I’m Patrick Danaher, and I’m asking Hartford residents for their vote on March 4 to serve on the Hartford Selectboard. My family has lived in Hartford for nearly a century, and after 40 years away, I returned to Vermont because this town is home. But Hartford is at a crossroads, and I believe we need new leadership to get us back on track.
For too long, town government has drifted away from the basic responsibilities people expect — keeping taxes reasonable, managing budgets transparently and making sure essential services like public safety, roads and local infrastructure are properly funded. Instead, we’ve seen policies that increase the financial burden on families and businesses while pushing agendas that don’t reflect the priorities of the people who live here. That’s not how good government works.
I spent my career as a sea captain, where leadership, accountability, and making sound decisions were non-negotiable. I’m not a politician. I’m someone who believes Hartford deserves a Selectboard that listens to its residents, spends tax dollars wisely, and focuses on solutions that keep our town affordable and thriving.
This election is about restoring trust in our local government. It’s about leadership that respects the will of the people. If you believe Hartford needs a course correction, I hope to earn your vote on March 4. Let’s bring common sense and responsibility back to town government — together.
Patrick Danaher
Hartford
DOGE’s endgame
With what’s occurring with DOGE, the billionaire ruling class has discovered that they no longer need to use lobbyists, regulatory capture, recruitment of federal government employees into private industry to circumvent regulations, the crafting of legislation via judicial decision at the state level, or the stoking of culture war issues to distract the populace from their overall goal of the complete dismantling of the New Deal order and the installation of a corporate oligarchy.
They’ve learned that our constitutional order, and the checks on power it enables and relies on, is a house of cards and that an easier path to install that oligarchy is the direct seizure of political power, disregarding any legislative or judicial checks or concerns. This is the moment that those of us who have been paying attention have warned of for years. This is the transfer of our country to the richest people in the world so that they don’t have to abide by any of the constraints that you and I must. This is the beginning of the end of our republic, unless we can keep it.
The convenience that the technocrats have promised us in exchange for our data has numbed us to the reality of what’s occurring. It’s time to wake up, realize the predicament we’re in, and demand a different course. We’re doomed if we don’t.
I implore New Hampshire’s Congressional delegation to defend the Constitution and the structure of governance it created and protects. The time for meek bipartisanship is over. The time for action is now. History will remember us as either enablers of totalitarianism at worst, as a failure like the social democrats of Weimar Germany, or as someone who stood up and did their duty to protect America and the America people.
Dax Volle
Lebanon
Money in politics
Oh, them tech bros trying to influence politics. Any of you ever wonder how E. Jean Carroll came up with the money to finance her civil suits against Trump? Even the teeniest weeniest little bit of curiosity about that curiosity?
Sarah Crysl Akhtar
Lebanon