Fighting Big Money in Politics (w/ Karishma Manzur)

Chris Hedges Report

Dr. Karishma Manzur challenges the Democratic establishment in New Hampshire with an insurgent progressive senatorial campaign. Manzur aims to restore the true meaning of ‘public service.’

The blowback of the failed 2024 Biden-and-then-Harris Democratic presidential campaign, which supported Israel’s genocide in Gaza, continues as another grassroots candidate runs for Congress. Dr. Karishma Manzur, a scientist who is running for senate in the September New Hampshire Democratic Primary against Chris Pappas, joins Chris Hedges in this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to talk about her campaign.

Manzur, who is also an activist for peace and climate justice, has had firsthand experiences with elected officials through her non-profit work, revealing to her the corrosive power of money in politics. She witnessed the ways big donors, such as AIPAC, control the politicians and both political parties, and the corruption and deceit, which she says are most pervasive at the federal level. She finally asked herself, “Why am I being forced to pick the lesser of two evils because the lesser of two evils is still evil. We’re having to choose between bad and really bad.”

Both the Democrats and Republicans engage in anti-democratic practices and demonstrate their allegiance to the wealthy. Manzur criticizes the revolving door between Congressmembers and corporations: “The money in politics is not just bribing our lawmakers and bribing our candidates, these lawmakers themselves are part of the big money.” A major focus for Manzur is what it means to be a public servant. She loathes the culture of treating politicians as celebrities rather than people who work for the public.

Manzur’s campaign rejects corporate donations and is running on a popular program of Medicare for All, affordable housing, living wages and stopping wars, all of which are gaining traction with voters. Despite the Democrat’s efforts to marginalize Manzur and the wide disparity in fundraising between her and her opponent, Manzur is optimistic that she can win.

Chris Hedges:

Dr. Karishma Manzur is a medical scientist with a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology. She is running as a first-time candidate for the Senate seat in New Hampshire, part of the wave of insurgent candidates within the Democratic Party. She is challenging Chris Pappas, who is supported by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and who has deep ties to the Democratic Party establishment in the New Hampshire Primary on September 8th. Like other insurgent candidates, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, she calls for an end to military support for Israel, Medicare for all, and castigates the Democratic Party hierarchy for its subservience to corporate lobbyists and the billionaire class. She does not take money from super PACs.

She calls for a massive increase in affordable housing and an end to the buying up of residences by private equity firms. “Single family homes,” she says, “are for single families” She demands an end to the war in Iran and a halt to the nation’s addiction to endless wars. She calls out Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose biggest donor is AIPAC, for doing the bidding of the Israel lobby and big business.

“Is the Democratic opposition establishment really in opposition?” she asks, “or is it a controlled opposition serving the interests of the same donor class that funds Donald Trump and the Republican Party?” She is a member of the New Hampshire Coalition for a Just Peace in the Middle East, which includes New Hampshire Veterans for Peace, Vermont, New Hampshire Jewish Voice for Peace, New Hampshire Peace Action, New Hampshire program for the American Friends Service Committee and 350 New Hampshire. Joining me to discuss her candidacy is Dr. Karishma Manzur.

Let’s talk about what it is that propelled you into this race. We had spoken earlier when you were visiting Princeton, and it was really, from what you told me, born out of a kind of deep frustration.

Karishma Manzur:

First of all, thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to speak to you and to your listeners. I can start with my frustration at various levels in my life. There is a family history that also impacts the way I think about foreign policy here in the United States. And, also, being a Democrat and being frustrated by the establishment and the corporate Democrats that are basically failing us and have lost twice to Donald Trump. So, it can be at various stages, but it just kept building up and finally we said, “That’s enough.” And we’re right running a grassroots campaign, as you mentioned, honest and unbought and for the people.

