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Where in the world is Maggie Goodlander?

If you’re looking for the Democrat running for the Second Congressional District nomination, you might want to try an apartment in the new Nashua apartment building downtown on a street with a taxi stand and a casino.

But if you’re looking for her actual home, it might be the $2.2 million, three-bedroom house with harbor views in the First Congressional District city of Portsmouth. 

Unless it’s a work day. Then you might want to try Washington, D.C. Her husband Jake Sullivan is President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, and the couple has a home there, too.

Which leads to the ironic situation in which Goodlander is the only major candidate actually born in the Granite State, and yet she’s simultaneously facing legitimate allegations of being a “carpetbagger” as well.

Goodlander didn’t rent her Nashua residence until she became a candidate in the congressional race. Asked about the odd optics of moving into a district in order to run for office there, Goodlander retorted: “I am a renter, and there should be more renters in Congress.”

Goodlander’s building advertises apartments starting at $1,800 a month for a studio, and about $2,600 a month for a two-bedroom unit. It includes a gym and courtyard recreation area, though it seems unlikely she’ll be using the communal grill. And Goodlander’s name does not appear in the menu on the touch-screen directory at the building’s entrance.

The building is owned Wingate, one of the real estate rental conglomerates the Biden administration has been recently railing against 

Wingate, which owns and operates many apartment developments, is also a major contributor to Democratic politics, according to Federal Election Commission data. That includes a $95,000 donation to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that’s working to elect the next representative in the NH-02 race.

Ironically, Goodlander’s residency issues in Nashua go back to the very first time she voted, in 2008.

According to records reviewed by NHJournal, when Goodlander cast her mail-in ballot in the 2008 general election, the address listed was for a Nashua home her parents had already sold. 

According to the 2008 voter checklist, Goodlander registered undeclared and voted by absentee ballot in both the January presidential primary and the November general election. According to the checklist, Goodlander pulled a Democratic ballot in the First in the Nation presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  

The Nashua address Goodlander used for her registration was owned by her parents Betty Tamposi and Theodore Goodlander. However, that house was not her home by the time of the November election. The house was sold that fall, with the sale closing on Oct. 24, 2008, according to Registry of Deeds records.

Betty Tamposi and Theodore Goodlander were in the middle of an ugly, high-profile divorce at the time that is still a topic of conversation in Nashua circles. The fact that Maggie Goodlander voted from an address he family didn’t live at has some people asking if she cast an illegal ballot the first time she voted.

Probably not, Secretary of State David Scanlan told NHJournal.

While Scanlan would not speculate about the specifics of Goodlander’s actions, he said New Hampshire state law allows for limited transitional gray areas when it comes to moving and voting. 

“Everybody’s situation is unique and different,” Scanlan said.

The law at the time allowed for people like college students to “domicile” in New Hampshire while actually residing in another state, according to Scanlan. Those who domiciled in the Granite State could vote in New Hampshire elections. Conversely, Granite Staters who did not domicile in New Hampshire could still claim it as their home. And they could still vote in New Hampshire elections, he said. 

“For most people domicile is black and white, it’s where they live,” Scanlan said.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court has since clarified the definition of a domicile to be closer to the definition of a residency, Scanlan said. At the same time, the law still gives leeway for people whose lives are in transition or in the process of moving.

For example, a person who sold their New Hampshire house and then traveled the country in a motorhome could still claim New Hampshire as their residency, according to Scanlan, so long as they did not establish a home anywhere else.

“They do not lose their original domicile until they establish a new one,” Scanlan said.

Under the law, a person retains their New Hampshire residency until they establish a new residency. Usually, that is done by getting a new driver’s license, or putting a child in a public school in the new location, he said.

If Goodlander in 2008 did nothing to establish a new residency somewhere else in the weeks after her parents sold the Nashua home, she could still claim it as her home for voting purposes. Goodlander left New Hampshire for college, the military, and then a career in Washington, D.C.

The Republican National Congressional Committee says, “Goodlander’s residency issues and lack of local grassroots support goes to show just how little she has to do with New Hampshire as an adult.

“The voters of NH-02 deserve someone who understands their needs, not someone who pretends to be a renter while living in D.C.,” said NRCC spokeswoman Savannah Viar.

Goodlander may be hard to track down, but the campaign checks are still finding their way to her. According to the FEC reports ending in June, she outraised all of the candidates in the race with more than $1.5 million. Her Democratic primary opponent, former Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern, raised about $1 million.

In the GOP primary, entrepreneur Vikram Mansharamani has about $352,000 cash on hand, and frequent federal candidate Lily Tang Williams has $305,000 in the bank, $80,000 of which she loaned the campaign.

