, the only plan put forth by any member of the minority party consisted of a convoluted “weighted” voting scheme, which created districts across the state where votes from one town would count less than votes from another town. The plan must, first and foremost, by constitutional under the U.S. Constitution before the New Hampshire Constitution is considered. Perhaps Kathy’s next column should be titled, “Why I hate the 14th Amendment.”
Claim 4:
Another constitutional provision requires that gubernatorial veto messages be published in the House journal before veto overrides. O’Brien circulated an unsigned, logically tortured legal memo to the GOP caucus claiming that the plain language of the constitution does mean what it says. The vote went forward without the veto message being published, despite the absence of a number of legislators, including several from Manchester. They had been under the mistaken impression that the legislative oath to uphold the state constitution means the whole document, not just the parts the speaker likes.
Fact Check 4:
We’ve already fact checked similar claims (see “Nashua Telegraph Editorial on Redistricting Vote Mimics Democrat Party Talking Points, Ignores Facts”).
The New Hampshire Constitution DOES say that veto messages must be printed in the House Journal and made public before an override vote. That happened in this case, and Kathy Sullivan is the only one who is attempting to torture the law in this instance.
Claim 5:
The whole redistricting mess was not necessary. Various amendments were proposed to “fix” the defects, but O’Brien would have none of it. He based his reasoning on federal “one person, one vote” requirements. But the alternative plans — proposed by Republicans — would have met both the state and federal constitutional requirements.
Fact Check 5:
No matter how hard you wish something was true, it doesn’t become true. The alternative plans were rejected first by the Redistricting committee and second by the majority of the House. They were based upon constitutionally questionable methods of allocating representatives and calculating deviation.
If Atty. Sullivan truly supported these alternative plans, this would be the first time in history she has agreed with anything a Republican ever did. It’s more likely that she is grasping at straws. If she is confident in their constitutionality, perhaps she should offer her legal services pro bono.
Conclusion:
Kathy Sullivan is a partisan hack. She has no interest in factual representation. Her interests are to personally and falsely attack Republicans for partisan gain. These and other attacks are examples of the shameful and desperate strategy employed by desperate, attention depraved political hacks.
We’ll give Shir Haberman a little credit this week: he’s managed to cut down his factual errors to a degree, particularly the deliberately mendacious ones. However, it wouldn’t be an appropriate column in the Portsmouth Herald by Haberman if it didn’t include a few errors.
The most glaring error occurs when Haberman talks about “Rep. Shawn Jasper, R-Hudson, a former House speaker.” While Rep. Jasper has served in a number of leadership capacities in his career, he has never been House Speaker. This would have been very easy to fact-check by simply checking any number of published sources or asking any of the veteran House legislators. But, of course, accurate reporting is such a bother.
Of a more deliberately misleading bent, Haberman writes that the House redistricting plan, “separates Portsmouth Ward 3 from the rest of the city and puts it into a district that includes Greenland, Newington and North Hampton.” Either Haberman has not actually seen the House plan, or he is intentionally being dishonest.
In the redistricting plan, each Portsmouth ward is its own representative district with one member of the House to be elected from each ward, so Ward 3 gets its own representative, something the ward does not currently have. However, after giving each ward its own representative, Portsmouth still has an excess population of 4,778 which needs representation, meaning the city will need one floaterial representative, plus a portion of another.
The new redistricting plan accomplishes this by creating a floaterial district over four Portsmouth wards (Wards 1, 2, 4 and 5) and creating a separate floaterial with adjacent towns in order to ensure that all Portsmouth voters can now get representation consistent with the “one-person, one-vote” federal constitutional provision.
Suggesting that Ward 3 was “separated” from the city of Portsmouth is absurd and can be only deliberately misleading. Each ward in Portsmouth will now receive local representation in a way that improves access between citizens and their legislators. Combining all the wards into one floaterial would have given Portsmouth too little representation, according to federal standards. Furthermore, Portsmouth now has an opportunity to elect seven representatives, as opposed to six, if the city could have been kept intact, as Haberman suggests, even though Haberman’s suggestion violates the federal constitution.
Ultimately, it is easy to demagogue a plan when you are unconstrained by the facts. Haberman should have put a little more time into checking his facts before making outlandish claims.
One of the breeding grounds for inaccurate statements is the hotbed of political Inside Baseball, the State House reporter Sunday column. In these columns, political insiders will beta test ideas that go to the public in the effort to create a “narrative,” so that other political reporters will latch onto an idea for future stories. This is often the breeding pool for new “spin” to develop.
Unfortunately, this is also often a place where new facts are invented, with the goal of then using these columns as a basis to spew these inaccuracies on other reporters as truth.
This week, we can see a few of these cases in the Union Leader’s State House Dome column and Concord Monitor’s Capital Beat column.
Starting with the Capital Beat column, we can see the frequent transition from that Democrat talking point to “fact” that appears to be the primary news source for the Monitor. Consider the latest example. In this week’s column, an item begins, “It used to take a vote of the full House to subpoena witnesses who failed to show for legislative hearings. Not any longer.”
This statement simply is not true and has never been true. What is true is that it has been a Democrat talking point for several weeks, and apparently the Monitor fell asleep at the switch for not fulfilling its mission and printing it earlier. In fact, during the last time the legislature used subpoena powers, the impeachment hearings of two Supreme Court justices, they were approved and signed by a counsel retained by the House – not even a House committee, let alone the full House.
This is one prime example of how a liberal paper will take any talking point handed it by the Democrats and run with it, as if it were fact.
Another example of shoddy fact-checking comes from the Union Leader’s column. The column states that the Speaker told “reporters Monday he would not bring up the redistricting veto that week.” This is a rather curious statement, given that the column’s author, Garry Rayno, did not attend the press conference on Monday. It also happens to be inaccurate. On Monday, the Speaker, when asked about the veto override, said that with other pressing bills coming before the House on “crossover” day – the last day for the House to act on House bills – that the veto override would not be the focus of the House.
While Sunday columns are just that: columns and not stories, and thus have a lower journalistic bar, they do often result in invented “facts” that are subsequently used for future news stories and editorials. It’s time that the columnists to put as much effort into fact-checking their columns as they do their stories.
On Friday March 30, the Union Leader published a story by Beth Lamontagne Hall entitled, “Redistricting vote surprises, angers in Manchester,” in which certain facts and assertions need clarification and/or fact checking.
Claim 1:
“The recently passed plan put Wards 8 and 9 together with Litchfield.”
Clarification:
The recently passed plan put Ward 8 and 9 in a floaterial district with Litchfield. Wards 8 & 9 as well as Litchfield also are districts of their own, receiving two representatives apiece. Those three underlying districts will also share two additional representatives elected in the floaterial district.
Claim 2:
“Obviously, the Speaker and his team saw that there were several of us missing and thought it the best opportunity to bring up the override,” said State Rep. Cam DeJong.
Ward 10 Alderman and state Rep. Phil Greazzo also accused House leadership of taking advantage of the Manchester absences on Wednesday.”
Fact Check:
Seven of the city’s representatives were not present for the vote – Thomas Beattie of Ward 10, Norma Champagne of Ward 5, Cameron DeJong of Ward 2, Ward 6’s Larry Gagne, Ward 11’s Phil Greazzo, Ward 3’s Jean Jeudy, and Patrick Garrity of Ward 7.
Even if these seven members were present and voted to sustain the governor’s veto, which may not have actually been the result, HB 592 would have still become law.
Claim 3:
“Mayor Ted Gatsas also discredited the idea that Manchester is better off with the current plan.
“Twelve years ago, the Supreme Court didn’t place Manchester with any other town,” said Gatsas.”
Fact Check:
12 years ago, the New Hampshire Constitution had not been amended to include Part II Article 11, which gives single towns and wards their own district, when possible. The result of providing the exclusive underlying districts to as many towns and wards as possible results in the need to create float districts and/or combine some towns and wards together to provide for equal representation.
In the case ofManchester, they are sharing one float district.
In previous redistricting plans, as drawn by the court, huge multi-ward districts were created inManchester, in some cases stretching across the city, increasing costs for candidates and diluting local representation. In the new redistricting arrangement that has become law, each Manchester Ward has its own underlying district.
