'No disruptions will be tolerated': Belknap County Republican Committee facing turmoil

GILFORD — At the last meeting of the Belknap County Republican Committee before the midterm elections Oct. 12, a small crowd of people stood outside the Gilford Public Library.

“I’ve been coming to these meetings for over a year, and now I’m not allowed in?” said Marc Forgione of Laconia. “I’m a member of a party that doesn't want me to be involved.”

BCRC leadership said that, unlike usual meetings, they were not allowing guests that evening. Not because they intended to discuss private, pre-election strategy, but because they were hosting a guest speaker, the editor of The Weirs Times, and room capacity would be tight.

Alongside Forgione were Republican state representatives and then-candidates Mike Bordes and Tim Lang.

“Apparently their rules are that, even if you’re an elected state official, unless you’re on their members list, you don’t count,” said Lang, who at the time was running for state Senate. “It’s disheartening that during a general election process we’re picking and choosing who can participate.”

Republican sentiment remains strong in Belknap County — it again voted red by larger margins than any other county in statewide races. The Republican Party itself there, however, is on the rocks. 

The Belknap County Republican committee, a local node of the state GOP committee, is currently plagued by factions and lingering grudges over sides taken in the controversy surrounding Gunstock Mountain Resort, disagreements about how the committee should be run and a brewing power struggle for committee leadership.

This turmoil has made local Republicans and officials wonder whether the committee has fulfilled its mission. 

Specifically, current BCRC leadership has been accused of neglecting, and even publicly criticizing, specific candidates and purposefully restricting its membership to hold onto power.

Committees are the infrastructure of political parties as organizations. At the state and national level, they help promote and raise money for candidates and develop a policy platform. In New Hampshire, there are also committees at the county and city level, which, in addition to supporting candidates, elect members of the state committee. 

At the heart of the disputes are the BCRC’s executive committee and membership structure. 

Elected party delegates and all of the party nominees from the most recent primary elect the members of the state committee from each county committee. According to the NHGOP bylaws, those state committee representatives then elect the officers at the county level. These officers, in addition to a member at-large, comprise the executive committee in Belknap County.

Rep. Norm Silber of Gilford currently chairs the committee. Rep. Paul Terry of Alton is vice chair, Dr. David Strang is treasurer, Priscilla Bean is clerk, and Marc Abear is an elected member-at-large.

While NHGOP policy states that “members of a County or City Republican Committee shall be registered Republicans who live within the respective County or City,” BCRC’s has implemented a rule requiring Republicans in the county to apply to become voting members, and their application must be green-lighted by the executive committee.

Some of those who have applied have waited months or longer to have their application acknowledged, let alone approved for voting. They accuse committee leadership of excluding them for both political and personal reasons.

Forgione said he first applied to become a member over a year ago. Others standing outside the meeting in October said they had submitted as many as four applications. 

“It’s hard to think that it's anything other than on purpose,” said one applicant.

Ahead of the October meeting, the officers of the Laconia Republican Committee, most of whom have attempted to apply for BCRC membership, wrote to the NHGOP asking for assistance in seeing their applications processed. 

Their letter pointed to exclusion by BCRC leadership for two reasons. First, they wrote, “the BCRC is looking for a certain type of Republican,” namely, those who are close to current leadership and not deemed by leadership as a 'RINO.'” Second, they emphasized, “holding up membership is to ensure that when it comes time to re-elect the executive committee of the BCRC, the membership is all in favor of the current leaders, virtually ensuring re-election.”

“The BCRC is a private organization,” said Silber in an interview. “We have the right to determine who comes to our meetings and who doesn’t.”

Silber said that in 2021, when the current leadership was elected, they decided to update the BCRC bylaws. They decided to add a membership process and the requirement that members be active in order to vote, which were universally adopted by the voting members at the time. They also instituted a guest policy, where non-members are required to have the sponsorship of a member to attend. The NHGOP was aware of these changes, he said, and did not comment on them.

