As stated in a piece written for the Bastion by Representative Juliet Harvey Boulia last week, write-in campaigns are generally a risk not worth taking.
“Meredith resident Jeanne Tofts is running as a write-in candidate hoping to win one of only two State Representative seats in town. Ms. Tofts must be something of a gambler because she runs a palpable risk of getting a Democrat elected instead of winning.
“The spoiler effect” or “splitting the vote” happens when a minor candidate, in this case, Tofts, draws just enough votes away from a candidate on the ballot and changes the outcome of the election had they not run. On November 8th, Tofts will only gain write-in votes from conservatives, splitting the Republican vote three ways in an election that is already a tight race between Democrats and Republicans. In 2020, Republican state rep candidates for Meredith garnered an average mean of 1996 votes to their Democrat opponents’ average of 1724 votes, a difference of only 272 votes. The Jeanne Tofts write-in campaign is a gift to Democrats and they must be gleeful at the prospect of a three-way split.
Juliet Harvey Boulia
Guess what? Representative Harvey Boulia was exactly right. The town of Meredith, a long-time Republican voting stronghold has now elected a Democrat. Here are the results as reported by the Laconia Daily Sun;
As you can see, the top Republican vote-getter received 1649 votes. The top Democrat, who gains the second slot for the district, got 1581 votes. The other Republican, Cindy Creteau-Miller got 1446. The write-in candidate garnered a mere 272 votes. While perhaps impressive, given the steps necessary to convince that many voters to go through the effort needed to bring such a vote to bear, it isn’t anywhere close to winning anything. Such quests never are. But what Jeanne Tofts DID achieve, was bring a win home for the Democrats. One can surely assume that her 272 votes came completely from Republicans and not either of the Democrats. Let’s say that 200 of them would have gone to Creteau-Miller in a normal voting situation — she would have been joining Lisa Smart in the winner’s circle. 1446 + 200 = 1646, right in line with the Republican vote for Lisa Smart. But of course, the local Republican party in this cycle has been anything but. Smart, that is…
Inside players know that Ms. Tofts is closely associated with the cabal of fools that currently run the Belknap County Republican Committee (BCRC). We all know that more serious and thoughtful party leaders would have stepped up and asked Tofts to give it up following her primary loss. But the evidence has shown that rather than being clear thinking, the BCRC “leaders” are better suited for heading up circular firing squads and scorched earth campaigns, in which they excel. They, and their equally strategically-challenged cheerleaders are responsible for this seat going to the Democrats. There were numerous letters to the paper supporting this destined to fail effort, including one by the outgoing Republican Representative Mackie, and a person who has indicated a desire to be a potential chair of the BCRC Dave Devoy- a losing candidate in the district’s state senate seat. Thanks a lot- just the kind of “leadership” we need for the party here in Belknap County.
Make no mistake about it- this wasn’t just a sour grapes effort on behalf of a candidate refusing to give it up and wait to perhaps try again next time. This was an organized effort that featured a good amount of money spent in support. In addition to the signs in the picture above, and the many letters, consider this half-page ad found in the Sun last Thursday:
Rational area Republicans need to ask, what might have happened if the letter writers encouraging a stupid and losing write-in campaign had instead called for support of the candidates that were actually ON the ballot? Rational area Republicans should ask- how many letters did we get in the last weeks before Election Day from the BCRC “leadership” team encouraging all hands on deck for the vote? Advising Republicans to support the WHOLE slate in their respective districts? Of course, the answer is ZERO. They were too busy writing letters attacking fellow Republicans that fell out of favor with them. Too busy conniving their schemes to maintain control of the County Committee- the only election they seem to care about. Thanks Jeanne Tofts. Thanks Norm Silber. Thanks Paul Terry. Thanks Marc Abear. Thanks Dave Strang. Thanks John Mackie. Thanks Dave Devoy. Thanks everyone else that supported this scheme. Thanks for nothing! Oh, and Democrat Matt Coker? HE thanks you too!
The Bastion.News 
Here i go making friends in my own special way but…maybe the problem with the BCRC has more to do with members who obviously are eager to devour each other rather than offer support and share their knowledge with each other.
I personally saw an email from Ms Juliet Harvey-Bolia to Jeanne Tofts and in it Ms Bolia offers support and encouragement to Ms Tofts to run as a write in candidate for the General Election. Was that a set up or did Ms Bolia decide to “flip” her opinion to make herself look good? “Beaver Slap” also seems to have no problem chewing on an extremity of anyone who gets to close to him. In a recent article “Beaver Slaps” calls out several members of BCRC as rinos. I’m sure I saw Creteau-Miller’s name on that list! You can’t have it both ways.
There is no loyalty, ethics or morals within this group. You make me ashamed to identify as a Republican. You all act like a bunch of 2yr olds. Grow up, or at keast try to act like one! Lisa Smart
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You’re right, you did see an article that mentioned Creteau-Miller as a potential “RINO. as the article stated that the PAC in question created an image that shows one single CfB endorsed individual that was called “republican” while all the others were called “rino.”
The article was written in a way where mentioning the names was a way to find out which of the endorsed candidates were claimed as RINO instead of Republican by the PAC. Not, as you infer, that the Bastion was calling one of these individuals or any of them, RINOs. It feels like you’re pretty upset about something that you didn’t read correctly, that was not even an intention of that article from my point of view.
Beaver Slaps are editorials. There are a number editors at the Bastion. You’ll find that not everyone around is of the hive mind and many people have their own opinions. You’ll find that my articles mostly run against the grain of the rest of the articles. That’s on purpose. Because we choose to put forth a number of varying conservative opinions. Feel free and welcome to share the letter you state you’ve seen personally from Ms. Harvey-Bolia. Feel free to send it to me directly if you prefer. Thanks for subscribing!
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Other than Smart, there were no other republicans running on the ballot
in Meredith. Citizens for Belknap buddy from the Gunstock crew,
Creteau-Miller, has already announced that she’s re-registering back to
independent. Maybe if the republicans voting would have all written
Tofts in as an actual conservative republican instead of holding their
noses and voting for Creteau-Miller, we would have two actual
republicans. I put the blame on the candy ass cowards who are afraid to
vote out of the box on principle, and that is a huge part of what’s
wrong with the republican party infighting. Most of the people who
wrote in Tofts would NEVER have voted for Creteau-Miller anyway, myself
included! In addition, if you had been paying attention instead of just
constantly whining, you would recognize that the democrat elected had
support from every facet of the voting population. Now we’ll see if
he’s true to his moderate word. Pay attention and start thinking more
strategically Beavers, you are wrong on this one. Karen Sticht
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What a sad state of affairs NH is becoming. Apparently the people of this state need more pain in their everyday lives before they wake up to the facts. Don’t worry it’s coming. “It’s going to be a dark winter”
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You’re not wrong William. There was a BCRC meeting last night where they couldn’t even really get down to any business, they were too busy trying to change rules at their whim to keep out new conservative members and protect their positions.
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Where were the blow hards of the Beaver when the Citizens for Belknap (which I see you neglect to mention by name) were encouraging independent Democrats to “hop the fence” in the primary and vote for a liberal candidate on the Republican side. Creteau-Miller’s base was mostly Democrats! So what’s really the loss here? You got a male version of Creteau-Miller (moderate Democrat) elected instead of the original?
Plus word on the street is that Harvey-Bolia is the one who originally encouraged Tofts to run as a write-in, then kicked her under the bus with that article. Maybe that should be your next story, if you care about the truth?
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[…] reported last week here in The Bastion, the write-in campaign for a NH House seat in Meredith resulted in a win for one of the Democrats […]
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