Also on today’s menu:
Resolution Would Block Undeclared Voters From Primaries
Governor Appoints Higher Education Task Force
Mike Johnson Elected Speaker Of The House
Police have identified Robert Card, 40, as a person of interest while the man who shot and killed at least 16 people in Lewiston, Maine, on October 25 remains at large. A shelter-in-place advisory is still in effect at several Maine communities.
Maine Public Safety Commissioner Mike Sauschuck said during a Wednesday night news conference that Card, of Bowdoin, Maine, should be considered armed and dangerous. Card was a firearms instructor who police believe was in the Army Reserve, assigned to a training facility in Saco, Maine. A police bulletin said Card had been committed to a mental health facility for two weeks this past summer after “hearing voices and threats to shoot up” the military base.
Wednesday’s shootings occurred around 7 p.m. in at least two locations: Schemengees Bar and Grille and a bowling alley known as Sparetime Recreation. Two law enforcement officials told the Associated Press that at least 16 people had been killed, but Sauschuck said it was a “fluid situation” and that the total number of deaths was unknown.
State police plan to hold a midmorning news conference today.
Resolution Would Block Undeclared Voters From Primaries
Secretary of State David Scanlan has not acted on a New Hampshire Republican Party resolution initiated by Karen Testerman of Franklin, chair of the Merrimack County Republican Committee, that would prevent the state’s 320,057 undeclared voters from casting ballots in Republican primary elections.
Testerman, who ran unsuccessfully against Governor Chris Sununu in the last two primaries, said state law requires political parties to send a letter of permission to the secretary of state to allow undeclared voters to cash ballots in their primaries. Scanlan has asked for such a letter, which the GOP has not yet provided.
Testerman said Democrats have been encouraging undeclared voters to register as Republicans for the primary in order to vote against former president Donald Trump. “Why do we want somebody from outside making that decision,” she said.
The grassroots Citizens for Belknap issued a press release about the resolution on October 25, saying the GOP was invoking an arcane rule that gives the parties the ability to tell the state who can vote in their party’s primary. “Earlier this year, House Bill 101 proposed requiring voters to register with a party four months before a primary election, but it was killed in committee. In an attempt to bypass the legislature, the new resolution found a loophole in New Hampshire’s statute (659:14), which appears to permit a party to close its primary without legislation,” the release stated.
Al Posnack, co-chair of Citizens for Belknap, said, “[I]ndependent voters in Belknap County and around the state will be outraged by this effort to deny New Hampshire citizens a cherished right which they have held for decades.” Undeclared voters have been able to choose either a Republican or Democratic ballot in primary elections. Voters who declare a party remain with that party unless they change their affiliation back to undeclared.
Governor Appoints Higher Education Task Force
Citing “significant changes in demographic and workforce trends, the expectations of students, and downward pressure on enrollment” that Governor Chris Sununu says require “optimizing public higher education for New Hampshire’s future”, the governor has established the Public Higher Education Task Force to Study the Strategic Alignment of Public Higher Education in New Hampshire.
His executive order states that net revenue has been declining “in both component systems of New Hampshire public higher education since 2018” and that, “while significant and ongoing efforts to find efficiencies and control expenses have yielded results, concerns remain about the long-term sustainability of the current model of public higher education in the state”.
The task force will comprise the governor or his designee; the chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire; the chief administrative officer of the University System of New Hampshire; the commissioner of education or designee; one member of the New Hampshire Senate, appointed by the senate president; one member from each party in the House of Representatives, appointed by the speaker of the House; two members of the Community College System Board of Trustees, appointed by the Chair of the Board of Trustees; two members of the University System Board of Trustees, appointed by the chair of the board; and two representatives of business and industry, appointed by the governor, who also would appoint the task force chair.
The first meeting is to take place within 30 days.
Mike Johnson Elected Speaker Of The House
The United States House of Representatives has elected Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana as its 56th speaker after more than three weeks without a leader. The former chair of the Republican Study Committee was an unknown to many of his fellow representatives, even though he was among those helping to support Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election results, devising a legal theory to justify Trump’s objections and rallying support for a Texas lawsuit that sought to overturn the results in four Biden-won swing states. Johnson also has supported a nationwide abortion ban and fought against gay marriage rights.
In a letter to his Republican colleagues as part of his speakership bid, Johnson said it may be necessary to pass another temporary funding bill to give Congress more time to pass an annual appropriations bill, and said there is a need to negotiate with Democrats in the Senate and the Biden White House, but “from a position of strength”.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said that, going forward, House Democrats will “continue to push back against extremism in this chamber and throughout the country. House Democrats will continue to protect Social Security, protect Medicare, protect Medicaid, protect our children, protect our climate, protect low-income families, protect working families, protect the middle class, protect organized labor, protect the LGBTQ community, protect our veterans, protect older Americans, protect the Affordable Care Act, protect the right to vote, protect the peaceful transfer of power, protect our democracy, and protect a woman's freedom to make her own reproductive health care decision.”
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