EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Michael Gugliemo was convicted of assault in January of this year. In fact, he was listed as a victim in court records of that incident. This story has been updated.

Michael Guglielmo, one of the candidates running for a seat on the Concord School Board, has a lengthy criminal record spanning nearly four decades.

Nothing prevents convicted felons like Guglielmo from running for office in the city.

In September, Guglielmo, 60, announced his candidacy for a Concord School Board seat to represent District A, which includes wards 1, 2, 3, and 4. He’ll be effectively running against Jessica Campbell, though two other names, Kristen Jackson and Robert Avery, remain on the ballot. Campbell was the lone district candidate to participate in a recent Monitor school board forum. Jackson has not replied to the Monitor’s attempts to contact her. Avery has officially withdrawn from the race. Voting is Nov. 7.

While Campbell, as an adjunct professor at SNHU, has a traditional background for school board candidates, Guglielmo has been in the headlines for a recent dispute with a Concord elementary school teacher and for his history of arrests and convictions.

“I am running for school board on principle and, yes, I have a past and I’ve paid the price for my past, yet that price appears to be never ending,” Guglielmo wrote in a statement to media. “To those who are concerned about my past who profess to be God fearing, where is your principle of forgiveness? And those of you who want to use my past against me, well, that is your choice.”

On Dec. 5, 1985, while under the influence of alcohol, Guglielmo was arrested by the Manchester Police Department and charged with three counts of attempted murder of police officers, reckless conduct and an assault on a police officer, according to a police report.

Guglielmo was 23 years old when he broke into the home of a known drug dealer on Montgomery Street in Manchester that he planned to kill. Manchester Police and members of the SWAT team surrounded the home, leading to a standoff with Guglielmo. He fired more than 200 rounds at police.

The attempted murder charges were reduced to first-degree assault. He was found guilty and sentenced to 22.5 to 45 years in the New Hampshire State Prison. He was released five years shy of the minimum 22.5-year sentence in 2003 when he was 40 years old.

He was released early, in part because of his attempts to further his education when he was incarcerated, he said.

After he was released, he became a father in 2006 to a son named Giovanni, who had a rare gene mutation. He led an international campaign to help match bone marrow donors with those in need of transplants. Giovanni died in 2012 at the age of five.

Yet Guglielmo continued to have run-ins with the law.

In 2009, he sustained three stab wounds to his stomach during an altercation in his home and was arrested by the Concord Police Department for simple assault. Because Guglielmo was on parole at the time of the altercation, he was remanded back to Concord State Prison for 42 days, according to police and court records.

“I was arrested in my own home for defending a third party being assaulted on my property by three others whom I defended myself against as they repeatedly stabbed me almost to death and I was charged with assaulting them,” Guglielmo said in a statement to media.

Six years later in 2015, he was charged with sexual assault, simple assault, criminal threatening and two counts of disorderly conduct as a result of an altercation with a 16-year-old female in a restaurant on South Main Street in Concord.

According to police records, Guglielmo appeared to be under the influence at the time of the alleged assault and admitted to touching the buttocks of a young female in the bar area of the restaurant. Witnesses said Guglielmo made odd and inappropriate comments to the female in the hours leading up to the alleged assault.

“It was apparent that Guglielmo purposely walked toward [the victim], who was standing at the bar between two bar stools,” Detective Brian Womersley wrote in his police report. “Guglielmo looks down in the direction of the [victim’s] backside. He then reaches his left hand out away from his body and appears to extend his fingers. Guglielmo then touched an unknowing, unwilling and helpless 16-year-old’s buttocks.”

Guglielmo pled guilty to simple assault and the sexual assault charges were dropped by prosecutors, according to court documents. He was sentenced to a maximum of 12 months in Merrimack County Jail, but most of that time was suspended.

He still insists he was innocent of those charges.

In 2018, he was charged with driving under the influence by Concord Police and found guilty. A year later, he was arrested by Manchester Police for five counts of simple assault and aggravated driving while intoxicated.

According to a press release from the Manchester Police Department, officers responded to E. Industrial Park Drive when a woman, who was Guglielmo’s romantic partner at the time, called police for help and told them he repeatedly struck her in the head and threatened to kill her and hurt their unborn child.

He pled guilty to three counts of simple assault. The aggravated driving while intoxicated charge was reduced to disobeying an officer and he was found guilty. He was sentenced to 12 months in Hillsborough County Jail. He served three months and was then placed on probation for two years following his release and ordered to pay $62o in restitution.

“It’s clear that the defendant has a serious substance abuse issue. The defendant cannot follow the criminal laws of this state when intoxicated,” wrote Judge William Lyons in his decision to place Guglielmo in preventative detention. “This profound addiction renders Criminal Bail Protective Orders and Domestic Violence Protective Orders, meaningless pieces of paper that do not protect the victim. Moreover, the defendant’s choice to evade the police while driving under the influence in a heavily settled area of East Manchester makes him a serious danger to those on the streets.”

Since 2019, Guglielmo has been arrested multiple times. Many of the charges of simple assault were dismissed.

to hold office

There is nothing in the Concord School District’s statute that says a convicted felon cannot hold office in the district, said Superintendent Kathleen Murphy.

“I looked into it and he served his time for the crimes he committed,” she said. “I did reach out to our attorney for the district and if he’s elected by the people, he can serve. To my understanding, all of these cases have been resolved.”

When Guglielmo announced his candidacy for school board, Murphy said she met with him, as she does with all candidates, to go over specific aspects of the district and the requirements of serving on the board, she said.

“He clearly has strong opinions about parental rights so, you know, that’s his agenda,” Murphy said. “My responsibility is to work with and support the board and when the board needs to be reminded of the law around their work, that’s my job.”

Last spring, Guglielmo made national headlines when he dressed as Julius Caesar at a school board meeting to protest against the school’s lack of policies against cross-dressing teachers, which he said promotes gender confusion. His appearance came following a confrontation with a Christa McAuliffe School art teacher, who later filed a temporary restraining order.

“I’m no politician and I never wanted to be one but the extreme left-wing transgender community dictating educational values flies in the face of my values and to attack me and retaliate against me for stepping up when all other parents are afraid of being canceled has compelled me to run to fight for the rights of these parents and myself but most importantly, for our children,” Guglielmo said in a statement to the media.