Bill Kennedy - Legitimate Candidate?

Bill Kennedy is a candidate for governor of NH. He's running as a Democrat. He's raised a little over $5000, most of it contributed by either himself or relatives. He has no staff, no volunteers. His website is a joke. I signed up for his email list on August 24. There have been no emails. The NH primary is in 4 days. I'm getting plenty of emails from other candidates. Hell, I get 3 emails a day from the NH Romney campaign, and I'm hardly a likely Romney voter.

Despite a complete lack of money and organization, Kennedy has been regarded as a serious candidate - getting just as much on air time during the recent WMUR debate as Senator's Cilley and Hassan. The NHDP and their minions have treated Kennedy as if he were a serious candidate.

There are a lot of curious aspects to the Kennedy campaign. For starters, he doesn't sound much like a Democrat. He's in favor of a flat income tax. He's in favor of a 24 hour waiting period for abortions, since he also thinks that women are frequently coerced into having them.

Kennedy's website In his lengthy bio, which is long on military service and short on anything else is this statement:

Kennedy is a self proclaimed “Centrist” who entered the race after carefully reviewing the other candidates and their positions; realizing the current candidates were too far left and right.

So, Hassan and Cilley represent the right and the left? Or is he including the Republicans here, too? It's hard to tell, because nothing Kennedy says indicates any connection to the Democratic Party.

He does have signs, apparently, and a lot of them in the seacoast area, which is where he's originally from, and where his family members live. I haven't seen a Kennedy sign anywhere in Carroll County. Apparently that's what he's putting his $5000+ in campaign funds into.

Here's some detail from one of his signs:




The victory store looks like any other site that sells campaign merchandise. Google "cheap campaign signs" and you'll get pages and pages of these sites, as I discovered. One thing I didn't get, however, in the first 6 pages that came up, was the Victory Store. At the bottom of the Victory Store's website is this:

© Copyright Victory Enterprises, Inc., 2001.
Victory Enterprises provide all sorts of services for campaigns, corporations, and special interest groups. They have a lengthy
client list. A sampling from their candidate list:

Arkansas Republican Party
Illinois Republican Party
Indiana Republican Party
Republican Party of Iowa
Missouri Republican Party
Nebraska Republican Party
Legislative Majority Fund, IA
Indiana HRCC
Missouri HRCC
Connecticut HRCC
Tommy Thompson for President
Steve Forbes for President

Their interest group list is comprised of groups like the Heartland Institute, a GOP/libertarian think tank concerned with proving climate change is bogus, amongst other things. On their front page is a trailer for "Atlas Shrugged Pt. II. Another satisfied Victory Enterprises customer are the Concerned Women for America a religious right organization with an anti-choice and anti gay agenda.

It's curious that a Democrat would pick this sign company. It's even more curious that a Democrat who claims to be a believer in equality would do business with this company.

As anyone who has any familiarity with the workings of the NHDP is aware, they HATE primaries. The NHDP hierarchy would prefer to choose candidates for higher office, anoint them, and pass them along to the grassroots without any troublesome challengers cropping up. The NHDP wasn't at all happy in 2006, when grassroots activist Carol Shea-Porter challenged the chosen party candidate, former State Representative Jim Craig.

The NHDP hasn't come right out and endorsed gubernatorial candidate Maggie Hassan, but they may as well have, since the entire staff and former chair are all Hassan supporters. And perhaps that's why they and other Hassan supporters have treated Bill Kennedy as if he were a serious candidate, because they're hoping he'll take votes away from Jackie Cilley. The Democratic Party as a whole certainly doesn't take every candidate seriously, as I know all too well, as a former Kucinich staffer.

I don't mean to imply that Kennedy is some kind of put up job on the part of the Hassan campaign. This is a campaign that's raised and spent nearly a million dollars and is still running neck and neck with Jackie Cilley's grassroots shoestring campaign. If they were behind Kennedy, some of that million would have been funneled to him, to make him a legitimate, credible candidate.

Same thing for the GOP. If he were a Trojan Horse candidate for the GOP, it seems as if they'd have given him enough money to make him a real candidate.

Or maybe not. Maybe the goal here is just to siphon votes away from Cilley, to ensure a Hassan win. The GOP is hoping for a Hassan victory. Maybe Kennedy is just an egomaniac who decided there needed to be a man in the race. Given his patriarchal leanings, that's entirely possible. Maybe this is all just bizarre coincidence.

To borrow an old time north country phrase: "hard sayin' not knowin'."



thefreedictionary.com
spec·u·la·tion (spky-lshn)
n.
a. Contemplation or consideration of a subject; meditation.
b. A conclusion, opinion, or theory reached by conjecture.
c. Reasoning based on inconclusive evidence; conjecture or supposition.