Ted Gatsas Continued to Appear on Rich Girard Talk Show After Sexting Scandal

Former Manchester Mayor Allegedly Used Conservative Pundit as Political Enforcer — OPINION

Former School Board member Richard H. Girard is running for mayor. This opinion piece is being reprinted for informational purposes. Due to the Union Leader newspaper having seemingly abandoned its archives, and the online advertiser-driven dynamic that favors fresh Internet “content” over old, the availability of contemporary accounts of the Rich Girard Sexting Scandal is limited. At the time this opinion piece was published, New Hampshire Executive Councilor Ted Gatsas (R-4th Dist.) was in his third term as Queen City mayor. A censored version of the Rich Girard Little Mel sexting conversations is available here.

Pinardville, N.H. — Queen City Mayor Ted Gatsas is still appearing on Rich Girard’s show, despite the sexting scandal that revealed the conservative radio talk host to be a hideous hypocrite and two-faced simoniac. Girard’s constantly self-professed religious piety, which he used as a bullwhip to flail others failing to meet his high moral standards, and his position as a defender of “Christian Family Values” were revealed to be both a front and a fraud.

No one over the age of ten in my knowledge is shocked upon hearing of behavior by a professional politician like Uncle Teddy that could be characterized as “shameless”. However, there are bounds of both propriety and good taste.

Sources tell me that at an event at which several aldermen had gathered just after the scandal had broken, on the very day Hizzoner has made his first appearance on Girard at Large, a text arrived on one alderman’s smart phone from a highly respected colleague some believe may one day be Ted Gatsas’s sucessor. That member of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen expressed disgust that the Great Gasbag would stoop so low as to bolster Girard’s cratering credibility by showing up in Pinardville, the Goffstown suburb from where Girard at Large is broadcast from atop a flower shop, to appear on the show.

Comeuppance for Queen City Conservative Icon

Last week, the ex-mayoral candidate who fancies himself as Gatsas’s successor at City Hall, became embroiled in a sexting scandal that many thought might terminate his career on the Christian network that broadcasts his Girard at Large program. Yet, Rich Girard is still broadcasting two weeks after the scandal roiled the Queen City, and Gatsas is still appearing on his show.

The scorn arising from the sexting scandal was seen by many as a fitting comeuppance for Girard, who has always played the role of “Professional Christian”, more devout and moral than his enemies (who are legion by many of whom exist mainly in Girard’s mind). When it was found out that this allegedly devout Catholic went from defending the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision that enabled the family owned business to ban coverage for birth control devices it considered abortifacients like the intrauterine device (IUD), to almost simultaneously trying to seduce a fan and asking her if she was outfitted with an IUD, most people who read about it were appalled.

The Union Leader newspaper, which had sat on the sexting scandal story for over a week, did not mention Girard’s real position concerning the use of an IUD in its coverage. Indeed, the Union Leader ran two “Letters to the Editor” praising the Hobby Lobby decision on Thursday, July 24th, highly ironic in its own cover-up of the hypocrisy of the main Hobby Lobby supporter in New Hampshire.

Many conservatives were afraid that the sex scandal would, in a political and moral sense, “debag” Girard (an operation some women taking to the social media comment boards counseled Girard’s wife, the mother of his five children, to consider). They feared he would become an albatross in the political arena, and hurt such issues as opposition to the Common Core teaching scandals that Girard has been out front on.

They needn’t have worried. Not only did the Union Leader whitewash the story, television station WMUR and its political correspondent James Pindell, who apparently had interviewed the young woman that was the object of Girard’s affection, ignored the story completely.

And Gatsas and others feel free to go back on Girard at Large, without acquiring any of the stink from association with the Queen City’s #1 skunk.

Why?

A Man Called “Stinky”

I asked Alderman-at-Large Joseph Kelly Levasseur about this development. Not only is he “Girard’s nemesis”, according to the Union Leader, he helped break the story via his Facebook page.

“Gatsas is a bully, but he doesn’t have a three hour per day, five day per week radio show like Rich Girard does,” Levasseur told me in an email. “He needs Girard to pound on his enemies, real or perceived, so he has made the calculation that keeping Stinky on his side is worth being seen as a stooge by going on Girard’s show.”

“Stinky” is the nickname that Rich Girard earned while he served as the aide-de-camp of Mayor Ray Wieczorek in the 1990s. He was so hated, the Board of Mayor and Alderman voted to eliminate that position.

However, when one reads the unexpurgated sexts between Girard and the young woman and discovers his unbridled lust for the scent of a woman’s genitals, one wonders if Girard’s sexually predatory behavior was known then, and the nickname “Stinky” came from that.

An alderman and state senator before winning the mayor’s chair, Ted Gatsas was not elected alderman until the year 2000, his arrival coming after the departure of Rich Girard, who had been elected alderman-at-large in the previous election and served but one term. Maybe he knows the secret of Stinky’s nickname.

No matter which way you look at it, the relationship between Gatsas and Girard stinks!

This opinion piece originally was published on Yahoo! News platform under a different title on June 27, 2014.