Who, what, when, where, why

Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Paul McEachern was standing outside the Chateau restaurant in Manchester, greeting arrivals to the AFL-CIO Labor Day breakfast, when he offered the following observation about the state of the press in New Hampshire:

“We really don’t have a working press in New Hampshire,” said the Portsmouth lawyer and former state representative who ran against John Lynch in the Sept. 14 Democratic gubernatorial primary.

McEachern was particularly worked up about what he saw as misrepresentations in Lynch’s claims about his role as CEO at Knoll.

The company was losing money before Lynch joined the firm and it became profitable again.

McEachern claimed Lynch’s claims that he turned the company around to profitability were misleading because Knoll was already back in the black over a year before Lynch became CEO. He also pointed out that not everyone was greeting Lynch with flowers upon his arrival at Knoll, especially the 500 people who lost their jobs in the restructuring.

Lynch called McEachern’s statements “a scurrilous personal attack” and has cited them as a reason for refusing to meet in a one-on-one pre-primary debate.

“The press should have been on that from Day One,” McEachern said about the Lynch “resume.” “I think it’s ridiculous that I had to point that out.”

But McEachern – apparently not willing to entirely burn his bridges – added that “the press does the best it can, but when it comes to politics in New Hampshire it’s overworked because we have that presidential primary that they extend themselves on. I can’t complain about it. They’ve been fair to me. They’ve stated my positions correctly. But I don’t think we have what a metropolitan press would do.”