And Goodlander’s house hunting may not be over, regardless of the outcome of the NH-02 election. According to The Wall Street Journal, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has already made it clear she’s going to clean house on foreign policy if she takes over from President Joe Biden.

On the list of staffers who’ll be shown the door: Goodlander’s husband Jake Sullivan.

As Rep. Annie Kuster’s handpicked successor, Democrat Colin Van Ostern wants voters to forget the time his financial firm was paid millions for misleading its investors.

Van Ostern was president and chief operating officer at Manchester-based Alumni Ventures from 2019 through 2023, a position he left to launch his current campaign. In 2022, federal and state regulators investigated the company, finding it lied to customers and improperly moved millions between accounts.

Van Ostern did not respond to a request for comment. 

In 2022, Alumni Ventures agreed to pay back more than $4.7 million to investors taken in an allegedly misleading fee schedule. The company also paid millions to regulators in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, as well as fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

According to documents, the company misled investors by telling them the fee to manage investment funds would be “the industry standard of 2 and 20.” That’s generally understood to mean a two percent management fee every year for 10 years, and a 20 percent share in the eventual investment profits.

But that’s not what Alumni Ventures charged. Instead, the company took 10 years worth of two percent fees, or 20 percent, off the top of all investments. If a customer gave the company $100,000 to invest, Alumni Ventures would immediately take $20,000, leaving less money for the investment, according to the records. That money was then used to fund the business.

“This practice amounted to an undisclosed interest-free loan to [Alumni Ventures] from the funds it managed,” New Hampshire’s Bureau of Securities Regulation statement makes clear.

Van Ostern’s firm was also sanctioned for allegedly moving around investment fund money, effectively giving itself interest-free loans, according to the Massachusetts court order.

“The loans from [Alumni Ventures] to the Funds had no predetermined maturity date or interest rate, and their timing and repayment amount was solely in [Alumni Ventures’] discretion. The loans were not memorialized in a written debt instrument at the time the loans were made, and were not disclosed to investors,” the Massachusetts order states.

Alumni Ventures ended up paying a $700,000 fine to the SEC, and founder and CEO Michael Collins paid a $100,000 penalty to the federal agency. The company was ordered to pay $750,000 in fines and administrative costs in Massachusetts. New Hampshire regulators assessed a $600,000 fine, $100,000 for the investigation, and another $100,000 fine from Collins.

The company was also ordered to change its marketing material to inform potential customers about the real fee schedule.

The questionable conduct regulators targeted occurred between 2016 and 2020, according to the records, ending about a year after Van Ostern became COO. The Alumni Ventures job is one of many private sector positions Van Ostern occupied after he lost the 2016 gubernatorial race to Gov. Chris Sununu.

Van Ostern has long been a player in New Hampshire politics, though mostly assigned to the bench. After earning an MBA at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, Van Ostern worked as Democratic Gov. John Lynch’s majordomo as well as operating a consulting firm. His early clients were Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Kuster.

Van Ostern was elected to the Executive Council in 2012 and served alongside Sununu until they faced off in the 2016 governor’s race.

Van Ostern also tried, and failed, to unseat Secretary of State Bill Gardner in 2018 before moving into the private sector. He did stints at yogurt maker Stonyfield and Southern New Hampshire University before landing at Alumni Ventures.

Collins started the Manchester-based Alumni Ventures in 2014 as a venture capital investment firm. The company has raised more than $1 billion in funds since it started.

According to investigators, a young Dover girl hid under her bed, scared for her life, as Jheisson Rizo Suarez broke into her home during a burglary.

Now, Suarez, 39, from Colombia, is facing his second deportation after pleading guilty in U.S. District Court in Concord to one count of reentry after deportation.

Suarez is the third high-profile illegal immigrant arrested in New Hampshire in recent months, including a convicted mass murderer and an alleged human smuggler. It is part of a national crisis that has reached from the U.S. border in Texas and Arizona to New Hampshire’s border with Canada.

Some seven million undocumented migrants have poured into the U.S. since President Joe Biden took office, But Democrats like Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, have declined to take any action.

Suarez was arrested in 2021 in connection with the burglary. Police responded to the residence when the girl, alone at the time of the break-in, called 911. According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Hampshire, she reportedly whispered to the 911 operator that an unknown person or persons had forced their way into her home.

Dover police officers soon had Suarez in custody and discovered it wasn’t his first sojourn to the United States. Suarez had been previously deported in 2013, according to prosecutors.

Suarez, due to be sentenced in January, faces up to 10 years in federal prison. His plea comes weeks after Mexican national Reynaldo Velasco-Velasco, 36, was arrested at the Canadian border for allegedly smuggling people into New Hampshire.

