by Ed Naile
Logan Darrow Clements, purveyor of “FreeLoaderMedia,” just finished leading his lemming march over the cliffs of Weare, NH in a failed from the beginning effort to send a message to US Supreme Court Justice David Souter for his anti-property rights vote in the US Supreme Court Kelo Decision. The message was and REMAINS: Live by the laws you create.
Another message is: Don’t send an ego-maniacal media hog to do what a couple vigorous high school seniors could have done with a voter checklist and some cell phones.
When Logan Darrow Clements isn’t engaged in other personal fantasies like running for Governor of California, he claims to run a media consulting business. In this case, he ran it like he was hell-bent on losing. Logan Darrow Clements set the anti-eminent domain issue back as far as he possibly could. And the NH press are grateful. You can see it in their “the voters have spoken” editorials the Monday after the debacle.
Logan Darrow Clements should be on David Souter’s Christmas list from now on because without Logan Darrow Clements running around threatening lawsuits for which he has no money to pay, or “rallying the troops” of people who cannot vote in Weare, or getting hate mail directed at local officials as though they were to blame for Souter, a legitimate petition to take Souter’s house could have passed. It only lost by less than 40 votes.
Here is what really happened. At a Senate Bill 2 deliberative session (RSA 40:13) activists and special interests are predominantly who shows up. That was the case in Weare. Logan Darrow Clements had some of his out of town “helpers” show up for good measure to help sink the vote as well, just in case Weare voters didn’t get the “message” that this was a non-resident generated event.
At any deliberative session the supporters of or opponents to any warrant article try to gut the wording of the warrant article they oppose so that when it appears before all the voters at the annual meeting on a paper ballot in the secrecy of the polling booth the issue is for all intents and purposes, “pre-defeated.”
The Souter supporters know that if a warrant article to take Souter’s house winds up on a town meeting ballot it will be passed overwhelmingly because the general voting public shows up on that day en mass. That is what happened to the “Lost Liberty Hotel” hodge-podge Clements was selling. It was doomed from the start because Clements was only interested in one thing; publicity for himself.
As long as Souter is on the bench and eminent domain is an issue, a warrant article to take his house should be on every ballot.
This was a fiasco from the start. Next year if 40 more voters show up and and a properly worded, petitioned warrant article is on the ballot it could be quite interesting.
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[Note: Locals had already drafted a proper warrant article that had a good chance of passing and did not take kindly to the intrusion of Clements who they feel sunk the deal for them.]