Chris Hedges:

Well, let’s talk about those frustrations. You ran into one kind of brick wall after another on a series of issues. I know for instance the climate crisis is big on your agenda, wars are big on your agenda, but talk about your – because the reason at the end of that introduction, I listed you have been an activist involved with these groups, which has meant that you have been reaching out to centers of power, in particular the Democratic Party, and were really rebuffed. So, speak a little bit about that experience.

Karishma Manzur:

So, I’m a scientist by training, that’s my profession, but also for the last several years I’ve been very involved with the nonprofit sector in New Hampshire. And one of those was Peace Action, because this war economy is hurting our communities across this country. It is also causing massive death and destruction across the planet, and it’s burning our planet down. We need to stop this war economy. So, Peace Action is something that is very close to my heart. And the other nonprofit that I’m very involved with is Open Democracy Action. We’re trying to get big money out of politics because it’s the greatest threat to our democracy, and we don’t even have to say that anymore. We are living through that kind of terrible nightmare.

So, I kept my paid job, but I was involved with the nonprofit sector, and through that, we were trying to advocate for getting money out of politics and actually having a foreign policy that was based on national interest and national security and not war profiteering. So, we’re a tiny state, so we only have two representatives. But through my coalition work, through my nonprofit work, we would go various times to our two senators’ offices and our two representatives’ offices advocating for things that made sense to us right here in New Hampshire. Increase the minimum wage to a livable wage. Stop weapons transfers to Israel to fuel a genocide. Pass Medicare for All, like co-sponsor and pass Medicare for All, because right here in New Hampshire there are families that are facing dire conditions because they cannot access healthcare. And we kept hitting, like you said, a brick wall because it didn’t matter. Just because we are rising up and going to our delegate’s office that they will care because they’re taking money from National Restaurant Association, AIPAC, Big Tech, Big Oil, Crypto, AI, not every single one of them takes money from every single one of these organizations, but of our four delegates, there’s a nice little game going on where they’re taking a lot of money from various organizations. Yes, these people are Democrats. Our two senators are Democrats. Our two representatives are Democrats. But when I’m trying to improve people’s lives, I don’t care if it’s a Democrat or a Republican. If you’re answering to your donors and you’re not serving the people, I have nothing to more to do with you. The job of a public servant is to serve the public, not corporations. And unfortunately, we see this across this country.

So, through my work in the nonprofit sector, yeah, we went many times, but it didn’t matter. We advocated for increasing the minimum wage. So right now, Chris, you know this: the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour for the last 17 years. The last time it was increased was 2009. 17 years it has not increased. In 2021, President Biden tried to increase it from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour. And we were very concerned that both our sitting senators were going to vote against it. And indeed, they did. Both Senator Shaheen and Senator Hassan, two Democrats, voted against increasing the minimum wage. These are multimillionaires, and they didn’t have the heart to change a starvation wage to a less starvation wage. For me, that was like a betrayal. And for me that was strike one.

Medicare for All, the fact that none of them co-sponsor Medicare for All, including my opponent Chris Pappas, was strike two. And strike three came in 2024 when they were taking money from AIPAC on one side and sending our hard-earned tax dollars, billions of our hard-earned tax dollars, instead of spending it right here in New Hampshire or across this country, it was being sent overseas to kill children, to kill people. And yet they did not listen to us. They did not care to meet with us. They gave us whatever needed to be said at events, like, “Oh, yeah, talk to my office, call me, we will set up a meeting.” Nothing. And yet many of them have regular meetings with their AIPAC handler. This is what we’re facing.

John Sununu is running in this race in the Republican side. Chris Pappas is running in this race in the Democratic side. Sure, there might be some slight differences between them, but they’re both answering to the same donor base. And that is exactly what we’re challenging in this race.

Chris Hedges:

Just before we go on, I know the housing crisis is something that you have spoken out against, which is hitting New Hampshire, but also just across the country, with private equity firms like BlackRock and others just buying up residential housing and making it impossible for families to have homes of their own.