Claim 4:
“Ward 8 Alderman and State Rep. Tom Katsiantonis, who is one of the House members affected by the redistricting plan, said he will ask the aldermen during their meeting Tuesday to support filing a lawsuit to regain the city’s representation.”
Fact Check:
Cities and towns are entitled to file lawsuits if they choose to spend taxpayer money in that manner; however, they have to claim some injury.
Since the citizens ofManchester(and every other town in the State) have equal representation as a result of the plan in the newly enacted redistricting plan, which has a deviation range that is presumed constitutional, they have no injury to claim.
Furthermore, Part II Article 11 of the state constitution gives no rights of representation to cities as a whole. It does state at least half a dozen times that towns and individual wards should have rights to local representation. There is no mention in this constitutional provision on redistricting of cities. The plan passed by the New Hampshire House and the Senate follows those guidelines, where possible, by redistricting House districts across the state in terms of wards and towns, not entire cities.
Claim 5:
“Town administrators from other communities that could lose representation under the House redistricting plan, such as Meredith, Litchfield and Pelham, said discussions on the redistricting vote would be scheduled on the next agendas for their respective Boards of Selectmen.”
Clarification:
No representation has been lost or will be lost by the redistricting plan in HB592. Meredith will share four representatives with Gilford. They deserve only 1.89. Litchfield will get two representatives of its own and share another two with Manchester Wards 8 & 9. By population, that town deserves only 2.5 representatives. Pelham will share vote on 11 Representatives withHudson, yet that town only deserves four representatives by the size of its population.
Claiming a “loss” of representation is certainly a glass-half-empty perspective. Each of these towns will get fair representation and vote on more than they would if standing alone. If the current makeup of the House is any example, representatives in multi-town districts do not ignore voters in towns they do not live in, thus giving both Meredith, Litchfield and Pelham much greater presence in the House than if the stood alone.
The plan in HB592 nearly doubles the amount of districts in the state, making most of them smaller and more local, which fulfills the intent of the state constitutional amendment passed in 2006.
On Friday March 30th, the Nashua Telegraph editorial page dove head first into a shallow pool of mistruths, showing they’d rather reprint partisan rhetoric from the belligerent left rather than research the facts. The editorial, focused of the veto override vote of HB592, the House redistricting bill, neglects to fully vet their claims of constitutional and procedural misbehavior.
Claim 1:
“No stranger to procedural controversy during his first 18 months in leadership, Rep. William O’Brien, of Mont Vernon, did it again Wednesday when he thumbed his nose at House protocol – if not the New Hampshire Constitution – in calling for an unscheduled override vote of Gov. John Lynch’s veto of the House redistricting plan (HB 592).”
Fact Check 1:
No veto override vote is ever “scheduled”. The Speaker can bring up a veto message at any time.
The State Senate obviously disagrees with the Telegraph’s interpretation of the NH Constitution as they promptly took up the veto vote as well, “unscheduled”.
Claim 2:
“This is the same plan that deprives Hudson and Pelham of their own seats – they will share 11 under the new law – even though they were deserving of seven and four, respectively, based on their populations.”
Fact Check 2:
Hudson and Pelham will share 11 seats. If Hudson were given 7 of their own Representatives, their deviation, meaning the margin of population over or under the ideal for a district, would be 6.2%. Federal case law presents that anything less than -5% or higher than 5% does not adequately provide equal representation, a fundamental constitutional right.
Because giving just 7 Reps to Hudson would result in the people of Hudson being under-represented, it was necessary to combine it with a surrounding town. Each town or Nashua Ward that borders Hudson has an equal claim to their own representation, however, the constitution clearly states that if giving a single town/ward district affects the ability to provide equal representation in other towns, they must be combined.
If the current makeup of the House is any example, Reps in multi-town districts do not ignore voters in towns they do not live in.
It’s unfortunate that the Telegraph would prefer to have Hudson unconstitutionally underrepresented in the House with just 7 Representatives.
