Former Salem NH selectman Joe Gagnon
I can’t believe that over a quarter of a century has now passed since I worked as a Newspaper Reporter in Salem NH. Without a shadow of doubt, the most fascinating character whom I covered in the nearly two-year stint with both the Salem Observer and the now-defunct Salem Record, was Selectman Joseph W. Gagnon. I never really asked the guy, but I swear the “W” on Joe’s middle initial must stand for, “Wacko”.
I also found it amazing that when doing a Google search on “Salem NH selectman Joe Gagnon”, nothing comes up on this guy’s six-year tenure “managing” (or should I say, “mismanaging”) that community. Are we supposed to believe that “life” began at the turn of the century just to accommodate both Google and the World Wide Web?
To put it mildly, Joe was always playing about 51 cards short of a full deck. To say that this guy was a wee bit “controversial”, would truly be an understatement. When he was first elected to the Board of Selectmen in March ’87, Gagnon had kicked one of the incumbent board members he defeated in the groin on Election Day. Now granted, the incumbent in question was a little immature to hold the door shut on Joe at one of the polling locations, but the last time I checked, an adult man (and Gagnon was in his mid-40’s at this time) delivering a kick in groin to another individual is considered, Assault and Battery. Can you say, criminal offense?
A week or two earlier in that same ’87 Salem election, Gagnon encountered the other incumbent Selectman he was challenging at a popular breakfast diner in town. There, Gagnon made it a point to apologize in advance to this Salem selectman on what he planned to say about him during their upcoming televised debate. What was weird about this exchange — most people apologize AFTER they make a regrettable public statement about somebody, but Gagnon apologized BEFORE he planned to trash this guy. Whether or not Gagnon initiated a little “reverse psychology” here, Crazy Joe wound up bouncing this incumbent out of public office as well.
Shortly after Gagnon was elected, a few angry voters raised some stink over pushing for a “recall provision” and having him impeached from office before he even got started — as if to say, the voters shouldn’t have ever elected this nutcase in the first place. The problem here is that it’s nearly impossible to impeach or recall an elected official from office. Something like 25 percent of all registered voters from that community are required to sign a recall petition. Then, of course, Gagnon would have an opportunity to see the petition for himself and personally either visit or contact any of the people who signed the thing. It’s a zillion times easier to vote correctly the first time around.
Another thing that was very unfair to expect from Gagnon’s selectmen colleagues was publicly “censuring” him for his many juvenile and ignorant actions at board meetings and in the community. But in all fairness to Gagnon, he was a duly-elected member of the Salem Board of Selectmen and the onus should NOT be on his fellow colleagues to determine whether or not the voters made a mistake in the election. To the best of my knowledge, Gagnon was never publicly censured by the other members of the Board of Selectmen for his actions.
From a media standpoint, covering Joe Gagnon was a Reporter’s dream come true. It wouldn’t take much initiating from Joe to generate a nice controversial article for a Reporter’s newspaper. These regular local board meetings, like Selectmen and School Committee, were mostly dull, boring and lackluster. Think of how dull and boring it would be for a Reporter covering the New York City mayor’s race this year if Anthony Weiner wasn’t a candidate — it’s sort of like that.
For example, shortly after Gagnon was first elected in ’87, he had a whole batch of business cards made up with his name, title of ‘Selectman’, and phone number on them — all courtesy of the Town of Salem. When he gave one of these business cards to local pol, Earl Merrow, who really didn’t like Gagnon too much, Merrow responded and said, “hey thanks for the card, Joe, I just ran out of toilet paper and this will come in really handy.” At that point, Merrow served on both the Finance Committee and the Conservation Commission, but Gagnon made a big stink (no pun intended) out of that comment and he tried to either get Merrow publicly censured, or even removed off those boards. Gagnon claimed that the phrase “toilet paper” was vulgar and unbecoming of a public official. Merrow remained on his public boards but not before Salem residents got a good laugh from the whole incident.