Karishma Manzur:

Yes. So, the housing crisis or the healthcare crisis tells you it’s a systemic failure from the federal government because it’s not just one town that’s suffering or one state, it’s across the board, across this country. So, people might tell you, “I don’t want to be involved in politics,” or “I don’t want to care about politics.” Politics is making your housing unaffordable. It’s making your health care inaccessible. It’s making your childcare too costly. So, people across this country might say, “I don’t care about politics.” Well, politics is impacting you so you better care about politics because the candidates you’re helping elect or others are helping elect to Congress are going to impact your life.

So, the housing crisis, right now in New Hampshire, we are facing about a 40,000 unit shortage. We’re a tiny state of 1.4 million people. 40,000 units short because there’s not enough affordable housing being built. The developers, when they get access to land, they do build houses, but these are million-dollar homes, mansions, McMansions. Nothing against the developers. These are businesses and they want to build what they can sell for the maximum profit. It’s the job of the federal government and the state government to make sure to work with developers in building affordable housing. If we don’t reverse the course of our housing crisis here in New Hampshire, by 2040, it is estimated that we will be 90,000 units short.

So, in New Hampshire, for example, our governor, Kelly Ayotte, you would expect that the chief executive of our government will be the person to help us mitigate the housing crisis. She was on the board of Blackstone, one of the private equity causing the housing crisis. What are we expecting from somebody who caused the housing crisis? This is what we’re talking about. The money in politics is not just bribing our lawmakers and bribing our candidates, these lawmakers themselves are part of the big money. They themselves are part of the problem. She made money from the housing crisis, so we cannot turn to her and ask her to get private equity out of the housing crisis.

Chris Hedges:

When did you exactly decide to run? You’d not run for political office before. And then I want you to reflect a little bit on the Biden-Harris campaign.

Karishma Manzur:

It was kind of building up. Every election cycle I would just look at the ballot and go, “Wow, is this the best we can do?” Because in many of our industries across this country, we have meritocracy. The best people who are the most capable at their job, whether it’s in the construction industry or a police force or in a business, they’re the ones who move up the ladder. But in the Congress, we’re not necessarily seeing meritocracy. We’re not sending the best. We’re sending the ones that the donors can control that are sometimes spineless, sometimes soulless. They will be just corporate politicians. There are wonderful people in Congress. There are wonderful people in the Senate, but the majority, unfortunately, are bought politicians from both parties. So, it has been building up.

I kept going into the ballot box or during the election cycle thinking, “My god, the lesser of two evils. Which one do I pick?” Okay, I’m a Democrat, so I usually pick the Democrat. But still, why am I being forced to pick the lesser of two evils. Why are we, any one of us, having to pick between the lesser of two evils? Because the lesser of two evils is still evil. And yet, this is what we’re asking. The people who will impact our lives, we’re having to choose between bad and really bad. Why not vote for the greater good? So, I kept being very frustrated. Where is that person that inspires me to vote for them and not vote out of fear?

In 2024, this is at the height of the genocide in Gaza, as peace activists, we were, of course, doing vigils in front of the representative’s office, vigils in front of the senators’ offices, going there to hand over pamphlets, reports from Oxfam or Amnesty International, thinking maybe they don’t know what’s going on. And then in May 2024, five of my peace activist friends were arrested in Chris Pappas’ office. They had gone 12 times to meet with their representative, 12 times from January 2024 to May 2024, and yet he did not want to meet with them or have a phone call with them. So, they would go in, ask for the meeting, talk to the staff. They would be, “Oh, yeah, come back, we’re going to do something. Drop off your material,” and that’s it. So, on the 12th time, they planned if they don’t receive their meeting or the phone call, they’re going to do a peace sit-in. It’s a form of civil disobedience. It’s a nonviolent civil disobedience, similar to what Rosa Parks did when she didn’t get up from the bus seat, or what John Lewis did when he crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, even though he was told not to cross it by the governor. So, the five of them, these community leaders, went to Chris Pappas’s office in May 2024, asked again for a meeting or a phone call, and they were told come back or whatever and so they decided just to sit in the waiting room and sit there. And so, they just sat there peacefully. At 5 p.m. they were asked to leave, and they said, “We will leave if you give us the meeting of the phone call.” Instead, the police were called in and these five people were arrested.