While those initially prevented from entering the October meeting were later invited in as guests, few attendees had left the venue in the intervening hour and the capacity justification for their exclusion rang hollow.

Silber said the BCRC has no record of anyone submitting multiple applications. Several individuals, he said, apparently had filled out only a one-sheet contact form and mistakenly assumed it counted as an application, when the full BCRC application is multiple pages.

“This was a mob scene that appears to have been generated by some social media posts,” Silber said of the small crowd outside the meetings, “encouraging people who were not members of the BCRC to come out there and in some way engage in a protest.” Silber criticized the group for making comments to a library staffer locking its doors for the evening.

In the weeks between that meeting and the midterms, the question of exclusion was rehashed publicly between Bordes, who represents Laconia, and Terry and Silber in letters to the editor in The Sun.

Hours before its scheduled beginning, leadership announced that on Nov. 9, the BCRC would instead hold a special meeting, where active general members would consider and vote on whether to revoke the membership of Rep. Gregg Hough of Laconia and Gunstock Area Commissioner Doug Lambert for “serious misconduct.” The announcement email states in bold, red letters, that "NO DISRUPTIONS WILL BE TOLERATED!"

The so-called charge sheets, written by leadership, state that Hough asked the Weirs Times speaker not to attend the October meeting and that Lambert allegedly physically assaulted another member, Erica Golter, at that meeting. Lambert denies this allegation. Hough was not removed by a vote on Wednesday, but Lambert was.

“I hold no ill will towards Golter,” Lambert said. “But I question the timing of it. ... It’s part of a political vendetta they’ve had against me since the Gunstock issue.”

With leadership positions on the horizon, outspoken critics of the current leadership, including Hough and Lambert, could be seen as rallying against the re-election of the current executive committee, or considering challenging them for seats on the BCRC executive committee.

Silber said that, at the most recent meeting, Hough declared an intention to run against Silber for the chair position. Silber said this intention was “not surprising,” but emphasized that “his political ambitions have absolutely nothing to do with the charges that were brought against him.”

Critics of committee leadership believe that this alleged closing of the ranks is the result of lingering bad blood over how the all-Republican county delegation divided over the events Gunstock this summer.

Silber and Terry did not attend the Aug. 1 emergency meeting of the delegation that helped reopen the resort, and Strang's recent lawsuit against Lambert was dismissed. After the local political action committee Citizens for Belknap called for the unseating of representatives who did not attend the Aug. 1 delegation meeting, several incumbent Republicans, including Silber, lost their primary bids.

Rep. Richard Littlefield, who has been attending BCRC meetings for eight years, described the proceedings as a “show trial.” He felt that leadership’s personal grievances against Lambert and Hough, who vice-chaired the Aug. 1 meeting and has clashed with leadership over the attendance of GraniteGrok blogger Skip Murphy at BCRC meetings, clearly motivated the ousters.

“They’re not on speaking terms with 90% of us who were at Gunstock,” Littlefield said at the October meeting. Littlefield previously described Strang as a mentor and friend. 

“We were not motivated by any kind of personal animosity or concerns about what might happen in the future,” Silber emphasized. “It's a serious matter to try to revoke somebody’s status as a general member, and we would not do it lightly.”

Silber continued that the executive committee had taken action against Lambert and Hough because their behavior at recent meetings — in challenging a ruling of the chair which was then upheld by a membership vote — was disruptive and out of order. 

“They're just disgruntled because they would like to take over and run it their way,” he said.

Silber continued that his leadership and its aims have been to increase attendance at the BCRC and prevent non-Republicans from attending meetings and impeding its mission.

“We've gone from probably the lowest attendance we've ever had since January ... to as many as 70 to 80" people, Silber said. “We've had speakers such as congressional candidates, Senate candidates, people running for office, the commissioner of education, lobbyists for Gun Owners of America, a representative of the Josiah Bartlett Institute, etc.”

Past leadership had low attendance and engagement, he said, and if the membership wants a change, “basically, you get what you vote for.”

Editor's note: This story was updated to include the correct title of the speaker from The Weirs Times.