The two weekly newspapers, which I was both associated with: the Observer and The Record, had reporting policies specifically on Gagnon since he alone could generate about a dozen articles in one Selectmen’s meeting. For example, during the first couple months of his selectman’s tenure, The Record would publish the other four selectmen’s names and say it was NOT any one of them they were referring to — but that didn’t last long since it was unprofessional and juvenile from a journalistic perspective. From a reader’s point of view, you’d have to seriously ask the question, Is this guy Gagnon really as crazy as the local media was making him out to be?
Just prior to the ’87 Salem local election, Gagnon was quoted in the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune as saying, if elected, he would fire the Town Manager, who, at that time, was a pretty sharp cookie named, Tom Molina from either Minnesota or Wisconsin. After he got elected, Gagnon then claimed that the Eagle-Tribune had “misquoted him” – Joe would do that a lot, especially with newspapers that loved to paint him as crazy.
But within a year after Gagnon became a Salem selectman, Molina uprooted and went back to the Midwest presumably from political pressure by Crazy Joe.
Another mystery about Gagnon was that he claimed before the election that he was a software salesman, working for a nearby high-tech company. After the election, Gagnon seemed to have all the free time and flexibility in the world. He was often present at a few of the popular breakfast diners in the morning patronized by the local pols. If there was a ribbon-cutting ceremony in town during weekday office hours, Gagnon would be right there representing the Salem selectmen. Besides that, he drove around in a fairly new Mercedes-Benz, which had a car phone (that was sort of a luxury item back then) installed in it. So needless to say, there was a lot of speculation between Reporters and political adversaries of Gagnon (even if it was, off-the-record) in an effort to figure out how the heck was this guy financially sustaining himself.
Joe was DEFINITELY “micromanaging” the Town Manager, as well as a few of the department heads during normal Town Hall operating hours. More often than not, Mr. Gagnon was seen just hanging out at Town Hall. Gagnon also somehow got himself appointed the selectmen’s representative to the Salem Planning Board, which was certainly a very powerful entity especially with all the development that was taking place in town at that time. In fact, I’m fairly sure Gagnon managed to get himself appointed the selectmen’s rep to the Planning Board every year of his elected tenure. I heard it had something to do with voting in a certain selectman as board chairman, who in turn, appointed Gagnon to the Planning Board.
Can you say, Quid Pro Quo?
Besides that, it was much better to have Selectman Gagnon as your political ally rather than your political adversary — otherwise, Crazy Joe could literally turn your life into a living hell.
Crazy Joe was also a pioneer in Salem Local Access TV, with a show of his own, “For the Record” (I can only assume Joe loved The Salem Record newspaper so much that he paraphrased its name for own his TV show) that I believe he presented monologue (or solo) style. When a newspaper colleague of mine decided to run for a Salem State Rep seat one time, Gagnon criticized this guy to prompt him to complain to the Government Local Access TV officials. When the local access officials informed Gagnon that they would hold off on that particular episode till AFTER that election, Gagnon had gone to Court and, I believe, whacked the local access studio with an injunction from broadcasting ANY programs. Long story short, Gagnon’s episode aired on Salem local access TV and my colleague lost his bid to become a State Rep.
To give you a much better understanding of Joseph W. Gagnon’s “modus operandi”, here’s a grievance complaint filed by the Salem Firefighter’s Union specifically against Mr. Gagnon and his TV show, “For the Record” back in January 1992:
http://www.nh.gov/pelrb/decisions/board/documents/1992-009.pdf
Is it safe to assume that the Salem Firefighter’s Union worked EXTREMELY HARD when Crazy Joe came up for reelection that following year?
But Selectman Joe Gagnon’s TRUE LEGACY as a Salem public official was contained in the approximate half dozen or so Defamation of Character lawsuits, which were initiated against the Town mainly because of his recklessness and ignorance. On his very first day as an elected official, when he kicked his incumbent opponent in the groin at the polls on Election Day, it was inevitable at the point, Gagnon was a lawsuit waiting to happen. And since Salem selectmen’s meetings were broadcast over the town’s cable TV system, practically everybody in town had the potential to watch Gagnon in one of his slanderous rants against someone he disliked in the community saying something like, this person was buying votes, or, there seems to be a little price-fixing here.