Let me tell you how scary these people were that Chris Pappas was afraid to meet with them. Two of them were 80-year-old women, Janet Zeller and Janet Simmons. And Janet Zeller is in a wheelchair. The third person was David Grishaw Jones. He’s the pastor of the Community Church of Durham. The fourth person was Amy Antonucci, she’s the executive director of Peace Action, and the fifth person was Em Friedrichs, an elected official in the town of Durham who was six months pregnant at the time. These are the five people that Chris Pappas did not have the decency to meet with. They’re his constituents. And he never called them back or anything. There was nothing in him. That he had five of his constituents arrested, there was nothing that moved him. I mean, he had them arrested, I guess. At their arraignment, I was there, and that’s the day that we decided that’s enough. We’re not going to keep voting for the any Democrat, we want to vote for the right Democrat. And that’s the day we decided to start the process of having our own campaign.

Chris Hedges:

What was your reaction to the Biden-Harris campaign? I’m sure on the genocide, I mean, in the end, genocide’s a moral issue, it’s not a political issue. How can we possibly vote for anyone who funds genocide was certainly how I approached the election. What was your reaction to that whole almost farcical process whereby which Biden, who had clear cognitive decline, the Democratic Party blocked anyone from running against him in the primaries, and then when that decline became too public to hide because of the debate, they anointed Harris. So, nobody voted for Harris, It’s so patently undemocratic. How did you view that campaign and what it said about the Democratic Party?

Karishma Manzur:

So, before I answer that, which is a great question, let me say one more thing about those arrests. So, in May they were arrested, those five people by Chris Pappas. Then in June there was the arraignment. He never contacted them in all of 2024, even though he was running again for reelection to Congress. All of 2025 he didn’t contact them, even though in the beginning of 2025 he started his Senate campaign. In August of 2025, I launched, and in my campaign, I talk about those five arrests. Right after I launched, he contacted those five people and asked them to have a meeting with him. This is what happens when you challenge them. They suddenly care. They don’t really care, they just want… how embarrassing.

Chris Hedges:

Well, that’s right. Fear works.

Karishma Manzur:

Yes, fear works. So now let’s talk about another problem. So, I do want to say, I will talk about Biden and Harris, but they are, given the nightmare we’re living under with Donald Trump, many people might say, of course, if they wanted to compare Biden to Trump, you might say there are lots of good things about Biden versus Trump because there’s nothing much you can say that’s good about Donald Trump, my god. And I completely understand it. But why did we lose to Donald Trump, right? If we don’t learn from that, the next election cycle we will lose to someone like Donald Trump again and again because we’ve already lost to Donald Trump twice. So, if we are not learning from our mistakes, we’re not learning from these losses, then it is inevitable that it’s going to happen again.

So, let us take a moment to understand what happened in 2024, at least from my humble perspective, that Donald Trump won. So, knowing how lethal that man is in his ability to connect with the people, regardless of whether they’re lies or not, that’s immaterial. He is an effective communicator. He’s able to bring out people to his cause. The Biden-Harris, and the Biden campaign had to take him seriously. Instead of just saying, “Well, Biden is not Trump, therefore Biden’s going to win.” I mean that kind of a ridiculous idea. We knew that it was not going to work because in 2016 it didn’t work. Clinton lost to Trump.