Velasco-Velasco had already been deported from the U.S. in 2011 when U.S. Border Patrol agents caught him this month. According to court records,  Velasco-Velasco was illegally leading four other Mexican nationals across the northern border into New Hampshire. 

The smuggler allegedly had two cars ready for the people he was bringing through, and Border Patrol agents stopped the cars as they were trying to flee the border region.

And last month, federal agents raided a home construction site in Rye to arrest wanted killer Antonio Jose De Abreu Vidal Filho, 29. According to federal sources, Filho was in the U.S. illegally after overstaying his visa. The former Brazilian military police officer entered the country legally in 2019, even though he was fleeing prosecution for his role in the Curio Massacre.

According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Filho was recently convicted along with three other military state police officers of 11 murders, plus charges of attempted murder and physical and mental torture, for his role in the 2015 massacre in the Curio neighborhood in Fortaleza.

El Globo, a Brazilian news outlet, reported the murders had been retaliation for the death of a Brazilian police officer in Fortaleza. Four of the 11 people murdered were teens under age 18; three were between 18 and 19, according to El Globo.

Filho was ordered to serve a 276-year prison sentence for his part in the massacre.

The arrests come as New Hampshire’s northern border is in crisis. This month, Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Swanton Sector — which includes the New Hampshire border with Canada — announced more apprehensions in the past year than in the previous decade.

“Over 6,100 apprehensions from 76 different countries in just 11 months, surpassing the last ten years combined. Swanton Sector Agents are resolute and determined to hold the line across our 295 miles of border in northeastern New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire,” Garcia said via social media.

Gov. Chris Sununu has been raising the alarm for months and keeps getting turned down when he asks President Joe Biden’s administration for help. This month, Biden’s team rejected Sununu’s request that the federal government restore millions of dollars in border security funding New Hampshire received during the Trump administration. The funding, through Operation Stone Garden, gave the state resources to backstop federal border enforcement actions.

Sununu has not gotten any help from New Hampshire’s all-Democratic federal delegation. Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, as well as Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas have been MIA, according to Sununu.

“I haven’t heard from them. I haven’t heard of any action that they’ve taken with the administration. I haven’t heard of any actual action or results that they have even attempted to bring to the table,” Sununu told NHJournal after the latest Biden rejection.

Asked Monday by NHJournal what they planned to do about the border chaos,  Shaheen, Hassan, Kuster, and Pappas all declined to respond.

While prominent elected New Hampshire Democrats have been silent, state party Chairman Ray Buckley spoke for them, reposting a social media message calling Ayotte a “fascist fearmonger” for focusing on the border.

Presumably, Buckley was not hiding under a bed when he posted that message.

Granite Staters are paying more at the pump, paying double the price for electricity, and are now getting slammed with heating oil costs heading into winter.

And according to the American Energy Alliance (AEA), the state’s top Democrats have done nothing to help. 

New Hampshire’s federal delegation, Democratic Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas, and Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, all scored a “zero” on the 2o21-2022 AEA report card on energy policy.

“All the proof of their rejection of affordable energy policies will show up in the energy bills for people in New Hampshire this winter,” said AEA President Thomas Pyle. “New Hampshire is not California and yet the entire delegation votes for California-style energy policies.”

The energy debate isn’t an abstract one in New England, where ISO New England Inc., has warned that an extremely cold winter could potentially result in rolling blackouts due to lack of supply.

“If we get a sustained cold period in New England this winter, we’ll be in a very similar position as California was this summer,” said Nathan Hanson with LS Power Development, which operates two gas-fired power plants in the region.

The AEA looks at what lawmakers have done to “promote affordable, abundant, and reliable energy,” as well as the steps they have taken to “expand economic opportunity and prosperity, particularly for working families and those on fixed incomes.”

In her debate with Republican Don Bolduc on Tuesday, Hassan was asked for her solution to rising energy costs. She touted her support for green energy spending, government subsidies to help consumers pay the higher prices, and her call for President Joe Biden to release more oil from U.S. reserves. She did not mention increased domestic energy production, and she repeated a debunked claim that “Big Oil” was manipulating energy prices.

Democrats have been scrambling ahead of the midterms to do something about the high prices. This week, Biden announced he was releasing 15 million gallons of oil from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve in a last-ditch ploy to tamp down prices before people vote. His use of the SPR is being applauded by Hassan and Pappas as they fight for their political lives in tight races.

Hassan signed on to a letter asking Biden to do more, like release oil from the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve.

“With lower inventories of crude oil, propane, and natural gas and the continued global disruption caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine contributing to a sharp rise in residential energy costs, we urge the administration to closely monitor the energy needs of the Northeast and release stock from the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve,” Hassan’s letter states.

