Doug Lambert: C4B a shadowy operation passing judgment on candidates

To The Daily Sun,

The effort that The Daily Sun has been putting in to bring voters the facts needed to make informed decisions in the upcoming primaries is commendable. In-depth interviews and long form articles are the type of journalism that readers appreciate from a local news organization.

Compare that to the group known as the Citizens For Belknap, a group whose efforts are the opposite: laughable. This shadowy operation is a small number of people that does a poor job of attempting to be bipartisan. Using candidate surveys and forums, they purport to seek candidates they deem “reasonable” and “rational.” Of course, the definitions of those words are however they deem them to be. A look under the hood reveals that if a candidate will vote to unquestionably preserve and grow all spending at the county level, they would fit C4B’s criteria. It is the same for work in Concord. Unless they will vote for ever-increasing “state funding” for education and such, a candidate will then be cast as unreasonable and irrational. The C4B is, of course, well within its right to pass judgement on candidates as they wish. What makes them disingenuous, however, is the fact that they harangue candidates to participate in their “nonpartisan” surveys and forums and then proceed to make endorsements. If a candidate chooses or is unable to participate, they are labeled as being unresponsive to voters.

Most of our Republican candidates here in Belknap have chosen to take their case directly to the voters rather than through the biased filter of the C4B. They have therefore created their own messaging, delivered through informative interviews with The Sun, events open to voters hosted by the Belknap County Republican Committee, direct one-on-one contact, letters to the editor, and assorted campaign materials and websites.

Doug Lambert

Gilford