In 2024, Biden was being so arrogant, and the DNC was being so arrogant in the primary process that here in New Hampshire we have the first in the nation presidential primary. Biden wasn’t even on the ballot in New Hampshire in January of 2024. There was a campaign going on, millions of dollars were spent, people were standing around for several weeks holding signs in the bitter cold of January 2024, saying, “Write in Biden.” Because he’s not on the ballot. So, we have to go in, check that we’re writing in, and we have to write in Biden. This was our campaign because he never came to New Hampshire because they wanted to take the first in the nation presidential primary away from New Hampshire. Okay. Dean Phillips was running. Whatever you think about Dean Phillips is immaterial, but he was running. If it’s “we care about democracy,” that’s another campaign that’s running. Give him the ability to connect with the voters. Let there be a free and fair primary. Dean Phillips, part of the problem that he was running into that was DNC was trying to take him off the ballot in some states. I don’t know if you guys remember, but back in 2024, Dean Phillips was spending a lot of time just suing Democratic committees of different states. That’s ridiculous. All right, so fine, Biden wins the nomination. I mean, there’s no one else to get the nomination. And then nobody hears him, nobody really sees him, and suddenly he’s now the nominee. And then, of course, that disastrous debate happens. And afterwards, everyone kept saying, “He has to drop out.” And I remember that New York Times had a headline where Biden said, “Even God cannot make me drop out.” Two days later, he drops out.

So, what happened? Did God intervene? No. The donors intervened. The donors told the Democratic Party that if Biden doesn’t drop out, they’re not going to donate to the presidential campaign. And so, Nancy Pelosi takes the message from the donors to Biden and says, “You got to drop out,” and he does. So, I guess Nancy Pelosi and the donors are even more important than God. Where is democracy in that? The donors have a say? The party has a say? What about the people? And then of course Harris was a Hail Mary candidate. But we were still excited. My God, we were still excited. and I was actually in the Harris convention in Chicago. My daughter was a delegate, and I was her plus one. It was quite exciting. We were hoping that she would change the direction of the campaign. Instead of thinking about the donors and thinking about Benjamin Netanyahu, that she was actually going to listen to the American people. What were the American people asking? It was a very small ask: “Stop the genocide. Give us health care. And stopped burning down the planet.” But maybe one out of those three would have been enough. Instead, for those 108 days, she campaigned everywhere. She had a lot of energy. She was flying all over the country. She did a lot of work, but continuously she was on the stage with Liz Cheney. So, while the base of the Democratic Party was asking Harris to just reach out to them, just stop the killing, just stop the weapons transfers, at least speak out against the genocide. That was all they were asking for. And what was Harris’s thought? “Forget the base. I’m going to get enough voters from the right side, from the Republicans. They’re going to leave Trump and support me.” Well, not once did she go on stage with a Bernie Sanders or AOC in those 108 days.

You cannot stop listening to the people. It doesn’t matter who you are and what race you’re running for, whether it’s in your town level, state level, federal level, it doesn’t matter. The voters don’t owe anyone a vote. Every candidate has to earn the votes. I need to earn the votes. Not because millions of dollars are going to be poured in from my opponent’s side. I have to go out there and earn the vote. And she had to earn the vote. So, it’s sad, right? And in New Hampshire, Dean Phillips was on the ballot and he received approximately 20% of the votes, which means 20% of the delegates to the convention would have been Dean Phillips’s. But they wiped out the entire record and gave all the delegates to Harris.

Chris Hedges:

I just want to say my family comes from Maine, not far from the New Hampshire border. The Democratic Party, especially starting with the Clinton administration, has betrayed the working class. My family is working class. Those towns in Maine are devastated. About just a week or two ago, I was in Mechanic Falls, where my grandparents are from. The bank is boarded up. The mill is closed. Methamphetamine labs, very similar, I think, to impoverished parts of New Hampshire. The Democratic Party turned their back on the working class. And when we compare Biden and Trump, I think we have to acknowledge that the betrayal by the Democratic Party gave us a figure like Trump and when we have insurgent candidates such as yourself and others, I really see it as a kind of return to the principles that once defined the Democratic Party with all of its problems, which have always been there, but nevertheless working people and Labor, they had a voice and that voice was eradicated essentially with a decision starting under Clinton, and Obama was no different, to serve the interests of the billionaire class and the corporate elites. And that’s why I look at your campaign as important. I just interviewed Adam Hamawy here in New Jersey who’s already won the Democratic Primary. But I think that this returns us to, rather than being radical candidates, I think it brings us back to where the Democratic Party should be.

