Victoria Sullivan’s Campaign Consultant Says Manchester Stinks
Faux Pas Reveals Republican Mayoral Candidate as Political Lightweight; She Should Drop Out — OPINION
MANCHESTER, NH — In the most remarkable campaign development since Ted Gatsas was revealed to have covered up a high school rape for 18 months when announcing his bid for reelection 2017, Victoria Sullivan’s consultant Michael Biundo used a metaphor implying that the Queen City stinks.
“Picture this: You open your refrigerator, you look at the expiration date on your milk and it says you have a few days left. When you open the carton, however, you can smell that something is not right. That’s what the residents of Manchester have to endure daily. The smell of something that’s not right.” — Michael Biundo
Biundo served as a senior consultant to the Trump for President campaign in 2012. Perhaps he believes trash talk is an effective campaign strategy.
He committed his faux pas in an interview with the New Hampshire Journal, which was reporting that Manchester came in #14 in WalletHub’s rankings of the best run cities in America. The rankings covered 150 cities.
Mayor Joyce Craig’s Manchester ranked #29 out of 150 in the quality of the municipal services it delivered.
The New Hampshire Journal had solicited responses from Mayor Craig and the two Republicans challenging her. Both Craig and Rich Girard responded personally; Victoria Sullivan did not.
Aside from Biundo’s Manchester Stinks comment, Victoria Sullivan’s campaign — “C’est incroyable!” as they used to say on the West Side — ran down the Queen City, pointing out to the Journal a negative piece claiming it’s the pits of the Granite State.
According to the Journal, Sullivan’s campaign “…shared another study, this one from MoneyWise, that ranked Manchester as the worst New Hampshire city to live in.”
Is this a way to run for Mayor of Manchester, by claiming it’s a fourth-rate dump?
Is this lack of respect because Victoria Sullivan has only lived in the Queen City for a baker’s dozen years or so? She has ballyhooed, for political gain, her non-political campaigns to clean up the trash left by homeless people: Does she see Manchester as just another dump?
The even bigger question is: Why did Victoria Sullivan let her campaign manager speak for her? Has she lost her voice, or has she been told to shut up?
Coming on the heels of her failure to show up — or even send an email stating her position on School Board autonomy — at Tuesday’s Board of Mayor and Alderman meeting in which the BMA voted to put City Charter amendments granting the School Board the right to override the tax cap on the municipal ballot, one must question her competency as a candidate.
In my opinion, Victoria Sullivan is a nice, sincere person who is deeply concerned with helping people; however, she is an ineffectual politician and campaigner.
Mayor Joyce Craig not just overwhelmed her in their televised debate in 2019, she blew her away. She just doesn’t seem to have what it takes to be the chief executive of the biggest city in New England north of Boston.
Ranking: Pros v. Amateurs
Rich Girard personally answered the New Hampshire Journal’s inquiry, and he answered it in the way a serious candidate does; not by running down Manchester but by citing problems and facts that he’d like to fix.
Girard cited an increase of violent crime, homeless vagrancy, terrible student proficiency scores, and a loss of students from the school district to counter the impression of the WalletHub ranking that everything is rosy in the Queen City.
His remarks ended diplomatically, by acknowledging the significance of the WalletHub findings, not by tashing his hometown, which he has lived in all his life:
“While their review of paper stats is interesting, it doesn’t tell the whole story.” — Rich Girard
He has expended a great deal of time and effort in creating position papers addressing the major subjects a mayor must deal with.
While Girard is a flawed candidate, no one can deny he is intelligent and knows the ins-an-outs of Queen City politics as well as the half-dozen people acknowledged by Inside Manchester Politics cognezeti as Masters of The Game.t
Rich Girard is a pro. Victoria Sullivan ranks as an amateur — a rank amateur at that — in contrast with Mayor Ray Wiszoreck’s former chief-of-staff, who has served as Alderman-at-Large for one term and two terms as School Committeeman-at-large.
She and her campaign have become an embarrassment to the City of Manchester.
As I have said, Sullivan campaign adviser Michael Biundo served as a senior consultant to Donald Trump in his winning 2012 Presidential campaign. In my opinion, he should advise Victoria Sullivan not to file a candidate’s declaration for mayor when the municipal candidate filing period opens on Monday, July 12th.
