As Maggie Hassan prepares to (finally) endorse Hillary Clinton today, she continues to take cues from her chosen presidential candidate on transparency – or lack thereof. From using private email for official business to dodging positions on key issues, Hassan and Clinton are two of a kind.
Take Hassan’s refusal to even acknowledge President Obama’s controversial Iran nuclear deal, despite other New Hampshire leaders, like fellow Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, taking a clear position. When asked by reporters, Hassan refused to so much as acknowledge the deal as an issue:
Granite Status again reached out to the governor for her take on the deal. Her spokesman responded that Hassan is focused on “reaching a fiscally responsible, bipartisan budget agreement that protects critical priorities like affordable higher education, combating the state’s heroin crisis, modern and safe transportation infrastructure, and access to health care without creating massive holes in future budgets.”
Now that Hassan’s “needless” budget brinkmanship is over, it will be interesting to see what excuse she uses next. Hassan’s dodge and decline strategy on Iran is straight out of Clinton’s playbook – she’s been deploying the tactic to avoid taking a position on the Keystone XL pipeline for months.
Sarcastically referring to Keystone as one of her “favorite issues” when a New Hampshire voter had the audacity to ask her a basic question at a town hall meeting yesterday, Clinton somehow managed to both contradict her past statements and continue to avoid taking a position at the same time:
Clinton told another Granite State audience in July that she would only take a position on the pipeline “if it is undecided when I become president.”