Shea-Porter wants apology from Semprini; Offers no apology for ‘tea bagger’ remark

A nasty he said/she said has broken out between Democratic Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter and former state Republican Chairman Wayne Semprini.

Last week Semprini authored a letter to the editor of the Portsmouth Herald accusing Shea-Porter of deliberately disrupting a town hall event by then-Congressman Jeb Bradley in 2005. Semprini said Shea-Porter was hostile and wore a plastic waffle on her head to signify Bradley’s indecision about the privatization of social security; a controversial issue at the time.

In a subsequent article on Tuesday Shea-Porter tells the Herald Semprini is lying. And she wants an apology.

A photo proves Shea-Porter was present at the town hall but in the picture she is sitting with her hands folded on her lap and sans the plastic waffle headgear.

NowHampshire.com inquired with the Congresswoman’s office as to whether she would, in the same spirit, apologize for calling opponents of health reform, “tea baggers.”

The Congresswoman’s office expressed contrition, but fell short of an apology.

“The Congresswoman was repeating what she heard on mainstream media including Neil Cavuto, a headline on a Foster’s Daily Democrat op-ed, and CBS. Once she heard that they did not want to be called that, she stopped using the word,” Congresswoman’s spokesperson Jamie Radice told NowHampshire.com

The Congresswoman also denied Semprini’s accusation that Shea-Porter had to be forcibly removed from a speech in Portsmouth by President George W. Bush in 2005 for being disruptive.

But NowHampshire.com has obtained a Denver Post column from April of 2005 in which Shea-Porter recollects how she was treated, “like a drunk being thrown out of a bar” (no link available):

Carol Shea-Porter and Susan Mayer had tickets and were admitted to the event staged in an airplane hangar. They even were allowed to stay through the entire show, despite the fact that they sat near the TV cameras and removed their sweaters to reveal red T-shirts that said, “Turn Your Back on Bush.”

But when they left their seats to join the crowd on the floor as the president left the hangar, two burly guys grabbed them and gave them the bum’s rush.

“We were there for the whole event, and they knew darn well that we didn’t disrupt anything,” said Shea-Porter. “We never opened our mouths the whole time.”

Shea-Porter said they went to the edge of the crowd of people as Bush exited and turned their backs to him in silence. “Somebody grabbed me,” she said. “It was really frightening. He said something like: ‘That’s it, you’re out of here. We’ve had enough.”‘

She said she asked him to identify himself. “He said, ‘Never mind who I am.”‘

The guy was wearing a dark business suit and an earpiece. She assumed from his appearance and his demeanor that he was a Secret Service agent, but she saw no identification.

Mayer was grabbed by another Secret Service look-alike who told her, “Time to leave.” She was so startled she yelled: “Take your hands off me. Don’t you dare touch me.”

The bouncer recoiled, she said, but continued to hustle her out of the hangar.

“They were very contemptuous,” said Shea-Porter.

The bouncers took the women to a side door and shoved them outside to a spot where several police dogs and police vehicles were parked.

“It was like a drunk being thrown out of a bar,” Shea-Porter said. “They tossed us where nobody would have access to us.”

Mayer and Shea-Porter didn’t reveal their story until recently. “We don’t want our husbands to get fired over this,” Shea-Porter said.

“But I got to thinking about it. My father was a lawyer and a very strong Republican, and he always used to tell me, ‘If not you, who? If not now, when?”‘

With their husbands’ encouragement, the women decided they had to go public.

The distinction might be in the definition of the word “disruptive” and in the timing of her removal. One Democratic source suggested to NowHampshire.com that the event had concluded by the time Shea-Porter was rushed out of the facility and that she was removed not because she was disruptive but to isolate her from reporters.