But as The Wall Street Journal reports, the problem isn’t Russia’s drop in exports — just 560,000 barrels a day out of a global supply of 101 million — but “a lack of investment, especially in the U.S., which had been the world’s swing producer.”

“Now the swing producers are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. OPEC countries and their allies, which account for 45 percent of global oil production, accounted for 85 percent of new supply in September,” WSJ reports. That new production cannot come from the U.S., in part because Biden has slashed the number of new oil and gas leases by 97 percent.

Pappas is pushing for more funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program to help people through the winter. But, like Hassan, he has a record of opposing expanded oil and gas production.

Don Bolduc, Hassan’s GOP challenger, said Democrats are hurting the country with short-sighted energy policies that ultimately drive up the cost without addressing the need for energy independence.

“Now, facing the brutal consequences and with a midterm election looming, their only solution is releasing more of our emergency supply of oil, leaving us vulnerable to future supply shocks and whims from evil despots (in Venezuela.) It never had to be this way: America has the resources to power our country right here at home,” Bolduc said. “For those facing tough choices between heating and eating, you’ve got Joe Biden and Maggie Hassan to blame.”

Craig Stevens, spokesman for the GAIN Coalition, blamed Biden.

“With each passing week, it grows more evident that President Biden has no real strategy for lowering energy prices. From Day One, the president has put American energy producers and pipeline operators in his crosshairs,” Stevens said. “Now, with gas prices up 59 percent since his inauguration and electricity prices set to double this winter, every American is dealing with the consequences of his unprecedented hostility to the energy sector.”

U.S. Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas have figured out how to be in Congress without really trying as the pair take advantage of COVID measures that allow them to skip voting.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) extended the COVID proxy voting rules this week, allowing House members to skip in-person voting. The extension, which runs through to May, comes as the COVID infection and hospitalization rates have plunged nationally to their lowest levels since last July.

Since the start of the pandemic, Pappas has filed five proxy letters with the Office of the House Clerk, informing it he designated another member of the House to vote for him. Kuster has filed 13 such letters, the most recent being at the start of this month when she had Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) vote in her place.

Pappas last voted by proxy in October, though he is currently listed as the proxy voter for Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas). Cuellar stated in his letter that he is unable to vote due to the ongoing public health emergency. Cuellar is also under FBI investigation and his Laredo, Texas home was raided by law enforcement earlier this year.

If their motive is to avoid the dangers of COVID-19, their move makes little sense. Washington D.C. recently announced it is relaxing COVID-19 restrictions in light of the fact the virus transmission has dropped dramatically. The city’s health department announced earlier this month that people can take minimal indoor precautions against the virus.

In New Hampshire, the virus is also in retreat, with six people currently hospitalized down from more than 400 in a matter of weeks. The Granite State is also experiencing a 2.8 percent test positivity rate, well below the highs of recent weeks.

So, why are New Hampshire’s members of Congress using COVID rules to cut work?

Kuster and Pappas’ teams did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

The constitutionality of proxy voting has been challenged by House Republicans in a lawsuit filed in May 2020. That lawsuit was dismissed and by the time House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, many of the 160 Republicans who signed onto the lawsuit had themselves used proxies to vote. The high court declined to hear the appeal in January.

Proxy voting has been allowed in House and Senate committees, though it was not allowed for full House or Senate votes until the pandemic. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) phased out committee proxy voting in the 1990s, citing widespread abuse of the practice.

And it is not just congressional no-shows. Sen. Maggie Hassan’s Washington, D.C. office remains closed to the public, apparently due to COVID concerns. Contacted by NHJournal last week, her staff refused t0 explain why the office was continuing its COVID-era “by appointment only” policy. The phone at her office went straight to voicemail on Wednesday.

Democrats in the State House are suing House Speaker Sherman Packard (R-Londonderry) in order to have remote legislation for disabled members. House Minority Leader David Cote (D-Nashua) has not voted in Concord in two years.

But while Hassan won’t open her office, she will be attending the opening of the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s new campaign office in Manchester on Saturday. Kuster and Pappas are scheduled to attend as well.

State Democratic party representatives did not respond to NH Journal’s questions, including if special COVID precautions were being taken for Hassan and Pappas.

MANCHESTER — House Republicans notched a big win Wednesday on the first day of the legislative year, passing the redistricting bill that gives them an edge in the 1st Congressional District currently held by U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas.

“It’s the biggest thing that matters,” said state Rep. Steve Smith, R-Charlestown, vice-chair of the House Special Committee on Redistricting.

The new map moves 75 towns from one district to another and makes the 1st District favorable to Republicans. It also makes the 2nd Congressional District, currently represented by Democrat U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster, more favorable to Democrats.

