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Arlene Quaratiello wasn’t going to give up when she was fired from her assistant librarian job at Raymond’s Dudley-Tucker Library for supporting conservative political candidates.

“You’ve got to fight,” Quaratiello told NHJournal.

Now, thanks to help from the American Center for Law and Justice, Quaratiello scored a major legal victory. The town of Raymond publicly admits to violating her First Amendment rights when it fired her.

“Somebody else might not fight back, but I knew what they did was wrong,” she said.

Arlene Quaratiello

Quaratiello knew that Library Director Kirsten Rundquist Corbett and Raymond Town Manager Ernest Cartier Creveling were wrong when they fired her last year. A Republican state representative in Atkinson, Quaratiello was told she was terminated for supporting conservative candidates in the Atkinson election for library trustees.

“You have not fulfilled the conditions of employment because of your lack of separation of personal/political values and agendas from DTL policies, procedures, and occurrences,” the termination letter stated. 

Quaratiello’s alleged violation of Dudley-Tucker values was to write a letter to the editor in Carriage Towne News supporting Pam Borisko and Christine Latino in their race for Atkinson library trustee. Both Borisko and Latino supported keeping age-inappropriate material away from children.

“They also believe in protecting our children from the increasing amount of inappropriate material available both in print and online without sacrificing the intellectual freedom that has always characterized public libraries,” Quaratiello wrote in her endorsement letter.

Neither Corbett nor current Town Manager Ken Robichaud responded to a request for comment. 

Quaratiello pushed back and kept her job as she looked for an attorney willing to take the case. After several lawyers declined, the ACLJ stepped up. Executive Director Jordan Sekulow said the lawsuit his organization filed is about protecting everyone’s rights.

“Our lawsuit was about protecting the rights of citizens to speak out about the issues that affect all of us and ensuring a conservative voice can still be heard,” Sekulow said.

The Dudley-Tucker Library in Raymond, N.H.

U.S. District Court Judge Andrea Johnstone issued a consent decree Tuesday requiring Raymond and the Dudley-Tucker Library to admit they wronged Quaratiello. They must also take steps to make sure they don’t repeat this treatment with future employees.

“She now has a court order explaining that her rights were violated and providing her explicit, extensive legal protection in case anything similar happens again,” Sekulow said of Quaratiello.

Quaratiello told NHJournal she was offered a lot of money to settle the case. At one point, the town dangled months of salary in exchange for a quiet resignation. But that was never what Quaratiello wanted.

“No one ever said they did anything wrong,” she said of her treatment by town officials.

The idea of any financial settlement made Quaratiello uneasy, as it would ultimately hurt local taxpayers. Instead, she is pleased with the statement from the town admitting wrongdoing.

Manchester Republican Victoria Sullivan had her Twitter account permanently suspended last week after she shared a New Hampshire Journal article about Manchester’s homeless crisis. And she has no idea why.

“If you’re a conservative, especially a conservative woman, they try to silence your voice,” she told NHJournal.

Sullivan, a former state representative and two-time mayoral candidate in Manchester, tweeted NHJournal’s coverage of Mayor Joyce Craig’s ongoing struggle to address the city’s growing homeless crisis. Soon after, Twitter shut down her account.

Sullivan says she does not know why she was suspended. “I am appealing, but they don’t tell you anything,” Sullivan said. “They don’t tell you what Twitter rules were violated.”

Craig was once considered a rising star in the New Hampshire Democratic Party, believed to have her eye on a run for the governor’s office. Amid the crime and homelessness during her tenure, however, many Democrats privately express doubts about a bid for higher office. Last week, Craig and a group of her fellow Democratic mayors wrote Gov. Chris Sununu asking him to deploy the National Guard to address the homelessness plaguing their cities and towns. Critics say it was an attempt to deflect criticism for her mismanagement of the issue.

Sullivan said she is not a heavy Twitter user. On Thursday she retweeted New Hampshire Journal’s article with her own comments, including the demand for Craig to resign. In the days before the suspension, Sullivan also posted videos of Manchester business owners speaking at a public Board of Alderman meeting about the homeless crisis impacting the city.

This is not the first time Sullivan has been banned on Twitter. During her first run for mayor, Sullivan was booted from the platform and unable to get back on despite an appeal. She thinks her photos from the Women’s Self-Defense League family picnic may have triggered someone enough that she was reported.

Sullivan said New Hampshire liberals engage in egregious behavior on the platform without any seeming reprisals from the company. Rep. Maria Perez (D-Milford) was forced to issue an apology in 2021 after she sent a post about Israel widely viewed as anti-Semitic. Rep. Alissandra Rodríguez-Murray, (D-Manchester) referred to Jewish people as termites on the platform last year.  In 2019, New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley retweeted a post that included the “N-word.”

All three are still active on Twitter.

Twitter did not respond to multiple requests for information, including an explanation for Sullivan’s suspension. The phone number listed on the company website does not seem to work and the email address for the Twitter media relations team immediately bounced back.

Twitter’s corporate offices are reportedly in turmoil a few months after the company was bought out by mercurial billionaire Elon Musk for $44 billion. After firing most of the Twitter staff, Musk himself has come under fire for his handling of the social media company.

According to the Associated Press, the company no longer has a media relations team. The AP was seeking comment on its story reporting Twitter is behind on rent payments for the San Francisco headquarters.

Meanwhile, Craig’s struggles to manage Manchester’s homeless crisis continue. The city suffered several high-profile incidents over the Christmas holidays, including the deaths of two homeless people and the birth of a child in freezing temperatures at a homeless encampment. The mother, Alexandra Eckersley, 26, was well known to Manchester authorities. She is the daughter of former Red Sox pitcher and sports commentator Dennis Eckersley.

The baby was naked and struggling to breathe when authorities found him.

Facing political blowback. Craig issued an order to vacate Sunday for the homeless encampment on the corner of Manchester and Pine Streets. “The notice will be posted at 9:00 a.m. on Monday, January 9, 2023, and individuals must vacate themselves and their belongings by 12:00 a.m. on Tuesday, January 17,” according to a statement from the Craig administration.

“At what point does Gov. Sununu decide the state must step in?” Sullivan said in response to the news. “These people will be scattered into our trails, in our neighborhood, and many will die. This is insanity!”