Claim 3:
In calling for the vote, O’Brien appears to have run afoul of the state constitution, which says the governor’s veto message should be printed in the legislative body’s journal prior to an override attempt.
Specifically, Part II, Article 44 of the state constitution states that if the governor vetoes a bill, “he shall return it, with his objections, to that house in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on their journal, and proceed to reconsider it.”
Fact Check 3:
In 1792, when this was added to the Constitution, there was no printed calendar, so the House Calendar is not the House Journal. The journal, according to Part 2, Article 24, which also was part of our constitution in 1792, is produced AFTER, not before, the House proceedings: “The journals of the proceedings, and all public acts of both houses, of the legislature, shall be printed and published immediately after every adjournment or prorogation.” The historical practice of the House was to take up vetoes as soon as they were issued; there was no notice period. Accordingly, the constitutional purpose of the requirement to put the governor’s veto message into the journal is to create a permanent record of the veto message for history, not to require publication prior to a veto override vote.
The House and Senate worked diligently to get the House and Senate redistricting plans to the Governor on Friday, March 16. Had these bills gotten to his desk that day, he would have been required to sign or veto them by Wednesday, March 21. This would have given the House the opportunity to print his veto message in the calendar that was published Thursday, March 22. However, for some reason, the Secretary of State did not get the bills to the Governor’s desk until Monday, March 19, giving him until the following Friday to sign or veto the bills. The Governor chose to use all the time given him, and by doing so removed the chance to put the veto message into the House calendar for the session this week, while at the same time saying in his veto message that the Legislature should consider the veto “quickly”.
Claim 4:
“O’Brien halted proceedings Wednesday to call a 30-minute private caucus with House Republicans, during which he distributed a written opinion from House legal counsel Ed Mosca. The opinion concluded that the speaker has the authority to take up the governor’s veto, though the House could choose not to do so by a majority vote.”
“Upon learning of the speaker’s intent, House Democrats asked for a 15-minute break to caucus on their own, certainly a reasonable request under the circumstances. Of course, their request was denied. Nor were they allowed to see a copy of Mosca’s legal opinion prior to the vote.”
Fact Check 4:
A caucus, by nature, is private. This is not the first time the Speaker has called for a caucus during a House session. This is common practice of Speakers from both parties. Materials distributed in a partisan caucus are private and not subject to Right to Know requests.
The Speaker’s ruling regarding whether or not to recess the House for a Democratic caucus was upheld by a House vote of 255-97.
Claim 5:
“By telling reporters and others Monday that he didn’t intend to bring Lynch’s veto forward this week, O’Brien may have deprived some lawmakers the opportunity to participate. Of the 397 House members now serving, 39 were absent for a vote that exceeded the two-thirds margin by eight.”
Fact Check 5:
On average, House attendance is less than what it was midday Wednesday. Lawmakers are elected to represent the people of their districts each session day, not just on some session days. With 397 members, all of whom are only compensated $100 per year, getting perfect attendance is nearly impossible. It’s fair to say that at no time did the Speaker send a message directly to the body indicating he would not take up the veto or any other legislation.
Claim 6:
“What’s worse, the unannounced vote also denied municipal officials – particularly those in communities like Hudson, Manchester and Pelham that share seats – one last opportunity to persuade their lawmakers to sustain the governor’s veto in hopes of a better deal.”
Fact Check 6:
Municipal officials have had months to express their thoughts on redistricting. HB592 had its first public hearing more than a year ago. In October, the Special Committee on Redistricting held a series of public hearings held in each county. Then, the bill went through the committee public hearing process in December and January. The House approved the bill on January 18th. The Senate on March 7th. At the very least, town and city officials had at least 3 weeks to lobby House and Senate members to sustain the Governor’s veto.
It has been widely reported that municipal officials did in fact meet with, send mail to, and call their representatives to express their views on redistricting. We’re unclear what was denied.
Conclusion:
It appears as if the Telegraph is telegraphing the sore loser temper tantrum happening in the House Minority office and at the NHDP. Stomping feet and whining about a procedural strategy that, no doubt, they would have employed if in the majority, and by all accounts is as clean as a whistle.