Rep. Ross Berry, R-Manchester, a member of the House Special Committee on Redistricting, said making one Republican and one Democratic district in the state is the right thing to do for voters.

“I think it was the right thing to do, we’re making two districts that are competitive,” he said.

House Speaker Sherman Packard, R-Londonderry, said the committee ought to be congratulated on the hard work the members did in order to generate the bill, including holding 10 pubic sessions, one in every county.

“They made transparency and open dialogue a priority throughout these sessions by being present in person and live streaming every public meeting. They included public testimony as part of the decision-making process, as well as an online map and testimony submissions.”

Democrats like Nashua Rep. Manny Espitia decried the map as an example of “partisan gerrymandering” and accused Republicans of gaming the system to their advantage. Rep. Paul Bergeron, D-Nashua, said the Republicans on the committee ignored the will of the people when they drew the new districts.

“Granite Staters gave clear direction requesting compact House districts that keep cities together and that local representation be provided to communities. It is a shame that community interests have been ignored in favor of blind partisanship,” Bergeron said in a statement.

Rep. Marjorie Smith, D-Durham, said the redistricting bill that was passed on Wednesday is laughable.

“It is extremely disappointing to see the New Hampshire GOP reject that public input, choosing to draw laughably gerrymandered districts instead.  We will no longer be able to brag about doing it ‘the New Hampshire way’ if these districts pass into law, as the Granite State will have become just another state that favors partisanship over community interests,” Smith said. 

Berry rebutted Democrats’ claims about “fair maps” with a bit of math:

“While the minority of the committee speaks of fairness of the current districts, they have won 90 percent of the contests under the current map,” he said from the floor. There have been five congressional elections in each of the two districts since the maps were re-drawn after the 2010 Census. Democrats won them all except Rep. Frank Guinta’s 2014 win in the 1st district amid a national GOP surge.

The vote totals for the redistricting bill and amendments ended up being close in some cases, and there there was an effort to delay voting in order to allow members not present on Wednesday to vote on Thursday or Friday. 

It’s not clear if the Democrats could have overcome the votes even if they had all their members present. Republicans had both the majority and the desire to win, according to Rep. Al Baldasaro, R-Londonderry.

“Republicans are together on redistricting,” Baldasaro said.

Democrats began Wednesday’s session by yet again expressing their concerns over meeting in person during the COVID-19 pandemic, even in the 30,000 square-foot space at the DoubleTree by Hilton in Manchester. Republicans responded that most working Granite Staters were on the job and in person, and there was no reason House members couldn’t meet in such a large, well-ventilated space.

There were attendance issues, but they were a result of ice-covered roadways in parts of the state, not the virus. State police said icy conditions on roads in central and southern New Hampshire Wednesday morning were responsible for at least 80 crashes in five hours.

Sources tell NHJournal the House GOP leadership was uncertain about whether to “special order” the vote on the newly-drawn maps on Wednesday. But after seeing a solid Republican margin throughout the morning, the decision was made to bring them to the floor. A minor rebellion by a handful of Republicans nearly tabled the vote on the new state House district map, but Speaker Packard cast the tying vote to keep the motion from passing.

With the big win early, the trick for the GOP is to make no unforced errors for the rest of the legislative session. The party got a black eye nationally over a few members engaging in vaccine conspiracy theories last year, among other controversies. There are still bills coming up for a vote on vaccine mandates, bail reform, and abortion. Rep. Dan Eaton, D-Stoddard, said the GOP is likely to trip itself up without any help from his fellow Democrats.

“I don’t think they can resist the urge, and I don’t think they need us to throw bait,” Eaton said. “They have their own folks who can’t resist the temptation to shoot themselves in the foot.”

U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas hopes New Hampshire gets a new commuter rail service connecting Nashua and Manchester to Boston. Critics note how few Granite Staters use available rail now and don’t think local property taxpayers want to pick up the estimated $11 million tab to subsidize the trains.

Commuter rail is part of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending package pushed by President Joe Biden and supported by all the members of New Hampshire’s congressional delegation. Biden signed the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which includes $66 billion for rail, in November.

“This is a project that continues to bubble from the bottom up here in New Hampshire,” Pappas told Manchester’s InkLink last summer about the Capitol Corridor rail project. “I hear about it everywhere I go, residents who are looking for an opportunity to get to work, businesses that are looking to attract the kind of talent they need, and from local leaders who understand this can be an economic engine for New Hampshire.”

The train service would potentially go from Manchester through to Lowell, Massachusetts, with stops in Nashua and at the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. 

Greg Moore, with the libertarian American for Prosperity organization, said New Hampshire cannot afford the fare. The service cannot operate without a taxpayer-funded handout, he said.

“Every state study has shown that it would require substantial taxpayer subsidies to benefit a small number of riders,” Moore said.

