Is Crissy Kantor A Stalking Horse for Right-Wing New Mexico Pol Jay Block?
Can She Be an Effective Alderman for Manchester If Her Heart Still Lies in The Land of Enchantment? — OPINION
Kantor travels back and forth to New Mexico to be with her fiancée. — John DiStaso, WMUR, June 2021
MANCHESTER, NH — Ward 6 Aldermanic candidate Crissy Kantor once was billed as the fiancée of New Mexico politician Jay Block when he was running for governor of the Western state back in 2022. An elected Commissioner for Sandoval County, Block’s term runs through 2024.
Now running for the vacant alderman position in Manchester’s Ward 6, Kantor claims she’s no longer Block’s intended.
Given that his daughter Maddie Block took to Tik Tok and to Newsweek to complain about her father terminating their relationship over political differences, maybe that’s one reason the erstwhile love birds are no longer singing the same song on social media.
New Mexico Governor Wanna-Be
Born in the Queen City, Jay Block enlisted in the Air Force Reserve after graduating from high school.
According to his Sandoval County Commission biography, Block subsequently served in the North Dakota Air National Guard and joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps while attending North Dakota State University.
Jay Block served 21 years in the military, achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. From 2005 to 2006, he served in Afghanistan.
In 2022, while in his second term as Sandoval County Commissioner, he ran for governor.
Crissy Kantor was featured in stories in New Mexico’s press about Jay Block’s failed 2022 gubernatorial campaign.
Kantor was even mentioned by WMUR’s John DiStaso in an April 2021 story about Block’s ambition to be governor of the Land of Enrichment, the official state nickname of New Mexico.
According to DiStaso, “Block’s future wife, Crissy Kantor, is a resident of Manchester and is the owner of Chill Spa on Hanover Street. For now, Kantor travels back and forth to New Mexico to be with her fiancée.”
3,650 Klicks West of Manchester
Rio Rancho is 2,265 miles (3,650 kilometers) from Manchester.
So far, Crissy Kantor and Jay Block have not married, and Kantor told the press that the engagement is off. However, sources say that Block reportedly regularly posts in a Ward 6 Facebook group.
Jay Block has told the New Mexican press that he is through with politics. A reasonable person may ask, does he mean through with politics altogether, or just with politics in New Mexico?
In the final session of the Sandoval County Commission, Block launched into a tirade that touched on national, not just local, issues.
Block said, “I’m passionate about you, the people, and I’m passionate about truth. This country is going to hell in a handbasket because of the lies they are shoving down your throats, the crap they’re putting in your bodies. They’re taking away your rights. My last two years in office, all I can do is fight for you, and all I plan to do in the year 2023 is fight for truth.”
Block often touts the fact that, while living in New Hampshire, he worked on conservative Congressman Jack Kemp’s campaign during the 1988 New Hampshire Presidential Primary. Does he have New Hampshire on his mind?
With the perennial focus of the national press on it as the Donald Trumps, the Mike Pences, the Chris Christys preen before the cameras (Republican Presidential candidates Trump and Mitt Romney has their final night-before-the-national election appearances in Block’s hometown of Manchester), the Granite State offers a much better stage for pontificating on national issues than does New Mexico. It offers many opportunities for a washed-up pol for being heard and for being elected to public office.
Out West, Jay Block’s political career is through. Might he be thinking of reviving it in New Hampshire?
Ward 6 voters should ask themselves if Crissy Kantor would now be living in “The People’s House” in Santa Fe, the capital of The Land of Enchantment, if Jay Block been elected governor of New Mexico.
They should also consider whether Kantor be an effective advocate for the people of Manchester Ward 6 when she seemingly was ready to move to New Mexico if her then-intended, an elected official in a Western state two time zones away, had been elected governor.
Is it fair to think that her attention, to say nothing about her focus, remains divided between New Hampshire and New Mexico?
What Makes Crissy Run?
Why is Crissy Kantor running for alderman? When one watches her appearances on Manchester public TV, interviewed by sympathetic conservatives, one sees a candidate who is unable to articulate coherent policies on municipal government.
One sees a person with little knowledge or understanding of municipal governance.
One sees a person who clearly is unsuited to the job of running for alderman, let alone being an alderman.
What one sees is a nice, inoffensive person, a person apparently who has no experience in politics other than being touted as a right-wing gubernatorial candidate’s fiancée back in New Mexico.
What one sees is a manufactured candidate who echoes two-time failed Manchester mayoral candidate Victoria Wojdylak Sullivan’s dystopian vision of Manchester.
One sees Crissy on TV parroting Landslide Vicky’s Me and my friends don’t go downtown anymore as it’s a hellhole diss of the Queen City.
One sees a nice person justifying her candidacy by offering up a rehash of Sullivan’s scenario that Manchester is akin to the Gotham City of the “Dark Knight” Batman movie cycle (the Christian Bale flicks) that Landslide Vicky peddles on social media, on her public access TV shows, and while hosting the TV show of the Queen City’s own Joker, JKL.
Simplistic nonsense.
Crissy’s other go-to issue is that old chestnut, The Tax Cap, a perennial Republican favorite.
The Return of Jay Block?
An observer of Queen City politics might ask themselves: Why did the Manchester GOP throw its weight behind such a lightweight as Crissy Kantor?
Recall that the first movie of the Christian Bale as The Dark Knight cycle was entitled Baman Returns.
It is my belief that Kantor very might be a stalking horse for her former fiancée, Jay Block.
New Mexico politics is a hard nut to crack. But New Hampshire, with its 424-person state legislature and its Republican-mandated gerrymandering of the State Senate, offers a lot of opportunity to an on-the-make right-wing politician to win statewide office.
New Hampshire secessionist leader Carla Gericke recently was on Manchester public TV boasting how the Free State Project outfoxed the Republican Party that the FSP has attached itself to, like a parasitic sucker fish living off of a shark, and managed to elect one of their own to the State Senate.
Jay Block would have much more chance at being elected to state office in New Hampshire than New Mexico. Is his former fiancée paving the way for him?
