Free Stater Project Perpetual Candidate Brittany Ping is Now Running for School Board
Manchester GOP Chair Ignores Board of the School Committee While Making Multiple Appearances Before Board of Aldermen — OPINION
MANCHESTER, NH — Free Stater Brittany Ping, one of the perpetual candidates of the Free State Project, is running for office again. She’s running for an at-large seat on the Board of the School Committee (BOSC), but you wouldn’t know it if you watched BOSC meetings from August through October. Unlike her multiples appearances before the Board of Mayor and Alderman (BMA), she didn’t speak before the BOSC once in that period.
What could be the root of this curious phenomenon?
Note: Ping’s fellow Republican candidate for School Board Member at Large, former Ward 6 Alderman Elizabeth Moreau, also failed to appear before the BOSC in the same period running up the September primary and beyond. Moreau, too, is a perpetual candidate.
Brittany Ping did speak during the public session of the BMA’s October 3rd meeting, about high rents in the city. During her September 5th appearance, she talked before the BMA about her stepfather’s suicide and suicide awareness, then came out against creating a department of homeless initiatives, before expressing her condolences to Aldermen Ed and Tony Sapienza, whose father had passed away. She then offered up to the BMA a prayer for world peace.
During her August 1st BMA appearance, Brittany Ping finally did address educational issues, for all of 14 seconds at the beginning of her remarks. She praised the BMA for tabling a proposed charter amendment that would give the School Board autonomy. After those 14 seconds, Ping made a please for innovative solutions for solving the problems of homelessness, came out against creating a new department for homeless initiatives, and then addressed homeless people camping out at the West High and gave a shout out to Alderman at Large Joe Kelly Levasseur.
So just WHY is Brittany Ping running for School Committee Member at Large when her interests, judging by her appearances before the respective Boards, clearly do not embrace education?
In her Candidate Profile/Questionnaire on ManchesterInkLink, Ping — billing herself as Brittany LeClear-Ping (possibly as a pitch to the French Canadian vote that is prominent in her home Ward 11, though she is listed on the ballot as plain Brittany Ping) — bizarrely talks about “We” and “Our Strategic Plan” while not really revealing who “We” is, or was.
So just WHY is Brittany Ping running for School Committee Member at Large? In my opinion, Ping is running for the School Board as that’s what prominent members of the Free State Project do: Run for public office. That seemingly is part of the FSP plan.
Maybe that is the “We” and “Our” she refers to. Or maybe the “We” and “Our” is her and her husband.
Last year, in the 2022 state elections, Brittany Ping ran as a Republican for State Rep in Ward 11, which is interesting as her hubby Matthew ran as a Democrat in the same race.
But that’s what Free Staters do — boost their chances of getting elected by attaching themselves like parasites to the majority party in a district. Or they may declare themselves a member of a party in a district in which there are no incumbents of that party in order to win the primary.
This parasitical behavior by the Free Staters explains why so many so-called “Democrats” in the State House of Representatives voted for the Republican candidate for Speaker of the House — is running yet again for public office.
This time Brittany Ping’s vying for School Committee Member at Large. That is not unusual as the Free Staters seemingly model themselves after the ultra-right reactionary John Birch Society, which targeted school boards during its heyday in the 1960s.
In the 2022 state election, her husband, fellow Free Stater Matthew Ping, was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for State Representative in floterial Hillsborough District 40, of which Ward 11 is part. Not many Democrats I know would retweet the assertion that the United States government is a terrorist organization.
But Brittany Ping’s husband apparently, like so many members of the Free State Project, is an opportunist. He never did answer the question I posted to him on Twitter: When did you become a Democrat?A Google search for what Matthew Ping believes in only reveals some retweets of tweets embracing issues and attitudes that are antithetical to members of the Democratic Party.
Ping’s retweets included sharing a video by a Libertarian candidate where a doctored clip of Joe Biden shows the President with a reptile’s tongue snaking in and out of his mouth.
That’s a Democrat running for a place on the Democratic ticket?
Did anyone believe that Matthew Ping was really a Democrat?
Who are the Pings?
Both Brittany Ping and her husband Matthew are realtors who live in Manchester Ward 11, part of the Queen City’s West Side that apparently has been targeted for takeover by what I call the “anarcho-libertarian” Free State Project.
Unlike hubby Matthew, Brittany ran for State Rep as a Republican. Which was fitting, as at the time, she was the vice-chair of the Manchester G.O.P. She eventually succeeded Will Infantine as chair of the Grand Old Party that she had grafted herself on to, like a pilot fish.
In her public appearances at City Hall, Brittany Ping comes across as an acolyte of radical anti-U.S.A secessionist Carla Gericke.
A former head of both the Free State Project and the New Hampshire Independence movement, Carla Gericke is yet another perpetual candidate for the G.O.P. Gericke, who was born in South Africa, won a U.S. immigration visa, then turned on the country that so generously took her in once she became a citizen. She actually advocates for the secession of New Hampshire from the United States!In her entry in the 2022 ManchesterInkLink’s Voters Guide, the only issue the realtor Matthew Ping addressed was real estate, specifically, high rents and what to do about them, namely, creating affordable housing.
That actually beat the quality of the answers of his Republican wife: Other than some personal background information, Brittany Ping-LeClear, as she presented herself on InkLink, didn’t answer any questions about policy.As I have pointed out, there has always been talk of Free Staters running as “Stealth Candidates” — running as a Republican in a GOP-leaning district, and as Democrat in a district leaning towards the Democratic Party — but when it comes to STEALTH, this was ridiculous.
Now, Brittany Ping — who failed to mention education during her state rep campaign last year — wants to represent the entire City of Manchester on the Board of the School Committee. Why?
Because that’s what Free Staters do.
