The election countdown is on! With less than a week to go until the special election to fill the 3rd Essex state representative seat vacated by Brian S. Dempsey, candidates Andy Vargas and Shaun Toohey face off in a live debate Thursday night, at 7 p.m.
Sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Greater Haverhill, the debate between Democratic candidate Vargas and Republican candidate Toohey will be moderated by Peggy Kruse of the Andover/North Andover League of Women Voters.
The debate takes place at HCTV’s Harbor Place Studio, 2 Merrimack St. 97.9WHAV FM broadcasts the debate live and it will also be carried on HCTV channel 22.
Members of the public are encouraged to submit questions for the candidates online or in person prior to the start of the debate. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and seating is limited.
Haverhill will also hold its election for mayor, City Council and School Committee next Tuesday, Nov. 7.
Beverly Donovan, President of The Haverhill Chamber of Commerce….WHERE ARE YOU?
Criminal illegals are committing armed robbery in Haverhill businesses on a weekly basis now. The thousands of illegals making Haverhill home are stealing jobs that otherwise would have gone to city residents. Cars are getting broken into at city businesses every week. Drugs deals by illegals are happening in business parking lots. Gang graffiti is spray painted on businesses all of the city.
Beverly, why aren’t you and the HCC mobilizing your members to elect Shaun Toohey, who is committed to protecting city residents and businesses??? It is well known that Andy Vargas is more committed to protecting the illegal invaders making Haverhill such a dangerous place to live and work. Is it going to take some business owner getting shot to death in their own business for the HCC to act? Shouldn’t the number one goal of the HCC be to help protect the safety of its members in their own business??
Beverly, besides the HCC mobilizing for public safety reasons, why aren’t you working to elect a Republican interested in protecting small business owners when it comes to government involvement and taxation of their business? Andy Vargas continually talks about increasing taxes on businesses in the city to fund the local social welfare programs he wants to institute. Why isn’t the HCC working to make sure that doesn’t happen? Do HCC business owners really want a state representative who puts a big target on their backs to take the fruits of their labor so the whackjob state legislature can then redistribute that money to illegals and all the other cradle to grave welfare layabouts?
Beverly Donovan….it’s your job to protect the interests of HCC members. Do something before it’s too late!!
You’re clearly a sad, sad man. If you hate Haverhill so much 1) run for office and change it, or 2) leave. Haverhill isn’t a war zone. There aren’t cops outfitted in military weaponry patrolling the streets. Illegals aren’t ‘stealing jobs’. It must be so hard to be you, the ‘oppressed white man’. Your ranting lunacy on here is nothing but a sad reflections of a pitiful racist.
Andy Vargas himself talks about how his own father came to Haverhill from the Dominican Republic illegally to work in a Haverhill factory!!!
When downtown Merrimack Street is blocked off by Haverhll police cruisers with their lights flashing and police are walking around with bullet proof vests on AT THE KIDSFEST of all places, then get back to me Haverhill isn’t a war zone.
Go downtown some Saturday night to see all the cops walking the streets after a young man got stabbed to death there a few months back.
Thank you for the opportunity to bring up more “factual events” of the sanctuary city the mayor and Andy Vargas have turned the city into.
Not a war zone? Don’t tell that to the Haverhill Police officers who were shot at in the middle of the day by an illegal invader after they showed up on scene with the highly weaponized HPD SWAT vehicle when the Vargas supporter barracked himself in his Fiorentini subsidized home.
This is Jacks MO, straight from the Far Right Hate Play Book. Jack, fortunately, is irrelevant to anything.
What is more relevant and concerning to all of us is that he acts as a representative to Shawn Toohey and Maura Ryan what’s-her-name.
One has to believe that, absent an admonishment to Jacks racistist hatefilled rants, Shawn and Maura are, simple put, just as racists and hate filled as Jack.
Both should be purged from the Haverhill and State political scene.
Haverhill can do better.
Kerry, I’ve emailed over 200 fellow former students of Marc Harvey at HHS (along with some parents) telling them to vote (absentee if necessary) against Maura. Even if only a meager fraction are up to the call, this will put a significant dent in Maura’s chances of reelection. These alums have unanimous disdain for how the solar project was rejected, and many are eager to be more politically active given the turn politics have taken nationally.