Moore said there are better ways to solve commuting problems that meet 21st century needs. He suggested private services like Turo or ZipCar, as well as Uber and Lyft.  

“Trying to jam an expensive 19th-century transportation solution onto the hard-working taxpayers of New Hampshire makes no sense,” he said.

A common argument from opponents of expanded rail is Granite Staters rarely use the service that’s currently available. The Amtrak Downeaster, for example, connects the Seacoast towns of Dover, Durham, and Exeter with Maine and Boston. According to Amtrak, New Hampshire riders make up less than 20 percent of the total ridership.

In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, fewer than 2,000 trips a week began or ended in the Granite State. During the pandemic when ridership fell, the number of trips originating or ending in New Hampshire fell to 362 per week. Neither of those numbers is enough to sustain rail service without taxpayer subsidies.

In fact, Amtrak — often hailed as a success story — has received annual federal subsidies of $1.5 billion to $2 billion, in addition to the new billions from the bipartisan infrastructure bill. And the only reason service in the Northeast “pays for itself,” as advocates claim, is because of inventive bookkeeping that hides a huge backlog of needed maintenance and the subsidies it receives from state governments.

State Rep. George Sykes, D-Lebanon, a member of the House Transportation Committee, said every form of transportation, from air travel to bus service, is subsidized by taxpayers to some extent.

“There’s no free lunch when it comes to transportation,” Sykes said.

Sykes said rail service would be a net financial positive for the state in the long run when factors like increased development and savings on highway maintenance costs are considered. Paying for the service through taxes or fees just goes the territory, he said.

“My question to (those opposed to rail) would be, name me one aspect of transportation where they don’t have to pay for, one way or another.”

Sykes’ colleague on the Transportation Committee, Aidan Ankarberg, R-Rochester, doesn’t want his voters to have to pay for a service they are not going to be able to use. He recently filed a bill that would keep any state funding from being used for the rail project.

“It is not fiscally responsible or the New Hampshire way to expect my constituents in Rochester to pay for a commuter rail in Manchester that very few people will use,” he said. “My bill protects Rochester and other Granite State taxpayers from this boondoggle before it begins.”

Ankarberg said the most recent Department of Transportation report on the commuter rail, which estimates the state would need to subsidize the service at $11 million, is several years old and out of date. The true cost for the service to taxpayers is likely closer to $16 million, he said. That money would come from increased property taxes, or cuts to education funding, he said.

“While current estimates aren’t available, the DOT previously suggested raising statewide property taxes by $15.7 million or diverting 5 percent of our education funding in order to cover the commuter rail’s operating and management costs,” he said.

That kind of spending isn’t going to catch on in New Hampshire, according to Moore.

“Thankfully, there is little appetite in the state legislature for saddling state taxpayers with this backward approach,” Moore said. “New passenger rail isn’t happening anytime soon.”

U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster stood in the White House Rose Garden Monday moments before President Joe Biden was due to sign the $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending, celebrating the spending.

“A billion dollars coming to New Hampshire for roads and bridges and highways, we’re even going to get rail back to New Hampshire,” Kuster said in a video posted to Twitter.

As Kuster spoke, the United States Marine Corps Band played “76 Trombones” from the Broadway show, “The Music Man,” about a con artist who made big promises he couldn’t keep.

Kuster and the rest of New Hampshire’s congressional delegation celebrated Biden’s signing of the bill, citing the investments in roads and bridges, as well as broadband internet for rural areas like New Hampshire, public transportation expansion, and investments in clean drinking water.

“This bill has so many elements that will be game-changers for our families and our economy,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan.

Hassan is facing a potentially tough reelection bid despite presumed front-runner Gov. Chris Sununu bowing out of the race last week. Polls show Biden’s spending package is popular, even if the president himself is not.

Rep. Chris Pappas, whose congressional career faces possible extinction thanks to Republican-led redistricting, also supported the spending plan.

“I’m pleased the president has signed this legislation into law, and I look forward to beginning the work of repairing our infrastructure,” he said.

Both Pappas and Kuster’s poll ratings dipped into negative territory in the latest New Hampshire Institute of Politics poll, a first for both of them. Pappas was at 42 percent favorable to 46 percent unfavorable, Kuster landed at 40 percent to 46 percent.

The only Democrat not facing reelection this year, Sen. Janne Shaheen, touted her role in crafting the spending legislation.

“As a lead negotiator, I fought to ensure New Hampshire priorities were front and center: that includes investments to upgrade our water infrastructure – including robust support to combat PFAS contamination – and to bring high-speed internet to every corner of our state,” she said.

