New Hampshire Republican gubernatorial candidate Kelly Ayotte fired back at a CBS Boston columnist who argued she was drawing on a “racially-tinged trope” when referencing fentanyl trafficking from Massachusetts cities into the Granite State.
On Tuesday, Ayotte announced her gubernatorial run during an interview on Fox News’s Fox and Friends and focused on public safety and fentanyl trafficking as top priories facing her state:
Number one priority is going to make sure that we’re safe, and that means getting those fentanyl dealers, we need tougher penalties to get them off our streets. Unfortunately we’ve seen drugs, the fentanyl being trafficked off our southern border from Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts, into our cities and its killing our citizens.
CBS News Political Analyst Jon Keller claimed Wednesday that Ayotte was playing off of a “racially-tinged trope by blaming New Hampshire’s drug problems on two Massachusetts border cities.”
“Actually, a National Drug Intelligence Center threat assessment found that New Hampshire drug dealers and users are ‘crossing the border into Massachusetts to obtain drugs,’” he added.
Ayotte fired back by tweeting a string of articles on Twitter reporting on trafficking or alleged trafficking of fentanyl and other drugs from Massachusetts into New Hampshire, including individual cases linked to Lawrence, one of the cities Ayotte mentioned Monday, and Boston.
“Fake News @kelleratlarge from @wbz attacked me as racist for stating the truth — fentanyl is being trafficked from Biden’s open border to Massachusetts and into New Hampshire,” Ayotte wrote.
In one incident from May, a man named Eddy Perdomo was arrested in Ashland, New Hampshire, and was charged with intent to distribute more than two pounds of suspected fentanyl, the Justice Department announced at the time.
“[Investigators] said Perdomo arrived as a passenger in a car that had traveled up from Lawrence, Massachusetts,” WMUR reported.
In June, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Massachusetts announced that ten Massachusetts residents were charged in an alleged New Hampshire drug trafficking ring, Mass Live reported. Officials said the drug operation, which began four years ago, “trafficked large amounts of fentanyl and crack cocaine from Massachusetts to Manchester, New Hampshire,” wrote the outlet’s Tristan Smith.
Most Massachusetts suspects charged in that case are Boston residents.
“I have heard countless more stories from law enforcement officers and my fellow New Hampshire citizens about the tragic toll that these drugs are having on our communities,” Ayotte wrote in a follow-up tweet.
“The media can attack me all they want. I will fight to keep New Hampshire safe, prosperous, and free,” she added.
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