I think there’s a strong chance Magliocchetti, Smyth, and Hobbs Everett all outperform Maura on November 7th. Even Rosa has an outside chance now. People may snicker, but those same people also weren’t expecting her father and brother-in-law to lose their respective races two years ago.
Shaun Toohey….
I got your mailing today showing Acorn Andy and the unindicted co-conspirator DeLeo, which stated that Andy voted himself an 88% pay raise. Shaun, where did you come up with the idea that a “pay raise” is what is going to motivate people to vote for you?
A pay raise is way down the list of what people in the city are about.
What people care about is knowing that when it gets dark out their elderly parents aren’t going to have their house broken into by criminal invaders looking for money to feed their drug habits.
What people care about is that their teenage kids won’t get knifed or shot when they go out on weekends by the invader gangs that have sought safe haven in Haverhill because of the welcome mat laid out for them by the mayor and Andy Vargas.
What people care about is that their mothers, wives and daughters aren’t dragged into the woods at a city park or just going out shopping and raped by invaders like happened just months ago to a Hispanic woman.
What people care about is that their family and friends who are police officers in Haverhill make it home after every shift and not killed by one the thousands of dangerous invaders who make Haverhill home.
Shaun, if you don’t focus on the fact that public safety is the number one issue in Haverhill and that issue is driven by the criminal invaders that Andy Vargas supports, you are going to lose. If you don’t bring up over and over and over that Andy Vargas put lives in danger when he chose to support criminal invaders in the city when he intentionally interfered with Federal law enforcement officials in Haverhill working to get drug dealers off city streets, you are going to lose. If you don’t bring up the statistic that 65% of the crime in Boston is caused by criminal invaders and that in Haverhill it is mostly higher than that, you are going to lose. If you don’t bring up that taxpayers in Haverhill are paying $15Million EVERY year to educate students who are children of invaders living illegally in this country and city, you are going to lose.
Shaun, during the debate you need to tell TLOWV to stuff their rules and you ask Andy directly how he can simultaneously support public safety in Haverhill while at the same time supporting the thousands of trespassing invaders who call Haverhill home. You can’t do both. He’ll tell you that the vast majority of the invaders are not dangerous, but the fact is, the first step they take into this country they are breaking the laws of this country. The last thing Haverhill needs is a politician who believes it’s okay for individuals to decide what laws to obey, what laws are acceptable to ignore.
Shaun, reveal Andy and his policy positions for what they are…a great danger to the citizens of Haverhill.
Andy wins in a landslide if/when voters stay home in a traditionally low voter turnout special election. If Toohey can’t get folks off their fat asses to vote, Andy can pop the cork before 8 PM on the 7th.
“Andy can pop the cork before 8 PM on the 7th.”
Shawn lost his last bid for School Committee. But for Joe B, he would have been handed his political hat.
Is the city of Haverhill done with Shawn, Maura and the Dying Ryan Political Dynasty?
We can only hope….
Haverhill Middle School Soccer Championship versus debate?
Given it’s sponsored by The League of Women Voters of Greater Haverhill, I think I’ll watch the soccer games.
Instead of watching partisan group ask boilerplate prepped questions, with almost zero originality or thought, I’ll pass. I did submit a pretty good question though, which no Democrat has been able to answer in this state without repeating Party line mantra (which is wrong). I’ll was the re-run/recording afterwards to see the The League had the courage to ask and press.
DB, what was the question you submitted?
I have a suggestion….all of us regular commenters here on WHAV should all submit questions to TLWV and then post the question they asked here prior to the debate. Then let’s see if they asked any of the questions we submitted, or, if like you claim, they go with just their own softballs. I’m with you…it will be all softballs, leaning to the “left” side of the plate.
I have a question. Can Toohey answer question without Bill Ryan giving him the answer?
Considering that Shaun has no issue with bearing it all. I am sure he would have no problem showing the audience where Bill uses him as a sock puppet.