James MacFarlin: Jonathan Mackie fails to represet Meredith voters

To The Daily Sun,

It is vital that the voters of Meredith are made aware of the complete lack of respect recently demonstrated by Jonathan Mackie for his Meredith constituents. Mr. Mackie is our only District 2 New Hampshire House Representative who resides in Meredith. The other three live in Gilford. As a fellow Meredith resident, you would reasonably expect him to care about what his voters want him to advocate for on their behalf.

Mr. Mackie attended Meredith’s Town Meeting in March and testified, on the record, that he supported Warrant Article 15. This warrant article asked Meredith voters to petition the general court for fair, transparent and non-partisan redistricting in 2021, and petition the New Hampshire House Special Redistricting Committee to restore Meredith to our own district with our own exclusive representative

The warrant article was overwhelmingly approved by Meredith voters and our town manager submitted a copy of the petition to our four NH House representatives and our state senator on the two topics above. Once the NH House Special Redistricting Committee was appointed, Meredith sent another copy of the petition directly to the committee.

When the NH House Special Redistricting Committee set the Belknap County public listening session for Oct. 19, at 6 p.m. at the Belknap Mill in Laconia, I immediately contacted all four of our District 2 representatives to strongly request they attend this vital, once a decade event to advocate for their Meredith voters. Through many texts, emails and voicemails I was finally able to contact Reps. Norm Silber, Harry Bean and Glen Aldrich. They all advised they would not attend and advocate on behalf of Meredith’s voters. Rep. Silber did decide to attend and testified against restoring Meredith to our own district.

Jonathan Mackie, Meredith resident, as our District 2 representative, has the dubious distinction of completely ignoring repeated requests from a number of Meredith residents to attend this event. His complete lack of basic respect is indefensible. By not even responding to his Meredith constituents he clearly demonstrates he is derelict in his duty to honor his oath to represent what is in the best interest of his own town.

To use a different meaning of the common acronym RINO, he is a “representative in name only.”

We can, and must, elect an individual who cares deeply for Meredith and will abide by their oath to represent what the people of Meredith overwhelmingly support. To restore Meredith to our own NH House district.

James McFarlin

Meredith