I think what amazes me about Salem voters are the mentality they use to vote someone in. Not because of the work they have or have not done in Concord..but what I hear people say when you ask why did you vote for that person “a Nice Guy” or “I have known them a long time”. So thank God that was not the case in other areas of New Hampshire where many of the voters realized the calamity of bills that came out from the State House these last two years and the Democrat’s were able to regain the House.

The other voter statistic that floored me was Maggie Hassen receiving 6219 votes and President Obama 6026 which tells me we have almost 200 voters who are racists here in Salem. How can you vote democratic and not for the President.

I say if you are a Democrat and want to win in Salem change to a Republican. That’s how Michael Downing got in.

I have had the same thoughts for years and agree with you.

The "good ole boy" network and the ability that some voters call these people direct to address their problems instead of going through the official channels has a lot to do with it.

Take Pat Hargreaves for example. How many times has he stated "someone came into my store complaining about,,,,,,,". That's not where citizens should be taking their complaints. We have a Town Manager and Department Heads for that

Congrats to all the Salem Residents for being astute and ignoring the crap being spewed by democrats.

Racism and now Sexism. Democrats lost because they offered nothing on Economic Growth or Unemployment. They offered nothing because they have nothing to offer except for divisiveness. Salem residents are sophisticated and not the low information types needed by democrats.

@ Jane do you believe only males can be sexist?

If Salem had state representatives who represented wards instead of running at-large (and largely hidden and unknown), I wonder what the outcomes would be? As it is, certain sections of town are over-represented among the delegation (especially interesting that two reps from Salem can live at the same address, yet every small town in NH under our constitution and the one man one vote theory is entitled to its own rep). Electing 9 people to represent all 30,000 of us seems like a silly way to elect in this district. It works if you're interested in containing information about how individuals are voting or even if they are showing up for the job, so all you know about some of them is their party affiliation and whether they seem like "a nice person," rather than whether they are actually doing something for this community. It's a pretty uninformed way to go about getting our voice heard in Concord, and probably why we can't get Salem's priorities done.