BOSTON GLOBE: Free Staters seek to undo New Hampshire government from within

In case you missed it, the Boston Globe published a story over the weekend detailing the ambitions of the Free State Project to move New Hampshire away from a democratic form of government and their complete takeover of the NH GOP.

This report follows a series of national stories on chronicling Free State Republicans in New Hampshire, including their recent work in shutting down Gunstock Resort for several weeks and slashing the Croydon school budget in half.

The story also covered NH GOP House Majority Leader Jason Osborne’s membership of the Free State Project, who came to New Hampshire as a part of the Free State Project 2010. His leadership in the House has been plagued with scandal, after driving his father’s student loan debt collection business into the ground,and taking over $4 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans from the federal government before firing over hundreds of employees, prompting multiple lawsuits, in addition to recommending guns be brought into schools following several high profile school shootings, and most recently, the resurfacing of his use of racial slurs online.

Read the full story here.

Key Excerpts:

• Jeremy Kauffman, a Free State Project board member, describes democracy itself as a threat. “Democracy is a soft form of communism that basically assures bad and dangerous people will be in power,” Kauffman said by e-mail. The Manchester resident, a tech entrepreneur, is running for US Senate as a Libertarian.

• House majority leader Jason Osborne, for example, moved to New Hampshire from Ohio in 2010 as part of the Free State Project. Like many Free Staters, Osborne belongs to the Republican Party.

• Free Stater influence also played a role in the controversial two-week shutdown of the Gunstock ski resort, a popular recreational area in conservative Belknap County. Antigovernment activists briefly took control of the commission that runs the county-owned attraction; chaos ensued.

• “They now control essentially the Republican Party in the House,” Dr. Tom Sherman, a Democratic state senator from Rye who is running for governor, said at a picnic in Croydon, where families celebrated the restoration of school funding. “They’re vocal and well-funded. It’s the tail wagging the dog, and the tail is big enough.”

• Mohammad Saleh of Keene, chair of the Cheshire County Democrats said The Free Staters are “an antidemocratic organization, which unfortunately has hijacked the New Hampshire Republican Party,”