Ayotte Dodges Retirees

The NH Alliance for Retired Americans represents some 13, 000 retired NH workers. They've been asking Senator Kelly Ayotte to meet with them for months. She's failed to respond to their repeated requests. 

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter, and Congresswoman Ann Kuster have all met with the NHARA. 

In attempt to create a little awareness of Senator Ayotte's failure to even respond to the NHARA, I put out a couple of tweets today, asking why she's afraid to meet with them. 

That led to State Representative Leon Rideout  deciding to insert himself into the mix: 

Sadly, poor Leon doesn't seem to grasp the difference between a town hall meeting and a constituent meeting. Even more sadly, he wasn't smart enough to leave out the reference to special interests. 

Saddest of all, when I confronted him about it - he just didn't get it.   That was when he started speaking in vowels. 

At Open Secrets I took a look at PAC donations that Senator Ayotte has received thus far for 2014:

That list is broken down into the top 20 PACS:

Number 11 on the top 20 list is weapons manufacturer BAE systems, which doesn't only have a special interest PAC, they have a NH location. And Kelly Ayotte has been there to meet with them!

NASHUA – U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-NH, is visiting the area Wednesday, as part of a three-stop tour to push the passage of recent legislation designed to halt proposed cuts to the U.S. military budget.

Ayotte, who helped write the legislation called Down Payment to Protect National Security Act, is scheduled for a 2 p.m. press conference at BAE Systems, 65 Spit Brook Road. She is also scheduled to visit Nanocomp Technologies in Merrimack and Raytheon in Andover, Mass., which includes 1,200 New Hampshire residents on its workforce.

That was February 22, 2012. Apparently SOME special interest groups are perfectly okay to meet with. Especially if they have big money to fill the campaign coffers of our very ambitious US Senator.  Those retirees of the NH ARA can't hope to compete with the PAC $$ from a weapons manufacturer. 

If churlish Leon Rideout hadn't decided to twitterstalk me, I'd wouldn't have taken this little journey into the land of special interests. Defense contractors are Senator Ayotte's 4th largest source of campaign funds. 

NH's retirees can't begin to compete with the kind of access that all that money can buy. BAE was awarded a $7 billion dollar contract in November of 2012. That austerity/sequester thing didn't hurt the Pentagon. It hurt real people - like the retirees that Ayotte is dodging.