Politics of New Hampshire: Difference between revisions

New Hampshire voters selected Republicans for office during the 19th and 20th centuries until 1992. Since then, voters have chosen Democrats for U.S. President all but once and, since 2006, have voted Democratic for most state offices. On selected issues, political debate in New Hampshire centers on personal liberty.

New Hampshire has undergone a partisan shift since 1992. Historically, New Hampshire was staunchly conservative state and regularly voted Republican. Some sources trace the founding of the Republican Party to the town of Exeter in 1853. Prior to 1992, New Hampshire had only strayed from the Republican Party for three presidential candidates—Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. The state voted for Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan twice by overwhelming majorities.

Beginning in 1992, New Hampshire became a swing state in both national and local elections. The state supported Democrats Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, John Kerry in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008. It was the only U.S. state to support George W. Bush in the 2000 election and go Democratic in the 2004 election. The state elected two Democrats to the Governorship during this period.

The voters selected Democrats in New Hampshire as they did nationally in 2006 and 2008. In 2006, Democrats won both Congressional seats (electing Carol Shea-Porter in the 1st district and Paul Hodes in the 2nd district), re-elected Governor John Lynch, and gained a majority on the Executive Council and in both houses of the legislature for the first time since 1911. Democrats had not held both the legislature and the governorship since 1874.^[1] Neither U.S. Senate seat was up for a vote in 2006. In 2008, Democrats retained their majorities, governorship, and Congressional seats; and former governor Jeanne Shaheen defeated incumbent Republican John E. Sununu for the U.S. Senate in a rematch of the 2002 contest.

The 2008 elections resulted in women holding 13 of the 24 seats in the New Hampshire Senate, a first for any legislative body in the United States.^[2] At the end of the 2008 election cycle, voters registered Democratic outnumbered those registered Republican.

The following may be factors in the leftward shift, but there is no conclusive evidence on the relative weight of each.

Demographics

Migration from Massachusetts to the more rural and lower-tax New Hampshire, has influenced voting patterns. Folklore in New Hampshire, complete with an off-color epithet, is that arrivals from Massachusetts end up advocating the measures that drove them away from their original home.^{[citation needed]} However, a professor at the University of New Hampshire studied the 2008 election^{[citation needed]} and noted that towns on the border with Massachusetts voted most strongly Republican.

Short-term trends

The fact that two of New Hampshire's neighbors, Massachusetts and Vermont, are reliably Democratic made it possible to free campaigners to work in New Hampshire.^{[citation needed]}

Partisan decline

Any party, after sufficiently long rule, may become dominated by office-holders who ignore the original platform on which the party gained power. Several federal measures passed after the September 11, 2001 attacks offended traditional Republican voters (libertarians and paleoconservatives).^{[citation needed]}

As an additional example, the REAL ID Act was passed in response to the wave of aliens entering the U.S. illegally. It tightened standards for driver licenses, mandated that states capture biometric data, and called for data sharing among states and internationally. Senator Judd Gregg included an earmark in the Act to compensate New Hampshire for being the first state to implement the Act. In 2007, however, New Hampshire overwhelmingly^[3] enacted a law^[4] calling the Act "contrary and repugnant to" the state and federal Bill of Rights and prohibiting the state executive branch from implementing it.^[5]

New Hampshire has several libertarian tendencies. New Hampshire perennially provides popular resistance to proposed seat-belt and motorcycle-helmet laws. Automobile insurance is optional under normal circumstances.^[6]

The state motto of "Live Free or Die" is another political touchstone. In 2006, when welcome signs at the border began to display the marketing slogan, "You're Going to Love It Here," a firestorm erupted and Governor John Lynch acceded to a privately-financed effort to erect new signs bearing the state motto. In 1997, a comparable firestorm had greeted a new issue of car license plates on which the motto was printed rather than embossed; the design was promptly changed to increase the size of the motto. (However, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1977 that those who object to the motto may tape over or cover up the words, either partially or completely.^[7])

New Hampshire's libertarian reputation led the Free State Project to select it by vote for a mass in-migration.^[8] Free Staters have run for office, and become state representatives, but not any statewide offices. They have also conducted civil disobedience to dramatize their opposition to victimless crimes. On May 9, 2005, Free-State proponent Mike Fisher performed unlicensed manicures in front of the State Board of Barbering, Cosmetology and Esthetics offices in Concord.^[9] Others have attempted to be arrested for juggling or providing a puppet show, and arrested for publicly holding marijuana.^[10] On September 5, 2008, Free Staters collected litter in a public park in Manchester before the 7:00 am end of an overnight curfew, but were not arrested.^[11]

New Hampshire's libertarian reputation has also induced contiguous Amesbury and Salisbury, Massachusetts, and not-nearly-contiguous Killington, Vermont in 2004 and 2005, to petition to become part of New Hampshire.^[12] This reflected local discontent with restrictions on liberty or profitability, rather than any expectation that their own states plus the U.S. Congress would grant the necessary permission.

There is continual opposition to "broad-based" taxes. Their absence is not absolute; there is an 8% sales tax on rentals (vehicles and rooms) and meals^[13], and a 5% income tax on dividends and interest;^[14] moreover, the state's 0.75% Business Enterprise Tax^[15] is essentially an income tax on sole proprietors. However, candidates for legislature and Governor are routinely asked to take "The Pledge" against broad-based taxes.

The property tax is the source of nearly all municipal revenue. It is "broad-based" (affecting even renters, indirectly) but does not attract the same controversy because municipal expenditures are voted locally, typically by Town Meeting, in which every voter can participate.

In 2002, in response to court-ordered statewide equalization of education funding (see Claremont suits), New Hampshire instituted a statewide property tax. The tax is lower than the amount already assessed by municipalities, it is collected by municipalities, and is basically returned to them, though legislative adjustments create "donor towns" and "recipient towns." Each new legislature has considered changes to the distribution formula.

Taxes that are not "broad-based" (that is, that residents could avoid paying) have not aroused comparable controversy. For example, the meals and rentals tax disproportionately impacts tourists and visitors, who do not vote. Recent legislatures have covered increased spending with increases in sin taxes, tolls, and filing fees. Some feel it would be simpler and fairer to enact a broad-based tax; in 2008, various Town Meetings considered citizen petitions against "The Pledge." In particular, the property tax is seen as unfairly impacting the poor and especially retirees. Advocates of a state broad-based tax say it would permit higher state payments to municipalities, enabling them to lower property taxes. The opposing argument is that municipalities set their tax levels to find a balance between local anti-tax and pro-services forces; a new state tax would not change this balance but would eventually lead to more state spending.

• Free State Project
• New Hampshire Liberty Alliance
• Political party strength in New Hampshire

• Politics of New Hampshire at Curlie