The second part of Gagnon’s legacy was, how the heck did this whack job get REELECTED TO A SECOND TERM IN 1990??? Elsewhere on this blog I mentioned that friends of mine told me that when choosing a lawyer – especially one to represent them in a court case – always go with an attorney who’s both an s.o.b. and a Pit Bull. I think the same philosophy applies to elected politicians as well. Gagnon certainly fits the description of both an s.o.b. and a Pit Bull – what Salem taxpayers never really took into account in that 1990 local election was how much money their property taxes would go up because of Gagnon’s Defamation of Character lawsuits.
One thing that should be noted here as well, there’s a major difference between someone who’s stupid and someone who’s crazy – Joe Gagnon DEFINITELY WAS NOT a stupid man, he was actually very intelligent and ABSOLUTELY LOVED to “get in the grille” with lawyers, engineers, public administrators, contractors, etc., and engage in a battle of wits with these people during public televised discussions. The more intelligent the opponent, the more Gagnon seemed to be stimulated by the challenge. I would definitely venture to say that out of all the selectmen who I’ve ever met — both in Massachusetts and New Hampshire — Joe Gagnon probably possessed the highest I.Q. out of the whole bunch.
Crazy, on the other hand, is a whole different bucket of worms – if you looked up the word, “crazy” in the dictionary, Joe Gagnon’s picture would probably be right next to the definition. One former newspaper colleague of mine at the time compared Gagnon somewhat to Napoleon Bonaparte as both sharing, “Delusions of Grandeur” — I would concur 100 percent with this particular assessment.
The Town of Salem settled these lawsuits, from what I understand, out of court. Gagnon, incidentally, was a divorced bachelor and resided in a basement apartment during his entire tenure as a Selectman, therefore, the Plaintiffs expected most of their “financial remedy” from the Town since Joe didn’t really have any “tangible assets” to go after in a lawsuit. So while Gagnon was publicly defaming these people at public meetings, he was DEFINITELY playing with Town of Salem money, not his own. Un – BLEEPIN – believable!!!
So what’s a person’s reputation worth these days (or even in the late 80s—early 90s)? The Plaintiffs DEFINITELY needed to pay their attorneys’ fees because I don’t believe any of them were working “pro bono” on a case like that. It’s too bad that the public can’t know the actual dollar amount paid out in out-of-court settlements, but I would guestimate it’d have to be: hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of dollars between the half dozen lawsuits.
Instead of nipping Gagnon’s insanity in the bud by the end of his first term in ’90, Salem voters instead, gave this whack job another three-year term to get the Town even more entrenched into these lawsuits. As I also mentioned elsewhere on this blog, “the masses are asses” and that would certainly pertain to the majority of Salem NH voters in 1990.
So in ’93, the Salem taxpayers finally wised up and voted Gagnon’s butt out of office – thank God for small miracles. Crazy Joe had initiated about one Defamation of Character lawsuit for every year that he was a Selectman. Somebody told me that Gagnon ran for Salem selectman a few more times after ’93 but was convincingly defeated each time. I heard he pursued a career in mortgage financing, which I’m sure he’d be pretty successful because Gagnon always had a great gift of bullBLEEP. Also, it would appear that Gagnon’s mysterious “source of income” during his selectmen’s tenure disappeared as soon as Joe lost all his political clout in town — oh well, life sucks then you die, I guess.
Mr. Gagnon would have to be in his late 60s, maybe even early 70s, at this point. I honestly think the Town of Salem NH ought to erect a statue or name a building after Crazy Joe Gagnon, if nothing else, just as a constant reminder for taxpayers to ALWAYS STUDY THE CANDIDATES AND ISSUES BEFORE CASTING YOUR VOTE!!!
One Bad Decision Away From Homelessness 