Well, this Shawn O'Connor thing has officially turned insane. A couple of weeks ago, O'Connor, a businessman running for New Hampshire's volatile 1st Congressional District, threatened to sue his Democratic primary opponent, ex-Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, for alleged defamation, claiming that she'd accused him of domestic abuse through a "whispering campaign." Shea-Porter denied the charge, but now the New Hampshire Democratic Party says that O'Connor threatened to sue it, too—and then some.
According to the NHDP, after it asked for (and never received) specific details about O'Connor's complaints, O'Connor "made inappropriate and troubling demands including a suggestion that NHDP or some other third party should pay Mr. O'Connor money to withdraw from the congressional race." O'Connor of course denied all of those allegations, too, basically saying that there's no way he'd have made such a demand for money on account of how he's been "successful in business." (He's self-funded $1 million for his campaign.)
But then, in O'Connor's statement rebutting the NHDP's charges, things got really weird:
In addition, [my] letter, for example, documented how State Senator Donna Soucy (D-Manchester) made a ridiculous allegation to State Senator David Pierce (D-Lebanon), after he endorsed me. Senator Soucy told Senator Pierce that I had planned to purchase and place rats in the kitchen of the Puritan Backroom, a restaurant owned by Executive Councilor Chris Pappas (D-Manchester), a close associate of [NHDP] Chairman [Ray] Buckley, and his family. I do not know where one would purchase rats nor do I know where the kitchen is in the Puritan Backroom. Furthermore, a simple review of the Backroom’s health code records will reveal that the restaurant already has a long-standing problem with rodent infestations.
Of all the WTF moments we've seen in the 2016 election cycle, this one is right up there. For a bit of background (and we can't believe we're even delving so deep into this dumpster, but here we go), the Puritan Backroom is a popular political spot, and its owner, Pappas, had actually been interested in running for this very same seat in the House. But unlike O'Connor, he deferred to Shea-Porter, whom many New Hampshire Democrats felt deserved another try after the FEC fined GOP Rep. Frank Guinta, who unseated Shea-Porter in 2014, for an illegal $355,000 campaign donation from his parents.
So now, in the midst of all this mishugas, O'Connor goes and—for no reason at all—dumps on a restaurant owned by a team player who checked his own ambition at the door for the greater good of the party, all apparently proving he's a lone wolf. Or perhaps a lone rat.