Karishma Manzur:

Where every party should be. Where every candidate should be. Where every lawmaker should be. These are not celebrity positions. Your job is to serve the public. My job is to serve the public. I’m a public servant. We almost treat them like celebrity status, right? They get driven around, like the other day it was a Fourth of July parade. It was my third parade of the day. We were going from town to town, making sure we were able to hit as many parades as possible. It was the third parade, it was such a hot day, must have been like 95 degrees, everyone was just soaking wet. We were lining up for the parade and Chris Pappas was sitting in his air-conditioned SUV while all his staffers were lined up and just before the parade started, he got out of his air-conditioned SUV, walked the parade, and then got into his SUV and went away. Whereas I was out there helping my people. If people in my campaign are working and sweating, well, I’m going to be out there working and sweating with them. No one should be above anyone in any situation, especially not a public servant. I think what we’ve forgotten, Chris, from my perspective, is that public service, the honor is not there anymore. And that is really sad. The job of a public servant is to improve people’s lives in the community, and if people are suffering, then the public servant is not serving the people. Or at least they have to have a very good reason why they can’t. Maybe the money is not there. The budget is not there. But at least be a true a person, like from the people. And we are constantly electing these multimillionaires who are backed by billionaires. They’re so out of touch. So out of touch.

Like you said, you saw those impoverished towns in Maine. Yeah, we have them here too. After the paper mills left, many of these towns were abandoned by the state government, the federal government, but both by the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party. I think we have just become so disenchanted with the Republican Party, we don’t even bother criticizing them. But they are, what is this, like spineless sycophants running around Donald Trump, a fascist. The man is making money from our misery, causing allies to turn against us, has become a thug committing war crimes in Venezuela, in Iran, in Gaza, and yet these donors, shills are just running around him in the Republican Party. Can we also fix up the Republican Party? I mean, I would like the Republican Party to also become humane. I want them to not be corrupt. I want them to also be answering to the people, just like the Democratic Party needs to reform itself.

In the base, if you just talk to regular people across New Hampshire, it doesn’t matter if you’re red, blue, Democrat, independent, Republican, everyone just wants a job that pays well. They just want to be able to afford housing. They just want to have access to healthcare. They want to be able to retire with dignity. These are the things that all of us want. And yet the establishment of both of the parties are answering to the donors. So, it’ not the base. It’s not the people. It’s not the state level. These are amazing public servants. At the town level, amazing public servants. It just seems like at the federal level, we’ve lost touch with the base, with the real people.

Chris Hedges:

Let me ask, I think you’re polling at 34 percent, is that correct?

Karishma Manzur:

Yes. Amazing.

Chris Hedges:

So, let me ask, because boy they came after Adam here, and let’s talk a little bit about their response to your candidacy.

Karishma Manzur:

Let’s see, so we have not had any TV ad. We have not had any mailer, and we just started digital ad today, and yet we are polling a 34%, down from like zero. We started from zero, and Chris Pappas has come down to 47 percent. So, now there’s a 13-point differential, and about 18% of the people are still undecided, and like 40% say they don’t enough know enough about me, which means in 11 days, we can actually win this race. We just need to get our message across the state.

