Less than a week after Hillary Clinton delivered a stinging indictment of Donald Trump’s foreign policy in an attempt to woo disaffected Republicans, her campaign claims her message reached at least one GOP lawmaker: former New Hampshire state Sen. Rick Russman.
Russman endorsed Clinton in an op-ed on Tuesday, claiming Trump’s position at the top of the Republican ticket means the GOP “no longer stands for small government or fiscal conservatism.”
The problem is, Russman has a well-documented history of lending his support to Democratic candidates most Republicans would consider a threat to limited government.
In 2004, Russman helped Democrat Maggie Hassan unseat his Republican successor, State Sen. Russell Prescott. Then chairman of the Granite State Conservation Voters Alliance (GSCV), Russman directed the group to provide financial support to Hassan’s campaign and pen letters to the editor in local newspapers criticizing Prescott’s record.
In a staff editorial earlier this year, the Union Leader described Hassan, who now serves as the governor of New Hampshire, as a “no-brainer” who thinks “big government, fueled precious taxpayer dollars, is still the answer, even when there isn’t a problem in need of solving.”
GSCV also endorsed Democratic gubernatorial candidate John Lynch in 2004 under Russman’s chairmanship. Lynch served four terms as governor of New Hampshire and first attracted Russman’s support when he began discussing environmental issues during his campaign.
Months before the 2012 presidential election, Democrats in New Hampshire revealed a list of “Republicans for Obama,” of whom Russman was included.
According to local reports, Russman disagreed with widespread Republican opposition to stricter environmental regulations and felt 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney would roll back such regulations as president.
“President Obama is making smart investments in clean energy,” the five-term GOP legislator told the Eagle Tribune. “The Romney energy plan has opened the door to drilling off the New Hampshire coastline, which would just be absurd.”
Instead of backing Republican challenger Scott Brown in 2014, Russman endorsed incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. He described Brown as “no different from the Washington, D.C. Tea Party wing of the Republican Party.”
Shaheen spent months campaigning with Clinton ahead of the first-in-the-nation primary earlier this year and has previously called Trump’s opposition to raising the federal minimum wage a “reckless.”
Despite opposing Romney in 2012, Russman said he and the former Massachusetts governor are “in good company” as Republicans “who find Trump to be utterly impossible to support.”
“There is so much at stake in this election and Donald Trump is simply too big a risk. I hope other Republicans will join me in voting for Hillary Clinton,” he wrote Tuesday.
