Hynes: The Airing Of Grievances Comes Early

By Patrick Hynes, NH Journal

Festivus has come early this year, ladies and gentlemen. And we’re starting things off with the Airing of Grievances. As Frank Costanza would say, “I’ve got a lot of problems with you people!”

First up is Anthony DiLorenzo. Speaking as a Republican voter in New Hampshire’s first Congressional district, I’m befuddled by this campaign. DiLorenzo is a man of remarkable accomplishment in the business world and has clearly given a lot back to his community. But his campaign message is bland GOP boilerplate from the 1990s. I don’t know why he’s running for Congress.

Of unique concern is his personal financial disclosure form (PFD), a form every candidate for Congress is required to file with the House Ethics Committee to disclose (using broad estimations) their personal net worth and financial holdings. DiLorenzo has been described as one of the wealthiest men in New Hampshire. Yet, somehow, according to his PFD, he is the poorest candidate in the GOP primary. The bottom range of his estimated net worth is $1.8 million. Yet he has already loaned $800,000 to his campaign. Most insiders believe he is prepared to loan his campaign even more.

Let me briefly explain how this plays out, should DiLorenzo win the primary. Prompted by the New Hampshire Democratic Party and the DCCC, someone will file a complaint in late September with the House Ethics Committee accusing DiLorenzo of failing to adequately disclose his full net worth. The Ethics Committee will take no immediate action, but the media will find this story captivating. And the campaign will spend weeks trying to explain how the candidate has loaned such a large portion of his reported net worth to the campaign, how he clearly holds assets that exceed his reported worth, how basic desktop research shows his worth to be far (far!) more than $1.8 million.

My advice to Anthony DiLorenzo? You are a successful businessman who should be proud of all you have accomplished. Own it. Don’t hide from it.

Next up – The New Hampshire Forum.

This effort, spearheaded by actor Andrew Shue, popped up a few weeks ago promising to be a bipartisan, grassroots group looking for common sense solutions. In almost no time, it has transitioned into an anti-Republican front group that looks like little more than a pretext for a Shue campaign for the presidency.

Allow me to run through some facts about the Granite State.

New Hampshire ranks #1 in public safety, economic opportunity, and economic freedom. We are the healthiest state in the nation. And the freest. We have the nation’s best taxpayer return on investment. We have one of the lowest tax burdens in the country.

We can handle our own business, Andrew Shue.

No airing of grievances could be complete without mentioning state Democratic Chairman Ray Buckley. On Wednesday, Buckley groveled before the DNC’s Rules & Bylaws Committee to beg for our First in the Nation Presidential Primary back. He wouldn’t have had to do that if it weren’t for the cavalcade of incompetence that was the 2024 Democratic primary process. Trying to protect Joe Biden, who would drop his reelection bid anyway, the DNC scrambled their calendar and punished New Hampshire by stripping us of our birthright. Buckley was too weak and inept to stop it. Instead, he held a secret (and probably unlawful) primary, in which Biden was the only candidate and, according to the Concord Monitor, only “dozens” voted. An absolute disgrace.

Now, onto the feats of strength …

Patrick Hynes is president of Hynes Communications and a regular columnist for the New Hampshire Union-Leader.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.