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Kelly Ayotte Continues to Cravenly Court Extremists

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Kelly Ayotte Continues to Cravenly Court Extremists

After getting roasted by her fellow Republicans for flip-flop-flipping her way into a Trump endorsement last week, former U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte is once again cozying up to members of the far-right as a way to paper over her “torturous history” with Donald Trump, continuing to demonstrate that she will do anything for her own political gain.

This weekend, that meant campaigningwith state Representative Jonathan Stone, who is best known for trying to hide disciplinary files that detail several instances of misconduct from public viewing, including “allegedly assault[ing] a disabled man while on duty.”According to InDepthNH, there were 11 cases of internal affairs investigationsinto Stone’s conduct, including an incident leaving a man with developmental disabilities with “bruises, facial lacerations, injured ribs and a chipped tooth…as well as psychological damage.”

Others in Ayotte’s fringe coalition include: 

  • State Representative Ken Weyler, best known for spreading dangerous and baseless conspiracy theories during the pandemic, including allegingthat “the coronavirus vaccine contains a ‘living organism with tentacles,’” that it “darkens the eyes of newborns,” that “5G technology had somehow been inserted into the vaccine to control people’s thoughts,” and “called the pope and others ‘at the top’ of the Roman Catholic Church ‘satanists’ and ‘luciferians’ for backing public health measures.”
  • State Senator Carrie Gendreau, who has a long history of attacking the LGBTQ+ community — including sparking a hateful controversy that compelled a New Hampshire Town Manager to resign — and most recently introduced legislation to ban abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest after just 15 days.
  • Extremist power-couple Rachel Goldsmith and Jeremy Kauffman, who Ayotte attended an event with last summer. Goldsmith is the leader of the New Hampshire chapter of the extremist group Moms for Liberty, which threatened to put “bounties” on educators’ heads for teaching “divisive concepts.” Kauffman, Goldsmith’s husband, is the leader of the state’s notoriously far-right Libertarian Party and best known for his “incendiary rhetoric.”
  • The New England White Network, a white supremacist hate group. The leader of the group, Ryan J. Murdough, cited Ayotte’s “anti-Massachusetts rhetoric” and her goal of keeping “invaders” out of New Hampshire as reasons he and his group are supporting her for governor. It took Ayotte more than a week to condemn this endorsement.

“While former Senator Kelly Ayotte is busy courting extremists best known for being violent, spreading dangerous conspiracy theories, or trying to strip Granite Staters of their rights, she is leaving New Hampshire families behind,”said DGA States Press Secretary Emma O’Brien. “Granite Staters want a leader who is focused on solving some of the state’s toughest problems, not someone who is only going to divide them further. Kelly Ayotte is nothing more than a political opportunist who will say and do anything to get elected, and Granite Staters can see right through her.”

 

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