Backing the nominally bipartisan infrastructure plan, which had 13 Republican House votes, is risky for the three incumbents facing voters next year. Biden is underwater with Granite State voters, according to the most recent polling data. His recent polling average is 42 percent approve/52 percent disapprove. As Gallup reports, “Currently, 34 percent of independents approve of the job Biden is doing, the lowest of his term to date. His approval among independents has fallen a total of 21 points since June, including nine points since August.”

Biden is also trying to push through his $1.75 trillion Build Back Better social safety net spending package that includes spending on daycare, cash payments to parents, and green energy policies. Given a 30 percent spike in inflation, a majority of New Hampshire voters may not want to see all of that spending. Only 37 percent of Granite Staters want the “Build Back Better” multi-trillion-dollar spending package to pass, while 40 percent would like to see both spending bills killed, according to the polls.

And a Scott Rasmussen poll taken in August, before inflation become a top-tier issue, found 59 percent of voters nationwide believe increased government spending leads to inflation. Only 14 percent disagreed.

On Friday night, the media coverage was dominated by the question: “Will she or won’t she?” Would Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) get the votes she needed to pass the “BIF” — the bipartisan infrastructure bill?

Now that it has passed in the House by a 228-206 vote, with 13 Republicans voting in favor and six Democrats voting against it, it’s time for another question:

What the heck did Congress just vote for?

All four members of the New Hampshire delegation voted for the $1.2 trillion spending plan. (Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen voted for it nearly three months ago. It was trapped in the House since.)

Most of the coverage of the “BIF” has focused on the traditional infrastructure spending, including:

— $110 billion in funding for roads, bridges, and major projects;

— $66 billion investment in rail, most of which will go to Amtrak;

— $65 billion for broadband infrastructure and development;

— $7.5 billion for electric vehicle chargers.

That’s certainly the focus of Hassan and Rep. Chris Pappas. “Investments in our roads and bridges, water systems, and broadband are critical to our future economic growth and way of life in New Hampshire, and they will help us continue to rebuild our economy and regain our competitiveness following the COVID-19 pandemic,” Pappas said after the vote.

Pappas specifically touted the more than $1.5 billion in the additional road, bridge, and transit spending over the next five years, “representing a 47 percent funding increase in fiscal year 2022 and additional increases in years to come.”

Who could object to a nearly 50 percent jump in spending on roads? And cell phone users who travel the Granite State are likely pleased by the idea that their notoriously spotty service might improve.

But these are the headlines of Friday’s late-night vote. In the fine-print, Granite Staters will find New Hampshire’s delegation also voted for:

More Deficit Spending

Despite repeated assurances from President Joe Biden that infrastructure spending “costs zero dollars,” the BIF  costs more than $1 trillion. What Biden meant, his allies say, is that it won’t cost any borrowed dollars, that Americans can feel good that neither of his infrastructure bills will add to the deficit.

Unfortunately, they’re wrong on that count as well. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published its score of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (as opposed to the much-bigger reconciliation) in August, and they found the legislation would directly add more than $340 billion to the deficit.

A Vehicle Mileage User Fee Pilot Program

SEC. 13002 of the bill is the “National Moter Vehicle Per-Mile User Fee Pilot Program.” The objectives of the program, according to the legislation, are to “test the design, acceptance, implementation, and financial sustainability of a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee” and “address the need for additional revenues for surface transportation infrastructure.”

Critics of the program point to the phrase “additional revenue” as opposed to “replacing revenue.” They say it’s a sign the goal is to add a mileage tax on top of the current gasoline taxes, rather than to replace them. And, they note, a mileage tax takes away one of the few incentives to drive an electric car — namely, lower costs.

Biden’s defenders say it’s just a pilot program and the administration has no (announced) plans to impose such a national fee. The pilot might encourage individual states to pursue it, however. Just as the state of New York has passed a ban on the sale of regular internal-combustion engine cars as of 2035. Every car sold as of that date in New York must be a zero-emissions vehicle.

EV Chargers for Electric Cars That Don’t Exist

Speaking of EVs…

The $7.5 billion Congress just passed for electric vehicle (EV) chargers is, according to the White House, just a down payment on the funding needed to install 500,000 public EV charging stations by 2030.

The question is, who’s going to use them?

First, from a statistical standpoint, virtually nobody owns EVs in the U.S. As climate expert Matthew Lewis recently noted, of the 280 million or so registered cars and trucks in the country, only about 2 million are fully electric. Even if the nation added another 2 million electric vehicles a year — which would be a sales level far beyond anything the nation has seen — there would still be fewer than 15 million EVs on the road — still a tiny fraction of the total.