Have they come down upon me? This is a four-term Congress member whose name is known across this tiny state. He’s a multimillionaire. He has billionaire JB Pritzker raising money for him. AIPAC donated anywhere from $800,000 to $3 million to him, and yet he still needed Hilary Clinton to stump for him, Andy Beshear, Pete Buttigieg. Let’s see, who else came? Mark Kelly came around. Like a whole slate of all these people coming around stumping for Chris Pappas. Last weekend the DNC sent its vice chair, Malcolm Kenyatta, to stump for him against me. And then a couple of my supporters were in this crowd as Malcolm Kenyatta is announcing in front of town chairs, county chairs, our party chair in New Hampshire, voters… Kenyatta is announcing that Chris Pappas is going to be the next senator from New Hampshire. And so, two of my supporters went up to him and said, “Malcolm Kenyatta, we have a primary. Why are you getting involved?” They started recording him and he said, “I didn’t know there was a primary.” You don’t know there’s a primary? You’re the vice chair of the DNC, you don’t know there’s a primary? You don’t know there’s a primary challenger?

Chris Hedges:

I don’t know, Karishma, they didn’t know there was a genocide. Maybe they didn’t know there was a primary?

Karishma Manzur:

Yeah, that’s true. Okay, maybe they don’t read the news that we read. That’s true. They have very filtered… imagine, Chris. So, then I was a little late and I got there and my supporters told me what had happened. And I see Malcolm Kenyatta leaving. So, I called him out. I said, “Malcolm,” and I went over and I said, “I’m Karishma Manzur. I’m running in this primary. Did you just announce to everyone that Chris Pappas was going to be the next senator?” And then, of course, my supporters started to record. And he said, “I’m really sorry, Karishma. I told your supporters I didn’t know about you. I didn’t know about the primary. I’m really sorry. You know, I wish you all the best.” Then it’s almost like a joke.

But let me just say, it’s not about just me. I’m a scientist. I will go back to science. I’ve given so much of my life, so much of my family time, but if, God forbid, if I don’t win, that’s one thing. But the people of New Hampshire do not have health care. Thousands of people in New Hampshire do not have health care. They’re literally dying because of cancer treatment that they cannot afford. People are sleeping on the streets of New Hampshire. People are working multiple jobs and can’t make ends meet while these little games are being played. The Democratic Party should, if they were truly democratic, they would say, “Wow, let’s have a free and fair primary. Chris Pappas, you have all your money, go for it. Karishma, your campaign, it’s grassroots. You don’t have a lot of money, but go for it.” I’ve raised $300,000. He has $16 million. The ratio doesn’t even make sense, like talk about David versus Goliath. Yet at every instance, they’re trying to crush me. And this is not just about the Democratic Party it’s also the Republican Party here in New Hampshire. I’ve talked to people who would like to run, but John Sununu and the Sununu family have been controlling the Republican Party for 50 years. The first John Sununu, that’s the daddy John Sununu, the son John Sununu, the brother John Sununu, the uncles, aunts, cousins, their donor class, everything. They’ve been controlling the party. They decide who the candidates are going to be, not the regular people. People don’t decide. They’re just given a choice. They’re actually not even given a choice. And I’ve talked to folks who would like to run as a Republican candidate, and they say, “The party discourages us, actively tells us not to run.” So, it’s happening on both sides. People are hurting across this country.

Chris Hedges:

Have they gone after you, I mean, used racist tropes? I mean some of these campaigns have been pretty nasty.

Karishma Manzur:

So, I do see bots or people commenting. So, I’m Muslim, I’m brown. I was born outside this country, so I’m a naturalized citizen. I’m an immigrant. So that’s three. I’m a progressive. So, keep let’s keep adding. I’m for Medicare for all. God, that’s brings out a lot of hate. I’m for livable wages. That brings up a lot of hate. I want to stop the genocide and stop war profiteering and bring the money back to our community and our country. That causes a lot of hate. So, there’s so many reasons why I’m hated upon. I wouldn’t say necessarily, maybe, I don’t know if I would say that the party itself is causing any kind of hate against me, but it’s this whole line of AIPAC-aligned politicians coming to stump for him. Mark Kelly’s coming back next weekend. Mark Kelly, go take care of Arizona. Why are you coming to New Hampshire to stump the day before the Primary because it’s Labor Day weekend? He’s coming just to stump for Chris Pappas. So embarrassing. So embarrassing. A four-term Congress member needs all his aunties and uncles to stump for him. He cannot stand on his own record. And of course, John Sununu, God, I’m running around this entire state visiting places. I’ve put 36,000 miles on my car. I’ve only run into John Sununu once at an event. He doesn’t even show up. He has millions of dollars. He has name recognition. And his yard sign that he puts up just says, “Sununu Senator.” It doesn’t matter which Sununu. It could be the mother, the father, the sister, the brother. It’s just one of the Sununus running for one of these positions. When you see Sununu, just vote for that person. He doesn’t talk about policy. He doesn’t even have any policy. All he does is, “I’ll cut your taxes. Oh, by the way, I’m a Sununu, vote for me.” That’s not public service, Chris. And when these people like Sununu, when they get elected, because Sununu did serve in the Senate, what do they do? They tell us whatever we want to hear. They use wedge issues to divide us, and yet they answer to the donors. John Sununu, since he left, he lost his Senate seat and he has been in the private sector, he has made like $30 million dollars from all his little connections. This is the reason that anyone who serves in Congress should never be able to lobby, should could not be a lobbyist ever again. There should be a lifetime ban on lobbying.

They use their positions, their connections to make personal wealth. And now that revolving door, he’s a perfect example. John Sununu was a senator, was a lobbyist, and now wants to become a senator again. This has to stop. He’s not a public servant. He’s just a corporate hack. He has been on the board of various corporations making lots of money for himself. And now he will go tell us whatever little games he wants to tell us about. And if he wins, then he’s just going to be working for his corporations.

Chris Hedges:

Yeah, although Karishma, the Democrats are no different. I mean, Clintons, the Obamas, they’re all multi-millionaires as well. But I think that just gets into the whole system has been gamed, which is why your candidacy is so important, and there’s a reason he has $16 million dollars and you don’t.

Karishma Manzur:

Yeah. In New Hampshire, every election cycle at the end of the quarter when you would have your FEC filing, WMUR would always talk about who had raised the most money, “So and so has raised three million, so-and-so has raised five million in this one quarter.” When I started this campaign, I said, “Let’s start to talk about where those millions are coming from. Don’t talk about it as if it’s an achievement. Follow the money. What are the strings attached to that money?” And since then, they have stopped.

We are a tiny little campaign. We are now, of course, at 30, but we have completely, just this one campaign has changed the language, the direction of this race. I used to call myself, which I still am, I’m the anti-corruption candidate running against a corrupt Democrat and a corrupt Republican. Chris Pappas, who’s a poster child for the corruption in Congress and why we need campaign finance reform, is now calling himself the anti-corruption candidate. Now he always has to defend his money. All this time he was talking about his money as if it was an achievement, “I got three million. I raised five million.” This is the first time in his nearly eight years of campaigning that he’s now having to hold back. And he says things like that he doesn’t take corporate PAC money. Well, I’ve news for him. This is one of those places again he deceives the people. He may not directly take corporate PAC money, but what he does is he takes leadership PAC money from Schumer and Jeffries. Leadership PAC money is full of corporate PAC money and super PAC money. It’s just a money laundering scheme. “Don’t deceive the people of New Hampshire. You take that money, just own up to it. Don’t deceive us. We are done with all these deceits by the corporate politicians from the Democratic Party and the corporate politicians from the Republican Party. We are done. If you do not know how to serve the people, then don’t run for public service positions.” That’s my message to Sununu and Pappas.

Chris Hedges:

Great. Thank you, Karishma. Good luck on September 8th. I’ll vote for Adam. If I was in New Hampshire, I’d vote for you, but I’m not. I spent a lot of time in New Hampshire and love it. And I want to thank Malena and Max who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.substack.com.

Host

Chris Hedges

Executive Producer:

Max Jones

Intro:

Margaret Flowers

Transcript:

Margaret Flowers

Crew:

Milena Soci

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