Ayotte should not get the credit
In reference to the Union Leader’s article on the front page of the Sunday News, March 1 newspaper entitled “With Merrimack gambit, Ayotte ices out opponents in critical NH battleground”:
The Union Leader’s framing gets it backward. Governor Kelly Ayotte did not swoop in and save Merrimack from an ICE processing center — she rode a wave that thousands of Granite Staters had already created.
For weeks, while plans advanced, Merrimack residents and allies were the ones holding rallies in the cold, flooding public meetings and turning an obscure warehouse proposal into a statewide scandal. They built the pressure that made an ICE detention hub in southern New Hampshire a political nightmare for both Donald Trump and Kelly Ayotte. By the time the governor finally moved, the project was already radioactive.
Ayotte’s campaign now repackages this retreat as “steady, resolute leadership” and a talking point for swing voters in the southern tier. But if she had truly led, she would have stood with Merrimack from the start, not waited until the town was “blowing up with public protests” and the polling showed overwhelming opposition. Calling that leadership insults the people who actually took the risk.
Let’s be clear: this cancellation is a victory for grassroots power, not polished press releases. The lesson from Merrimack is that when ordinary people organize and refuse to be quiet, even a sitting governor has to follow — and no amount of spin can erase that.