And then there’s the charger technology. In a recent interview for Emerging Tech, EV expert Brendan Jones, president of Blink Charging, talked about the chargers this tax money will buy:

“Jones said that in a good scenario, it takes about six months for an L2 charger—which need up to 8 hours to fully charge a car and make up 82 percent of public chargers in the U.S.—to go through permitting and get in the ground. Meanwhile, a D.C. fast charger (also known as an L3 charger) takes 60 to 90 minutes to charge a car, but can take considerably longer to build.”

How many drivers can park in a public lot for 8 hours to charge their cars? Or even for 90 minutes?

Advancing The Controversial Reconciliation Spending Bill

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, the House cast a straight party-line vote to move Biden’s so-called “Build Back Better” bill forward. It was a key step to get to what Pelosi says will be a vote before Thanksgiving on the legislation itself.

That’s the $4 trillion plan that includes massive social spending and more than half a billion on green energy policy. In the new Suffolk University poll for USA Today released Sunday, Americans are split on this bill, with just 47 supporting it and 44 percent in opposition. And only one in four Americans says they believe it will help them and their families.

Which brings up perhaps the most relevant fact about the votes cast for the infrastructure bill by New Hampshire’s congressional delegation: They didn’t address the issues Americans care about most.

Inflation. Bare store shelves. A lack of workers. The lingering impacts of COVID on daily lives, particularly on schools and children. Those are the things voters said last week brought them to the polls. Notably absent: Road and bridge construction, train travel, or the Green New Deal.

Even if Americans were in the mood to add billions to the national debt, there isn’t much information to show Americans would want to borrow this much money for EV chargers and Amtrack trains.

It had the support of all four members of the New Hamshire congressional delegation and 50 members of the U.S. Senate, but a Democratic bill to federalize state and local elections was blocked by Senate Republicans Wednesday afternoon.

It’s the latest attempt by the delegation to pass legislation limiting the power of state officials like Secretary of State Bill Gardner (D) to oversee Granite State elections are conducted — including the state’s signature First In The Nation primary.

New Hampshire Democrats have been among the most outspoken advocates for the law.

“Today, I’m voting yes on the #FreedomToVoteAct,” Sen. Maggie Hassan tweeted Wednesday. “Free and fair elections are the bedrock of our democracy, and this bill would help stop billionaires from buying our elections, crack down on dark money, and make sure every American can have their voice heard.”

Reps. Annie Kuster and Chris Pappas both signed a letter urging the Senate to pass the legislation.
“The Freedom to Vote Act can fortify our democracy and bring Americans of all political stripes back into the town square,” the letter reads.

Critics note the legislation would prevent voters in the town square from making the rules for their own elections.

“Our position hasn’t changed,” Deputy Secretary of State David M. Scanlan told NHJournal. “This bill would be a federal takeover of New Hampshire’s elections.” He called the bill’s defeat in the Senate “good news.”

“The bill is hundreds of pages long, and it covers aspects ranging from requiring states to mail every voter an application for an absentee ballot, to drop off boxes for ballots, and at locations other than with the city and town clerks. That creates logistical problems of getting ballots to where they belong, and doing so securely,” Scanlon said.

The defeated bill would also:

— Force New Hampshire to send postage-paid mail-in ballots to every voter who requests them, rather than having Election Day voting supplemented by absentee ballots;

— Require New Hampshire to have at least 13 days of early voting, including weekends, and to count ballots that come in late;

— Ban voter ID requirements by mandating allowing voters without ID to cast ballots based on a signed statement alone;

— Give millions of public dollars to political candidates to use on campaign staff, TV ads, attack mailers, etc.

And of special concern in New Hampshire, the law would cover “a primary election held for the expression of a preference for the nomination of persons for election to the office of president.” In other words, the First In The Nation primary.

That’s something not even the more expansive For The People Act attempted. According to Garder, this fundamentally changes the primary, which is currently a state election involving state officials, aka representatives to the Electoral College.

“The point is they did this now, and they didn’t do it in the first bill,” Gardner said. “You had a 1,500-page bill and now you have a 600-page bill, but they are still fundamentally changing how we conduct and participate in our election.”

“This is a terrible way to do this,” Gardner said.

The overwhelming support for the bill among New Hampshire’s elected Democrats is raising questions yet again about their support for the FITN primary. Polls show most Granite State Democrats don’t support the state’s law protecting the primary. And the state Democratic Party recently handed New Hampshire’s slot on a key DNC committee to a Washington, D.C. resident with few ties to the state.

The DNC’s leadership has repeatedly complained about New Hamsphire’s first-in-line primary position.

The primary isn’t just an important part of the national political process, it’s a key part of the Granite State’s economy, bringing in millions of dollars of business into the state. The fact that all four Democrats in the delegation are willing to back bills that endanger it is a telling political development in the Granite State.