Friday morning’s Legislative Panel at Keenevention 2013 focused on the tools of activism at the NH State House. Starting with learning how a idea can become a law, discussion included the mechanics of working with political parties, understanding NH demographics, how to win and lose elections, the technique of measuring legislators in a variety of ways, as well as how to successfully lobby (and how not to!) to stop new proposed bad laws and help remove existing bad laws (and [rarely] passing good ones.) Led by former State Representative and Free Keene blogger Seth Cohn, panelists included current State Rep. Tim O’Flaherty (D), former State Rep. Spec Bowers (R), and NH Liberty Alliance Chair Eileen Landies.
According to the Sentinel’s election rundown, turnout among the city’s 16,598 registered voters was 12 percent. Put another way, that’s 88% of people who are registered to vote that decided that the election wasn’t important enough to bother. Despite the claims of those who advocate for controlling their neighbors, the Keene election is hardly a mandate against liberty. It’s the same as always: a superminority of people are the ones who decide the winners and those people are usually those who support “the state”. Everyone else is too busy with important things like their lives.
Clearly, despite the excellent slate of liberty-oriented candidates, the average people of Keene did not fear freedom so much that they decided to come vote against us. Turnout this year was nothing unusual. Alternately, they did not desire freedom so much that they decided to come out and vote for us. Most people are in-the-dark as to what is happening here. Only the politically aware are likely to vote in municipal elections, and politically aware people tend to be those who wish to control others, hence, the easy wins for aggression-supporting candidates.
Surely the political class is resting easy with their victories, however, they should keep in mind that should the “sleeping giant” of average folks awaken, it would only take 2-3% of the population of Keene to come out and vote for liberty to completely flip the tables. For instance, I got 10th place out of 10 in the at-large race. However, I’d have needed only 700 votes to have made 5th place and won a seat on the council. 700 is about 3% of Keene’s 23,000 population. What could motivate those people to actually vote? Your guess is as good as mine.
P.S. Thanks to all those who voted for liberty-oriented candidates!
Keene held municipal elections on November 5, 2013. There were 10 candidates for At-Large City Council, with 4 of the 5 winners being current or former Councilors. Emily Hague is the only At-Large Councilor who is new to the Council. Kris Roberts received the most votes for At-Large City Council, and David Curran finished just 4 votes behind David Meader for the fifth At-Large spot. (more…)
You can vote for these liberty-oriented candidates today until 7pm!
Darryl W. Perry Keene Mayor
Ian Freeman City Council Keene (At Large)
Robert Sutherland City Council Keene (At Large)
David Crawford City Council Keene Ward 1
James Cleaveland City Council Keene Ward 2
Conan Salada City Council Keene Ward 4
Remember, you can register to vote at the polling location so it doesn’t matter if you are currently registered or not.
While Pete Eyre and I continue the 2013 Police Accountability Tour, updates from the changes at the Weare police department stream out of NH. The Concord Monitor has the story on WPD’s new police chief imported from New Haven, Connecticut, which was the subject of its own FBI raid in 2007. The Monitor story discusses some of the negative attention drawn to Weare police under the reign of previous administrations, wherein civilians were legally attacked and threatened with felonies for recording police. Multiple individuals have their own lawsuits against the department for the infringement on their right to document public officials.
Linked below is an update from myself and Pete produced shortly after touching down in Chicago, where our stay promises further adventures in accountability.
The NH Liberty Party‘s Darryl W. Perry was interviewed this morning on WKBK by Dan Mitchell about his candidacy for mayor of Keene, NH. Here’s the full interview:
