Porcupine Report #126: “What Happened in the New Hampshire Primaries with Rep. Michael Granger”

0:00Liberty in our lifetimes in a free state of our own. That's the vision, that's the dream, we are building it in New Hampshire. I'm Eric Breake, your host and renegade statesman for the Porcupine Report. Welcome to your source for Porcupine News and free range conversation on matters of Liberty. Alright, let's hop into the show. Hey there, all you porky pines. You, this is your host, your renegade statesman, your executive director of the New Hampshire Free State Project. Eric Breake come into you for episode 126 of the Porcupine Report. First, let me tell you about a couple of things that you probably want to know about. The first thing is mark your calendar and get your tickets for October 17th, our second annual granite freedom trek. We are climbing Mount Pierce and I want you to join us.

1:02Last year we had a great crew come out, folks from in New Hampshire, folks from outside New Hampshire, a mix of visitors and active participants in the free state project. And we're doing it again. It's going to be a great day. You climb the mountain with us and then when we get down we're all going to go and have a feast. So mark your calendar, get your ticket, fsp.org slash trek and come climb a mountain with us. And I also want to tell you about, look, we've got more and more products that we are repopulating our free state project merchandise shop, which you can find on the website. Actually, the link right now to get there is community.fsp.org slash shop. And I'm just going to show you two things that you can get there. One is our new mug, our spontaneous flowering porcupine mug by our local resident artist in our free state movement, Franklin. He was inspired by the spontaneous order of pork fest this

2:06year and created this mug. And you can get one for yourself at the fsp shop. So go ahead and buy one and it's great for your porcupine coffee roasting when you use those folks or whatever you like to drink. And also on the shop and on amazon.com you can get my book, the Liberty Canada's practical guide to door knocking is a very short book, very practical for anyone out there who is running for local office or supporting someone who is. This is my 13 rule system that I built over my very successful career in state politics in Maine, winning three times a very, very competitive state senate seat when I was an underdog. And the first time I wasn't even supposed to win. Anyway, I codified it all and I'm passing it on to Liberty Canada's particularly New Hampshire, but around the country, if you're running for local office, you can benefit from this book. So it's available for just

3:09$10. You can get it on amazon.com or you can get it at the fsp shop. So there's just a few things you'll find and there's other things you'll find at the fsp shop when you check it out. I also want to say thank you to our porcupine patrons. We have well over 300 porcupine patrons. And getting off the Tom Woods cruise, I just got confirmation that Tom is renewing himself as a porcupine patron for this year. And I'd love it if you would be a porcupine patron. Our porcupine patrons help make possible our entire year round mission with the free state project as we work to promote outreach, invite, welcome and engage with folks every step along the way of our pipeline from out in the Liberty diaspora to here in New Hampshire as folks learn, connect, visit, move, and build. We can't do it without our patrons. We depend on our patrons and you can become a patron too. For just $10 a month, that's our entry level, our granite level patron membership.

4:11For $10 a month, you can be a patron. So sign up at fsp.org slash give and we got plenty of benefits that scale as your patron level goes up, including access to our porcupine patron signal group, which a lot of people like to have access to is a great community there and many other benefits you can see on the website. So thank you to our patrons and become a patron at fsp.org slash give. It's tax deductible by the way. All right, those are the things I want to say. And by the way, this is a rare episode because we're doing it live. So if you're watching, you know, if you're watching in that that seven o'clock Wednesday broadcast hour, usually we're doing a pre-recorded episode that we are, you know, a broadcastiant at that point in time. But this episode we are doing live partly because we're talking about the primary election results that took place that that we just got from primary day yesterday in New Hampshire. And we want to have a little bit of

5:16time to, you know, make sure the results came in and have some time to digest, you know, what, what what exactly happened. And we're going to be talking about that in a little bit with my guest. I did also want to mention be sure to keep your eyes open on free state projects, social media channels where we broadcast this show, right? Every Wednesday at seven, the porcupine report, but you're going to start to see more and more. We're testing out more content. So in that same seven o'clock hour on on weekday nights, you will start to see more content from more creators, existing podcasters out there in the free state extended network. We've been working out agreements to re to broadcast their content on our channels. So you're going to start to see more offerings of content from us at the free state project. So keep your eyes open. We're still tweaking and experimenting with this before we formalize, you know, a formal schedule. So who knows what you'll find the next couple days

6:17or next couple weeks? Be sure to tune in. Most week nights at seven as we get our schedule together. All right, let's hop into the conversation we're going to have today. And let's welcome back a multi-time guest to this program. I've lost count actually how many times he's been a guest. Yeah, I don't know, maybe close to half a dozen, maybe a little less than that. Anyway, if it's not there yet, we're getting there. He's one of the people we tend to go to for insights of what's happening at the state house in New Hampshire. And now the state house is, you know, they're out of session, thankfully. Well, actually, I like it when the legislator's in session in New Hampshire. It's the only legislature in the country that I know of where the people's liberties expand rather than contract when the legislator's in session. But of course, a lot of that continuing to go that way rides a lot on what's going to happen in these upcoming, I know, Vember elections. And I will say, you know, with so many Liberty folks getting elected as Republicans,

7:18I get a little heartburn when I see just how badly the Republicans on the national level under Donald Trump are screwing up on so many of the things that I care about. And I certainly hope that that doesn't cause blowback on the great Liberty candidates here in New Hampshire. So people are working very hard to fight to, you know, make sure Liberty continues advancing in New Hampshire. And we're going to talk to Representative Michael Granger about what just happened last night in the New Hampshire primaries. And what it might spell for the November upcoming general election. And as we get into this conversation, let me simply put in my disclosure that the Free State Project is a 501C3 educational nonprofit organization and does not endorse or get involved in direct electoral politics. This is just commentary between me and Representative Granger. And it does not necessarily reflect the views of the Free State Project as a whole organization. I'm just speaking

8:20for myself. So let's get that disclosure. So now that's out of the way. Let's welcome to the show Representative Michael Granger. Hello, thanks for having me again. Hello, well, I'm glad to have you back. And I see that you're in the in the governor's office. And for some reason it is consuming the the headphones that are around your head. But yeah, starker now, it might not be necessary. But I decided I wouldn't change plans because this is live. Yes, yes, yes. Well, we're going to have you. And if you want to, you know, I'm sure some regular watchers of the show are familiar with you, Representative Granger, but some are not. So would you want to take a moment to introduce yourself? My name is Representative Michael Granger. I represent Straford District 2, which includes Rochester Ward 5, Milton West Milton and Milton Mills. And I am a that means I serve in the New Hampshire legislature, which is sort of like Congress, except at the state level. So if you think about you have

9:22your congressmen, you know, like whoever you like up there, same thing, state level legislature. Is it possible to like anyone up there? Yeah, Thomas Massey was okay. Well, I mean, yeah, but he's on his way out. So it's like, there's no more. Yeah, we'll figure out. I mean, I like my state legislators a lot better. So I'm just saying, you know, it's a shame. It's shame to have to compare yourself to that to those scounders. People know what they are. Yeah. But basically, it's a fun job. And what brings me what makes me sort of somewhat important, I suppose, if you want to put it that way is I found it the Liberty Caucus here in New Hampshire. And so the Liberty Caucus is the largest unofficial caucus in the New Hampshire House. And if it is a partisan issue and the Liberty Caucus doesn't like it, then it doesn't pass. It's that simple. That doesn't mean that everything we like always passes because if the Liberty Caucus likes something and the non Liberty Caucus Republicans don't, then it dies. That's just the way the math works out. We're looking, this was a

10:27very important primary day yesterday because primary season for those who weren't aware is the season when we determine who goes on the ballot in November. So you have your elections in November. You can vote for all these positions. But in order to figure out who ends up on that ballot, you have to have a primary election. So let's say there's two people and they're trying to get to the same spot. They need to have a primary election in order to figure out which one of them gets there. So that is the primary primary. That is the main way that the Liberty Caucus and its Solid Liberty Representatives work to improve our team in election season is we need to win those primary elections. And we didn't do too bad yesterday. Well good. So I do think that we probably should get out of the way the obligatory stuff that the media tends to talk about, which is the big federal races that are going on. Though I will say up front, I'm far less interested in them than I am. What's actually happening in the state legislature, I think that actually affects

11:32my life a lot more. And also has an impact on the future progress of the free state movement. And whether New Hampshire is the live for your die state and continues to be so. Or if those who want to change the state motto and turn us into just another progressive fashion of just like every other state in New England, where things go from there. So anyway, so we're going to make sure we spend time considerable amount time on state legislature. But let's go over the federal races very quickly. I know you had the US Senate race, two congressional races, Republicans, these were contested on on on all sides for the Republican nominations and the Democratic nominations. And now those are settled. We can start with the US Senate race. John Sennu knew pretty pretty handling with almost I think it was less than I saw 69% of the vote.

12:38I'm very immature thought just occurred to me. I won't say it out well. It was 68%. So you don't need to. All right, all right. Almost almost 70% of the vote. There we go. So pretty pretty handling Johnston, Johnson, new new former US Senator from New Hampshire. I guess he served in like the Bush era. He was he was one of the best senators during that time period. So I know my crowd. I'm not going to be saying this on the campaign trail. But the Liberty people would love to hear it. One, he was one of the biggest obstacles in the Republican side of things right after 9-11 on the Patriot Act. He pushed very, very hard against the passage of the original Patriot Act and they had to make give him major concessions right after 9-11. So anybody who was alive at that time remembers how crazy that time period was and how much flack you had to take if you were going to be standing in front of the Patriot Act. But he did. And he also pushed pretty strongly towards privatizing social or having a private option for social security.

13:41And I know that's not the most popular thing to talk about right now because a lot of people really depend on social security. But I know that the younger people that are having trouble with social security payments, a lot of them know that they're probably never going to get a dime of social security. So when it comes to the federal candidates, I am actually very, very happy with Johnson, new new. I endorsed him almost immediately. I kind of knew he was going to be running before he actually announced it. But so I had time to do all the math and stuff. But this is the ideal situation in that Senate race. From my perspective, now I understand the Free State Project, 501C3 Educational Organization. They don't have an opinion on such things. But as a Republican, I'm a big fan of John Sanunu. Scott Brown, who is in second place, he would have been okay, but his voting record was not nearly as good as John Sanunu. So this, in my opinion, is a very strong victory for liberty. And I feel like perhaps I should just say, you know, on my own behalf and the interest of disclosure, I almost thought about not showing up to vote yesterday. House,

14:43there were not another state legislative races that really excite me where we're really, you know, I'm in Dover. So, you know, there wasn't even a Republican running in my district for for for for state house because it's such a heavy Democrat area. And, and, and I was not going to run for it. But, but I did show up and vote. And, and I decided kind of last minute to, to I did cast my vote for John Sanunu. And what was the deciding factor for me? First of all, I will say I did think that Scott Brown was hustling a lot more. And I think that he deserved some credit for that. Scott Brown did come to speak at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum, which, which I really appreciate it. And he just seemed to be like really on the ground trying to, you know, meet people. And I really respect and appreciate that hustle as someone who's had to do it before in a US Senate race. I really, I really respect that. What, though, I will say I'm not an enthusiastic Sanunu person. I'm, I'm, I'm still kind of like up up in the air personally for

15:45the general election. What I'm going to do. But I felt like between the two of them, I, I, I just was, Brown had a lot more of a hawkish hawkish rhetoric on the war in Iran. And, and Sanunu seemed at least a little more reserved on that. And that's big, big deciding issue for me. So between the two of them, that's, that's how I made my decision. But, but I will say I'm, and I've expressed this in public places before I am reluctant about, you know, I'm committed to supporting myself personally committed to supporting the Republican ticket on the state level here in New Hampshire. But I am reluctant about supporting the Republicans on the national level if, because of what the national Republicans did to Thomas Massey. And because of the Trump administrations, kind of selling us out on the war in Iran and with, with other issues as, as, as well. And, and I guess I'd like to see something tangible that, that, where being offered for

16:52our support, like, like a pardon for Ian Freeman, which I know that many here in New Hampshire have been, have been pushing for, you know, the, you know, I don't, I kind of don't want to be kicked in the teeth and then say, you know, well, I'm going to be on the back of the bus no matter what. I don't know. What do you have to say to that representative, Granger? I think that for many reasons, it's important. So when you talk to people who may be thinking about moving to New Hampshire, one of the things that is often a stopper is they look at Maggie Goodlander and go, why would I move to that state? So they're, so, well, if Lily, in the Lily Tang Williams race, Lily won the second district to go against Maggie Goodlander. I think, you know, you know, whatever the national Republicans did or didn't do, like I'd be lining up to vote for Lily Tang Williams no matter what because she is, I'm confident for the most part, you know, pretty much in line with my principles and values. Whereas, oh yeah. And she, and she absolutely

17:54wrecked that primary, by the way. Yeah, I heard people questioning whether she was going to and it was kind of, I guess, I kind of knew it. Yeah. So that one was a little obvious to me. And so you can kind of tell where the minds of the candidates are based on their actions. So Victor Orlando was her main primary challenger. All right. And once I let me get US house, I get the numbers. I got the numbers here so I can reference them. So Victor Orlando was seeking endorsements by union organizations before the election. But he wasn't doing it early when he announced he was doing it later in the day. That tells me something. That means he must have been figuring out that he had no chance. And that's the only way, and he must have made some serious concessions in order to get, in order for a Republican to get union nominate or endorsements. So I kind of knew that Orlando knew that he wasn't going to win. And at the end of the day,

18:54a candidate that nobody has heard of, Dan Nicholson, got more votes than Victor Orlando did. I didn't even know there was a Dan Nicholson in the race. He didn't show up to any of the events. I still don't know who he is, but Victor Orlando got out competed by somebody that most people didn't even know was in the race. So Lily Tang had a very commandingly, she got 65% of the vote. And the rest was split among three additional candidates, only one of whom I know about. That's because her message resonates with the New Hampshire people. The culture here is such that if you have a message of liberty, of live free or die, people here, they don't just take that as a state slogan. They mean it. And that's why she's she's a good candidate for this area. Well, and that's certainly I think will be a very exciting race for us all to watch here in New Hampshire, but also I think anyone who has a stake in the cause of liberty around the country, I think certainly in the last election cycle, Lily really kind of blew up towards the end,

19:57maybe a little too late, starting to catch kind of national attention with her amazing story, her amazing way of, some people say that she's obviously she is a she immigrated to the US from China. She's an adamant staunch opponent of the Chinese Communist government. And she calls them out every opportunity. And she doesn't want to see the United States kind of threaten that path. And I think that very connects now. Some people say, well, she doesn't speak perfect English. And you know, are people going to vote? I actually think that's a bit of her superpower because one, it reinforces kind of her story and two, it makes you lean in and really listen to her. Yeah, that's good point. And also she considering that she has English as a second language and she has a she has a very strong accent. She's a very strong order. There's no confusion about what she's talking about if you're listening to her. It's very clear what she's talking about. And she makes the points very direct succinctly. Yes. And that's nice. She doesn't

21:04so it's simultaneously. She represents humility while also being very boisterous. And I like that about her quite a bit. Yeah. Well, let me ask you about the congressional race here in the first district that you and I live in. And the guy who won, I'm trying to remember his name Anthony DeLorenzo. Anthony DeLorenzo. I didn't vote for him. I think I only met two of the candidates and met him and I met Brian Cole. I voted for Brian Cole. I think I don't know Brian Cole too well, but I met him at a thing. He seemed to be somewhat good on freedom issues. And DeLorenzo, I heard him talk at a thing and it just seemed like, you know, you seem like a very successful businessman. I'll give him credit. You know, that's, I guess he built car dealerships, but I wasn't, I don't know, I wasn't convinced that there was a very strong underlying principle to ideology there. What, what, I'm sorry, my puppy just ran into the room. Can I see it? No, no. Anyway, my wife is taking care of her. Okay, definitely. Anyway. So, but anyway, so that's my bias on

22:13this. I didn't vote for him. Maybe I will in the general election. I don't know. I'm undecided at this point in time. And to be clear, I wouldn't vote for the Democrat. Maybe I'd, maybe I'd write someone in if I wasn't, because it's certain that it was sending the message that would lead to a liberty outcome. I imagine you probably, you know, you're, you're kind of strong team R. Like, what, what do you have to say about about about about, uh, uh, I feel the red zone. I didn't endorse in the CD one. I endorsed in CD two. I was really saying because he's awesome. I endorsed for Senate because, you know, I like Johnson, who knows, gray. Um, CD one was a lot more mysterious to me. Um, there's a bit of a bubble among Republican legislators where we saw Brian Cole more frequently. And we saw him campaigning more because he was a state legislator. And so it looked, it looked to us like he was going to get at least second place, but he ended up being in third. And it wasn't,

23:14it wasn't close. He only got seven, he got just shy of 8,000 votes. Whereas Anthony D. Lorenzo got just shy of 30,000 votes. Do you think it was the Trump endorsement? Uh, that was kind of the big, the big fact that race, yeah, almost definitely. I mean, imagine when you don't really know the candidates very well. And if people have kind of just party loyalty to the president, uh, that probably does carry a lot of weight, even for folks, you know, I wouldn't carry any weight with me. Yeah. I had to pass the Trump endorsement to, uh, to vote for Sanu Nu. You know, he likes to pick winners, doesn't he? Yeah. At the end of the day, I think Anthony D. Lorenzo will be fine. Um, I don't see anything really, really wrong with him. Um, he doesn't have a voting record though. So we wouldn't be able to know. He has won the election. And I'm perfectly happy with that because the alternatives, uh, he beat them in a race. So that means he's more electable. Hmm. That's how my logic works. Although I will say of the three federal candidates that

24:16we're talking about, he is the one that I'm least excited about. Well, I will probably, uh, be making a decision on what I'm doing, uh, in, uh, in that race as well as the, uh, the US Senate race based on whether or not there is a pardon coming from in the second congressional district. Mm-hmm. I would be voting for lily-ten Williams without a doubt no matter what the circumstances. But anyway, that, those are the federal races that, uh, we're obliged to talk about because that's, that's what, uh, you know, that's what everyone focuses on. Anything more you want to say on the federal races before we move on to the, the really important stuff, the stuff that's going to actually affect our lives. I think that it's very important that New Hampshire be read at the federal level in order to, uh, demographically adjust the voting populace of the state towards a solid liberty majority more permanently. I, I, I, I, I definitely see that point and others have made it to me and I think it's a pretty strong point that, um, uh, certainly I hear that a lot and we say, you know, we're,

25:21it's number one state for freedom in America and people, a lot of people on the outside, they only see kind of the blue federal delegation and they don't understand that on the state level. It's all red house executive council. They don't even know what an executive council is. You know, it's not really the only state with an executive council. Yeah. Kind of weird. Uh, I think if you talk to people on the subject, if a lot of them that is a hang up, but if you look at the people who are moving and who they register with party wise, we're an R plus four when it comes to new movers. Yeah, I know that in migration to New Hampshire, there's definitely making New Hampshire more red and I hope it's more liberty red. Yes, because if it is defenitio and and and it is true and I kind of wish it was otherwise, but like all politically speaking, right? Um, I'd say the general free state movement is very politically and culturally diverse in terms of, you know, culture issues and there are many

26:22free stateers who maybe are more aligned with, you know, maybe the Democrat kind of cultural issues. And but the Democratic Party, um, seems to have a very strong immune response to liberty. Uh, and the first free state elected the legislature was elected as a Democrat and they ran them out and others who have tried to run as Democrats have generally been kind of rooted out and run out. I've heard that maybe maybe there were some free stateers who won primaries in the Democrat primary. They were several running, but I won't say who will let the Democrats figure out, uh, you know, who amongst them are the are the traders they need to have a witch hunt against. Those days just all start. I would never, uh, I would never work with any Democrat, um, if they claiming to be a liberty person. Like that doesn't, that doesn't seem real. I would be skeptical of that. But, but for the most part since 2010, since the Tea Party wave,

27:24the political victories for liberty and New Hampshire have come through the Republican Party. So we are in a position where kind of all our eggs are in one basket and we're kind of a purple state. So, uh, you know, there is kind of the concern about about the swing and I, I certainly personally will be concerned. I don't want to see the House Republicans lose the majority. I want the House Republicans stay in the majority because that's, I mean, it's like a liberty Republican majority within that, within that caucus. Um, and until such a time that more liberty Democrats get elected, then I don't want, I don't want that party in power in state government. Um, uh, but, um, what do you see based on, you know, I guess first of all, we could look at, you know, as far as the legislature goes, um, the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, which is a, um, you know, distinct and separate from the free state project, but we're very much kind of aligned in some broader vision and mission. Um, there's a great kind of, you know, volunteer led citizen

28:29lobby, lobbying organization and they endorse something like 45 candidates in, uh, uh, yeah, the primaries in the primaries in these, in these House, in the House and Senate races. Um, what, what do you see? How, how did, uh, the NHL, like candidates do? Most of them did pretty good. Um, I will say that we had a lot of interesting results in the primaries. If you go just west of where I live, you will reach the town of Farmington and Farmington had three people vying for two seats and two of them tied for second place. And that would be Sue Delamis and Andy Dow. So that means that if you were a Liberty person in Farmington and you voted for one of those, you would have broken a tie and you personally would have chosen who won that primary. And so in that specific race, and this isn't, this isn't unusual in New Hampshire. What are they going to do? Flip a coin? They are. That's actually the state, they have to do,

29:33they have to draw lots of some sort. The Secretary of State determines how they, they break that tie because if it's, if you have to have two people on the ballot, if you have three people on the ballot and you're splitting the vote and then you're going to lose. So, yeah, mathematically, you have to have exactly two. Um, so we'll see exactly how that goes. And it reminds me of not very long go, just south of me in Rochester Ward four. So I represent Rochester Ward five, but just south of me in Rochester Ward four, uh, about four years ago, we had a straight tie between, in the general and that was between Chuck Crassi and Dave Walker. All right, Rochester's a big city by New Hampshire. Stan it's, it's a big city. You know, this is, this is not a small race and it was dead drawn. And they had to do several recounts and it was always a tie every time. And eventually they had to do a special election because that was actually a matter of the legislature because at the time, the house was also tied. Um, I think the Republicans had uh, 202 to 198. So basically, who was in the lead

30:39that day, depending on who showed up. Um, so we didn't have the votes at the time to just seat Dave Walker, which I guess is something that we theoretically could have done. Um, but that, that goes to show that it is incredibly important that if you live in New Hampshire, you are involved civically. One is the state's sport. So you'll have a lot of fun. Two, you'll meet all your neighbors and they all love talking about politics because New Hampshire's favorite sport. And three, you will make a difference. It will make a difference. Well, um, it is a good reminder, you know, it's, it's nice to uh, it's nice to live in a state where your vote matters. It does count. And uh, and certainly um, you know, vote for vote. Your vote matters a lot more for US Senate than it does in a state like Texas or California or New York, right? Um, not only a real small state, but we're a swing state. So it really matters. And these and and for these state legislative districts, um, they

31:43are, they're, they're so tiny. Uh, you, it's the most rep, it's like the most representative legislative body. Uh, you guys actually are the House of Representatives. You actually do represent, you know, you're very representative of of very small constituencies. Um, and um, that means that, uh, you know, you, you, you, you, maybe my vote doesn't make a difference for for state, rep and and dover where it's, it's pretty, pretty kind of, you know, uh, Democrat area. But, uh, but, but, but there are so many areas that are, are swing areas where you could really be the deciding vote. And um, not just in the primaries, but boy, in this, in this upcoming general election that could be a big impact on kind of the future that your director in the state. I think it's very interesting to go around and watch, right? It seems like the Democrat progressive activists, they aren't campaigning against the Republican Party. They're campaigning against the free state project, right? They're accusing it's capitalism. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's true. They are embracing,

32:44they're both, um, but it's funny to go around the state and kind of see the anti-free state project signs that they have, they have going around and their attempts to label every Republican as a free stator, which I guess is good for brand recognition. You want to hear something crazy? What's that? I have been accused of being a free stator by exactly one person. And that was Sam Farrington, who's the Republican representative out of Rochester ward four. I have never once been accused by, by any progressive or Democrat of being a free stator. You know who has Liz Barber, who's like very normal Republican, has been accused of being a free stator. Uh, Judy Aaron, the chair of environment and agriculture, who is very concerned about the pollution in the lakes, and all that stuff has been accused of being a free stator. They do not seem to have any, Liberty doesn't, Liberty alignment doesn't seem to have anything to do with their calculus here.

33:46They seem to just call people free stators when they think it will help in that specific district of getting them to lose so a Democrat can win. And you know, what, how strange it is that they think throwing compliments around like that are going to hurt people. Well, they're all socialists and they're they're selling themselves on socialism now. Well, it's actually, so I think this is interesting development. We'll see how it shakes out in the general. But the Democrats nationally have sort of embraced democratic socialism. As though, you know, socialism being democratic is better than any other form of socialism, or that socialism has ever promised anything other than being democratic when it's totally autocratic at the end of the day. We have actual democratic socialist winning governor races in New York City. And they're, they got the branding with the shaking hands and the flowers and the fists and all that. And most independent voters, the undeclared, they're used to Republicans going out and saying, hey, you know, the enemy, they're all, you know, those guys over there, the bad guys, they're all communists and socialist. And it sort of

34:50gets tuned out by a lot of independence. I don't know if that'll be the case once the independence start noticing that all the Democrats are calling themselves socialists. One third of the democratic primary voters voted for an out and out democratic socialist to be the senate candidate for the Democrats. So I don't know how this is going to work out in the long run. It's, you know, the general is a very far way, long way away. But it just seems to me strange that we're, it looks as though we're going to have a general election that is determined by whether you prefer free standards who love liberty or socialists. They set the match. We'll see what happens. It will be, this is going to be, or I think this election will be a real test. I imagine it's going to be very close too. I mean, it, it, well, it's interesting to watch the dynamics, right? You have on the one hand, you have just totally abysmal decision making on the national level by

35:52Donald, the Trump administration and all the Republicans he's dragging along with it. Though, you know, national Republicans in general don't need Donald Trump's help to do the wrong thing. But they're, but they're fracturing the coalition. They're dragging everything down. And yet, at the same time in New Hampshire, we have a different brand of republicanism that is being built here that's much more grounded in real liberty. And at the same time, you have the actual political demographic shift of all the in migration that's coming in that the free state project has played a significant role in. But, but also I think the branding of New Hampshire is the free state, the lone free state in all in New England is is drawing in people from Vermont and Maine and Massachusetts and other states where, you know, liberty is, is, is not on the table. And so the state is shifting politically and I think this will be a test to see, does that unique republican brand that has been built here on the on the New Hampshire level? Does that, does that

36:57underline political demographic shift? Is that enough to compensate for what maybe a bad year for republicans around the country can New Hampshire still prevail? What do you think that's a correct framing to look at it? I sure hope we can. Nothing, nothing happens, nothing happens on its own, right? It depends on what people do. Right. And the thing, the thing with people is there's a lot of them. And a lot of things can happen. And one thing I've learned in the house is, so a lot of people have this idea that policy decisions of large groups are made primarily by them thinking about it, especially if they're legislators, right? So you have all these legislators in a room, they have a series of bills, they think about whether or not they agree or disagree with the content of the bill and they look at the language of the bill and they use their experience to determine whether or not that bill is trustworthy or not. That's, that's a common conception of how a lot of legislators make decisions. There's another conception, more popular among liberty crowd

38:01people, that they mostly just go off of whoever pays them more. So I'm just going to nicks that, no, none of us are in the, in the politics game for money here in New Hampshire. There's no way to do it, we're all broke unless we're independently wealthy beforehand. But I digress. A lot of it is actually the animal spirits. And I don't mean that in a mystical mystical sort of woo woo spiritual sense. I mean it in the psychology of crowds is often determined in sort of an emotional way, right? And so if something happens directly before the election, that will change the results of the election, right? A lot of times a successful motion in the New Hampshire House passes or fails based on the bill that came before it and how that went. And you can, if you keep in mind the animal spirits, you'll have a lot more success when you're trying to win motions because you'll know, because the animal spirits actually do change things up. And it sounds weird and it sounds strange,

39:05but it's true. And so whether New Hampshire wins or loses in this election, whether or not we have a stronger majority or a smaller one or we lose the house, gosh forbid, it all, a lot of it will actually depend on the animal spirits, but you can't control the animal spirits. But what you can do is you can knock a lot of doors. If you knock a lot of doors, you can win elections because the doors actually do win wars. The animal spirits may slip things around a little bit, but the doors are sort of think about them as an insurance policy. It increases, it drastically increases your chances of surviving any ill effects of a hurricane coming by or some terrible thing. So candidate invades or whatever. If you, as a candidate, establish personal relationships with your voters, which you can do when you go door to door and you meet them face to face and you talk with them

40:06and you follow up with them as I lay out in my book, which you know, I appreciate you, you've purchased a number of copies and you've been distributing them to Republican candidates. In one state, thank you. It is. Thank you for the endorsement. People should buy it on Amazon.com for 10 bucks or on the FSP shop, which will just send you to Amazon.com to get it for 10 bucks. So, but that is like that's the power that can override individual partisan sentiments. Exactly. Because if people don't like Donald Trump, they might like you. Exactly. And they might be voting, you know, other ways and other races, but they know you, you came to their door, you complimented their flowers and met their dog and you seem like someone who listens to them. And when it when it's needed to, I just had another puppy walk in the room. Anyway, these puppies are after me, but that is and actually meeting people's dogs is a good way

41:12to win their vote. Then that's that can override kind of someone's partisan mood and how they might be voting in other races. And if everybody does that, right? So politics isn't a one man's sport. Right. So we took the example of Thomas Massey earlier. Thomas Massey was a great legislator, but was he an effective legislator? Did he accomplish his agenda very much? I think so. He got the Epstein files out there. I think it's one of the most effective. He got some things. Yeah, one of the most effective legislative moves I've ever seen. I'll give him credit for a lot actually. But he can't do anything on his own. He needs to have votes behind him. You need a majority to accomplish anything. Right. You need a in New Hampshire, you need at least 10 people to second emotion in order to roll call a vote. Right. So that means that if you're the only person in that room who won your election, who knocked on the doors and won and requested the roll call, nobody else wants to do it. You're you're not

42:17going to get a roll call. Sorry. So it's not just you that needs to get to knock on the doors. You need to get all the other people to knock on doors too. And a lot of them have jobs and they have families and they have other things to do. And any help that people can provide in that front will make a difference. Yeah. Well, and you're out there at least giving people a good book to help them along and encourage them to to do the doors. And I knocked doors to it. Actually, knocking doors is one of those things where you when you start out, you're like, I don't want to do it. But you make yourself do it. And then three doors later, you're just having a blast. Yeah. So much fun. Yeah. Well, the one race, I guess the one big race we haven't really spoken about is is the governor's race. I think she's going to win. You think what's her name? Warmington? You think she's going to win? No, I think Kelly A.O. it's going to win. I figured, you know, I don't know. There doesn't seem to be a lot of enthusiasm around Warmington. And is that her name?

43:23I don't even know. Yeah. So in general, Democrats pulled more ballots for this primaries and Republicans did because their primary was a lot more heated than our primaries. We're considering CD one. Yeah. But Kelly A.O. still got more primary votes than Cindy Warmington did. And also the signs they have up here are very effective. For those who haven't seen it, who haven't been driving around New Hampshire, the anti-Sindy Warmington signs, just say, Cindy Warmington opioid lobbyist. That's the only thing I know about her. That's the only thing anybody knows about her. And it's not good because we had a big problem in New Hampshire with opioid addiction several years ago. And this is the prescription painkillers back in the day. And people remember that. That was not a very pleasant thing. If you had a family member who got addicted to opioids because they were following the doctor's advice on prescription painkillers. Yeah. And it strikes a nerve. People don't like opioid not lobbyists here. They don't

44:24like opioids in general. So she actually had to go out and apologize and say she was tricked and bamboozled and she didn't mean to be a lobbyist for the opioid industry. But I don't know that they only had 2,500 writings for the Democrat primary for governor. I don't know that, I don't know that yeah, I don't think she has much of a campaign. I think KELI-A is going to take it. I'm fairly confident of that one. And look, I guess with KELI-A, I guess maybe I have feeling similar to how I feel about like Johnson Nunu. I think you're much more pro like he's a great liberty guy. And I'm just not totally sold yet. I do know about the Patriot Act stuff. And I think that that's great. But with the AOS probably would not have been good on the Patriot Act. So maybe actually I should feel the squadron. But as far as kind of the coalition goes that is

45:24doing good stuff on the state level. I appreciate that KELI-A has been very supportive of the school choice policies in the state and that that continues to advance under her. And I think that's one of the most significant things that is happening in New Hampshire for really advancing liberty in a tangible way and breaking up these government school monopolies. The EFA program, the school choice program here in New Hampshire is called the EFA program for the listeners. Did you know that if it were a school district, it would now be the largest school district in the state? Yes, actually. I think we reported on that recently in recent news letter of the the porcupine posts that people can subscribe to at fsp.org. That's a wonderful thing. But hello, Jay Rock. All right, we're getting some comments. This is what happens when you do it live. Not only can you not edit out the dogs coming into the room, but you can get live comments from folks. The dogs just add character. It's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing I would like to talk about is I'd

46:26like to talk about county commissioners. Okay, let's talk about it. I don't know anything about the county commissioners in New Hampshire. Ah, so I'll tell you how the county commissioners work here in New Hampshire. It's kind of unique. I don't know the other states sort of do it this way, but basically in New Hampshire, every county has three county commissioners. And you can sort of think of them as the mayor of a county, but there's three of them. So they run the daily in and out. So they run the court system, you know, the hospital or not the hospital, but the nursing home if you have one. And one county and one county a ski resort. Yeah, one county a ski resort. Yes, that was some that was some controversy a couple years ago that I'm glad that I avoided. So strafford county, which is the county that I'm in, recently started distracting for the election of county commissioners. And we had and I was pushing very, very hard because historically there have been three Democrat county commissioners in strafford county because they were elected at large, meaning that basically summers worth over in Rochester picked

47:27who it was. And all the little towns that happen to live in or happen to be in strafford county would have basically no say because there's more people in summers worth over in Rochester. And so we changed that up and we split strafford county into three distinct districts. And I was one of the co-sponsors of that bill. And now we have an opportunity to have a Republican county commissioner. However, what we had happen is that we had a Democrat become a Republican for the purposes of running. And then they started campaigning very hard to win as a Democrat on the Republican ticket. So they could continue to be the county commissioner. So in order to mix that, I was pushing very, very hard for Susan Rice to be the Republican nominee. And I'm very happy to report that she got about two thirds of the vote. And she won. However, in strafford, the third district,

48:28we had the same exact thing happen. And we were not so lucky there because it's too close to call. It is within 10 votes last I checked. And they need to do a recount because we don't know who actually want. If it was Robert Drew or the other guy or Sean Levit. And that just sort of re-emphasizes how close these races are. And that's a county commissioner district. That's not a single town or a single state rep district. That's a fairly large sizeable chunk of land and very sizeable population. And one more race that was also pretty close is just north of me in one of the floats, which is Carol 8, which is Carol, this is a separate county, but it's just right next door. Carol 8 is like eight towns wrapped up into one flotereal state rep race. All right. And we had three people fighting for two seats, one of whom the incumbent was a terrible, terrible bad vote. And I'm going to say it, he's Brian Taylor. I did not like him very much. He

49:34voted against school choice. He voted against tax caps. He voted against property rights, especially when building. And so I actually recruited a primary opponent for him and friends recruited another one. So we had Tammy guards ways and Colin Mitchell running. And Colin Mitchell beat him by 23 votes. Tammy did way better than Colin. Okay. She also campaigned harder. Well, Tammy Colin next time. All right. Well, I'm glad I'm glad to hear that. I, uh, Tammy, of course, I've worked with. She was one of our producers for the New Hampshire Liberty Forum several years back. And and she was a real dynamo as I understand it when she represented Manchester in the House of Representatives. So yes, an experience like as a new primary opponent in a completely different district is is nice. She brought a lot of the ideas that she had when she was running in Manchester over here. So I'll give you an example of something I hadn't seen before, but was really excellently done. She did a door knocking party. So what she did was she invited people over for a

50:36party, gave them a walk list and then sent them out. And then when they came back, they had sausages and beers waiting for them. And they had themselves a nice little shindig afterwards. It was great. And it was a great way to help her win her election, what she did. And also a great way to get free food, which is what drives me as a person. Well, glad it worked. Maybe she should write the Liberty Canada Practical Guide to, uh, uh, you know, feeding your volunteers. Yeah, it's a good, it's a great way to do it. I also want to report some good news in dairy. So dairy is a fairly large town. I don't know if it counts as a city. It's it's, but it's got 10 state reps in just one town. So I guess that's a city. We had some of the worst voting Republicans in that district. And we had 14 people chasing after 10 seats. And the two people we wanted to get out the most were kicked out in this primary. And we were, we replaced them with some of the people were most

51:38excited about. I'll give a shout out to, uh, future representative Brandon Bach. She came, second, out of those 10, she came in eighth or excuse me, ninth. All right. Guess what? She's on the ballot. All right. So she can, you know, get up, she can knock on doors and she can win. And I expect great things from her. She is an excellent Liberty candidate. And so I'm excited to see what she does. Hopefully she wins. I'm very excited to hear that. I know Brandon well and, uh, will be great to see here in the legislature. Um, and, uh, you know, that's kind of one thing that's different, right? A lot of these towns with bigger populations. It's like, you know, there may be 10 slots. So you can take the ninth, you'd be coming ninth place and, and you still won. And you get rid of representative Pearson. Yeah. I know. I don't, I don't, I don't, I'll say this about representative Pearson. All right. Uh, I'm glad he's gone because I call a lot of roll calls in the house, but he also sit right, sat like two seats down for me. So I could see what button

52:39he was pressing. And I knew that if it wasn't a roll call, he wasn't voting with us on a Liberty issue. Uh, every time because I could just look at the button and the red button was late when mine was green every time. But you can't prove that after the fact because it's not a roll call. Because if it's not recorded, then yeah, it's just your word against it. Yeah. And so, uh, I'm personally, uh, I, I like them as a person, uh, but, you know, great guy, terrible vote. And, uh, but we got, we got a much, we, we have a great improvement in that district. I'm, uh, I'm hoping. That's the hard thing about politicians is that most of them are nice people. That's not they're elected. They're professional nice people. That's right. So you got to separate the personality from what they actually do. Uh, but if you're the, if you're the candidate, go indoor to door. Boy, you better be a nice person. You better be nice to people. That's how you win the game. Be nice. That's right. We're coming to the end of the hour. Uh, representative Granger. Any final words you want to share with folks? I would like to, um,

53:39thank Tim Hartnet, who's a Democrat out of Manchester. Um, he has decided not to run again this year. He was a huge proponent of, uh, pregnant men and, uh, gender surgeries for children. And he will be moving to Oregon as well as tax and Tom Opel, who is, uh, moving to North Carolina. He was the prime sponsor of an income tax here in the state. Um, I'd also like to say goodbye to Eric Gallagher. Uh, or as we call him the conquered kami, uh, he invited against the inspection sicker appeal, not because he wanted the roads to be safer, but because he just doesn't like cars and doesn't think people should own them. Um, and finally, I would like to say goodbye to Linda Haskins, who was very, very, very pro abortion and, uh, did not want children to be able to choose their own schools. Uh, she is off to Colorado. I, I feel like I have seen this pattern. I've noticed it right, uh, just in some of the social media posts from different people of Democrat legislators,

54:40progressive ledges that progressive Democrat legislators announcing they aren't running again in their moving to other states. Meanwhile, more and more hopefully, hopefully their homes are being purchased by, by future free stateers. And I hope they enjoy their new, their new states. Maybe it's more in line with what they're looking for. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, uh, so I, I guess it is kind of good to think about how in migration is, is reinforcing the live-free or die spirit of New Hampshire and so is out migration. So, uh, that's, uh, that's a good thing. So, uh, all right, represent Granger. Thank you so much for, for coming on and for giving us an overview of what happened on primary night. We'll be watching. Uh, I know many people will be actively volunteering and supporting candidates that they, that they care about. Uh, um, in the, uh, now it's, it's like a month and a half to go until election day. Boy, I am certainly looking forward to when primary day is going to be moved back into the early summer in the future. So good on you

55:41guys for doing that. This late September primary is just crazy to me. So, um, anyway, thank, thank you, Representative Ranger for coming on and, uh, we'll, uh, I'm sure we'll connect again soon. Thanks for having me. Good luck to you. All right. Thank you, everyone. That is the show. Uh, a reminder to get your tickets for the Granite Freedom Trek at fsp.org slash trek. That will be October 17th where climb in Mount Pierce. And I'd love to have you with us, whether you're coming from away or you're right here in New Hampshire, come climb in mountain with us. Thank you to our patrons and you can become a patron too at fsp.org slash give and check out our merch store at community dot fsp.org slash shop. We got to get a simpler, simpler URL for that one. But check out the merch. All right, everyone. Uh, that's all for tonight. Furthermore, my opinion is the Federal Reserve should be destroyed.