After vow of silence Shea-Porter continues to talk about controversial 2005 town hall ouster

Politico asks this morning if Democratic Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01) has “gone native”:

Has Washington changed Carol Shea-Porter?

It’s a question that’s being asked in New Hampshire as the Democratic congresswoman gears up for reelection amid criticism that she’s become an insular member of the political establishment she once confronted as a grass-roots activist.

While Republicans have seized on the issue as part of their effort to deny her a third term, the state media has also focused on the theme after Shea-Porter avoided scheduling open town halls during Congress’s August recess. While she eventually held the events, it wasn’t until after she took considerable heat — and after her likely 2010 Republican opponent, Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta, announced he would be holding his own public health care event.

“The irony is, of course, that Shea-Porter used to be a ‘tea-bagger’ on the left,” wrote Nashua Telegraph columnist Kevin Landrigan in late August, borrowing a phrase Shea-Porter had used to describe conservative town hall opponents. “We remember when, Carol, do you?”

The charge that a member of Congress has “gone native” or been changed by Washington is a campaign staple, but in Shea-Porter’s case, it’s an especially troublesome matter because it cuts to the heart of her political identity.

Reporter Alex Isenstadt glosses over one recent controversial incident that ultimately involved NowHampshire.com:

Republicans, including former state GOP Chairman Wayne Semprini, accused her of being a hypocrite for avoiding the events and criticizing conservative town hall disrupters when, as a protester, Shea-Porter herself had been removed from a March 2005 event featuring President Bush.

The congresswoman denied in an interview with the Portsmouth Herald that she had been told to leave, a response that had many in New Hampshire political circles scratching their heads, since the incident is a well-known part of Shea-Porter lore.

In fact, most in New Hampshire’s political circles criticized Wayne Semprini for, according to them, lying about Shea-Porter’s controversial past. Shea-Porter’s staff told NowHampshire.com the incident never occurred and we initially backed off from reporting on some of the rhetoric flying back and forth. It was only after an exclusive NowHampshire.com interview with the Portsmouth Police Department revealed that Shea-Porter was removed by two police officers—gentlemen she later referred to as “thugs,”—that the head scratching began.

Shea-Porter has been urged by pundits to stop talking about her controversial past as a protester and it appears she has heeded this advice for the last few weeks. But it appears now that she is willing to discuss it again:

In an interview with POLITICO, Shea-Porter said that she had merely meant to distinguish between her relatively peaceful form of protest in her pre-Congress years and the more disruptive actions taken by the conservative town hall rabble-rousers during the August recess.

“I never opened my mouth,” she said of the 2005 Bush event, where she and another activist removed their sweatshirts, turned their backs to the president and revealed T-shirts that read, “Turn your back on Bush.”

“There’s a very, very big difference between standing there politely and quietly with a shirt on and going around and being disruptive and yelling,” Shea-Porter said.