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commentary by Timothy Horrigan; August 5, 2011
(The funny word "leela" is a Sanskrit-derived word which basically means "personal story." I borrowed it from the Adidam community. The devotees like to tell leelas explaining in a few minutes how they came to be involved with the Adi Da Samraj. Here, Todd Puterbaugh explains in a few minutes how he came to be involved with the Free State Project.)
(courtesy of the Ridley Report)
Original URL: http://youtu.be/bEOc4mOkiXI
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Todd Puterbaugh is significant to me only because his wife ran for the New Hampshire House in 2011 against my friend Bob Perry. She is far from the first Free Stater to run for office: a dozen have been elected to the New Hampshire General Court and many others have run. I am not as scared of the Free Staters as most of my fellow Democrats. (There are some wild stories going around.) The Free Staters I have met personally have all been amiable and intelligent people, and they aren't all rightwingers. But, I am still suspicious of a shadowy movement, funded in large part by out of state interests, whose express purpose is to take over a small state where it is easy to get involved in politics. I thought New Hampshire was a free state to begin with.
The Free State Project is the brainchild of one Jason Sorens, a young political science professor at the University at Buffalo (which is ironically part of the State University of New York.) He is the author of the book Secessionism: Identity, Interest, and Strategy.
The dozen Free Staters who have served in the legislature with me since December 2008 are all good legislators; in fact, most of them are much better than average. One Free Stater, Joel Winters, sat next to me on session days my first term: he was a moderate Democrat who was ironically swept out of office during the disastrous election of 2010.
Honey Puterbaugh's run for the State House turned out be more controversial than those of the Free Staters who went before her. She tried to run as a conventional anti-tax conservative New Hampshire Republican, without mentioning the slightly unusual story of how she and her family came to be living in New Hampshire.
Honey Puterbaugh got into trouble partially because she ran in a hard-fought special election during a time of statewide and nationwide political turmoil. She also got in trouble partially because she annoyed some of her more liberal neighbors: I heard words like "nuts" applied to her repeatedly when I canvassed in Barrington. (I was canvassing a list of my fellow liberals, I hasten to add.) But mostly she got in trouble because she wasn't candid about her involvement with the Free State Project. As her husband's video shows, she is very much a Free Stater. Todd is in fact the head of the "FSP Welcome Wagon."
See Also:
August 2009 Letters to the Editor about the Perry-Puterbaugh campaign
August 5, 2011 Foster's Daily Democrat editorial: "Free Staters: Voters deserve an answer"
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