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Will New England's libertarian bastard-child be forced to follow the advice on its license plates and commit ritual suicide, with blue state-hood creeping ever so slowly in? Could gun-totin' freewheelin' be going the way of the Old Man in the Mountain?
New Hampshire bedrock is listing to the left
By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff | July 2, 2007
HOPKINTON, N.H. -- On a scorching summer afternoon, it is dark and cool inside Blaser's Fireside Tavern , and the regulars are making the most of their last days of bar-side nicotine freedom. In September, a law banning smoking in bars and restaurants will take effect, and customers at this neighborhood haunt will have to adjust.
As Bruce Henriksen sees it, this is just the latest bit of nonsense to emerge from the New Hampshire State House.
"It's like the government stepping in on a church and telling them what they can preach or what they can't preach," said the 59-year-old owner of a small home maintenance business, taking a drag of a cigarette.
Granite Staters have spent the last half-century reveling in their reputation as the keepers of Yankee libertarianism, the rock-ribbed neighbors to the north who loathe taxes, Democrats, big government, and -- well, anything else that reminds them of Massachusetts.
But now, Democrats are running both houses of the state Legislature, the corner office, and the Executive Council for the first time since the 19th century. This spring, New Hampshire became the fourth state to adopt same-sex civil unions. The House passed legislation, later killed in the Senate, that would have enacted a mandatory seat belt law in the last state to lack one. And, the other day, the Legislature adopted a budget that will increase spending by 17 percent over two years, along with a 28-cent cigarette tax increase to help pay for it.
GLOBE GRAPHIC: Bluer shades of granite
Is New Hampshire on its way to becoming Massachusetts North?
Governor John Lynch pooh-poohs the very idea.
"New Hampshire is still the best state in the best country in the world," he said in an interview in his office last week. "We're still a state without a sales or an income tax, a very low tax environment, where the quality of life is second to none. . . . We don't have the traffic your state has."
He neglected to mention that he was born in Waltham.
In fact, more than a quarter of the state's 424 lawmakers are Massachusetts natives -- a mirror of the general population, which is about 27 percent Massachusetts-born, according to Andrew Smith , director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
But these newcomers do not appear to be responsible for New Hampshire's leftward list. Smith's surveys have shown that the Bay Staters who settle north of the border tend to be conservatives who want cheaper housing, lower taxes, and less-liberal politics. Rather, it is a different wave of immigrants -- highly educated, well-heeled arrivals from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut recruited to New Hampshire by the state's burgeoning healthcare, financial services, and high-tech industries -- that is slowly turning a red state blue, Smith said.
New Hampshire Republicans tend to blame the Democratic sweep in 2006 on a "perfect storm" of factors -- a popular, anti tax Democratic governor, the absence of a strong GOP challenger, resentment of President Bush, and the war in Iraq. Republicans stayed home; Democrats turned out in force. When it was over, even Democrats were shocked. One candidate who barely campaigned against a veteran Republican executive councilor was traveling in Europe on Election Day, when voters gave him a surprise victory.
Many GOP lawmakers insist the aberration will soon be corrected. They are confident, they say, that the New Hampshire electorate will not stand for what the Democrats have been up to.
"If anything, I think the liberal trend helps us," said Francine Wendelboe , a Republican from New Hampton . "All I've heard people talking about is they can't believe the stuff that's happening here."
Some lawmakers point out, though, that many of this session's apparently liberal laws actually transcend partisanship. Many libertarian-leaning Republicans supported the civil union legislation. Others supported the smoking ban because they believe employees' right to a healthy workplace should trump patrons' right to smoke. Politicians in both parties see New Hampshire's lack of a seat belt law as an anachronism that costs not only lives but taxpayers' money. Smith's polling has shown that a majority of the public supports all three measures.
And though the budget's bottom line is expanding, even Democrats know better than to venture down the road to an income tax or sales tax. The last time a Democratic gubernatorial nominee proposed such a thing, in 2002, voters awarded Republicans huge majorities up and down the ticket. Part of the reason for Lynch's success appears to be his steadfast embrace of "The Pledge," the promise most New Hampshire gubernatorial candidates make to veto a broad-based tax.
Still, it is a far cry from the days of Meldrim "Ax the Tax" Thomson , who as governor in the 1970s proposed arming the New Hampshire National Guard with nuclear weapons, waged a lobster war with Maine, and invited Nantucket to secede from Massachusetts and become part of New Hampshire. Back then, recalled Representative Marshall Lee Quandt , an Exeter Republican who ran Thomson's campaign operation in his hometown, "we'd tell anybody to go to hell."
In more subtle ways, too, the Granite State's rugged profile has grown more refined. Sushi and Starbucks have cropped up in Concord. Manchester Airport has been rechristened the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. The New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper, once run by the fire-breathing reactionary William Loeb, has been almost kind to Lynch.
Republican strongholds remain, especially in the southern part of the state. But they have also changed. Derry, a large town on the Interstate 93 corridor that has almost tripled its population since 1970, feels more like a suburb than a small town, said Greg Germanton, a Republican who runs a jewelry store downtown.
"It's good for business, but I think the sense of personal responsibility has gone by the wayside," he said. "People want government to take care of them."
And whether 2006 was a 100-year-flood or not, the fundamental makeup of the New Hampshire electorate appears to be changing: Democrats have won five of the last six gubernatorial elections. New Hampshire has not voted Republican in a presidential election since 1988, except for in 2000 -- and even then, the combined votes for Al Gore and Ralph Nader exceeded the total for President Bush.
Smith compares the New Hampshire Republican Party's hold on the electorate to the Old Man of the Mountain, the White Mountains rock formation that symbolized the state's flinty soul before crumbling one night in 2003. For years, the Old Man was on the verge of succumbing to gravity, held together by ropes and epoxy applied by its devoted caretakers.
"The fact that it finally fell down didn't come as a surprise to people who had been watching it closely," Smith said.
New Hampshire bedrock is listing to the left
By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff | July 2, 2007
HOPKINTON, N.H. -- On a scorching summer afternoon, it is dark and cool inside Blaser's Fireside Tavern , and the regulars are making the most of their last days of bar-side nicotine freedom. In September, a law banning smoking in bars and restaurants will take effect, and customers at this neighborhood haunt will have to adjust.
As Bruce Henriksen sees it, this is just the latest bit of nonsense to emerge from the New Hampshire State House.
"It's like the government stepping in on a church and telling them what they can preach or what they can't preach," said the 59-year-old owner of a small home maintenance business, taking a drag of a cigarette.
Granite Staters have spent the last half-century reveling in their reputation as the keepers of Yankee libertarianism, the rock-ribbed neighbors to the north who loathe taxes, Democrats, big government, and -- well, anything else that reminds them of Massachusetts.
But now, Democrats are running both houses of the state Legislature, the corner office, and the Executive Council for the first time since the 19th century. This spring, New Hampshire became the fourth state to adopt same-sex civil unions. The House passed legislation, later killed in the Senate, that would have enacted a mandatory seat belt law in the last state to lack one. And, the other day, the Legislature adopted a budget that will increase spending by 17 percent over two years, along with a 28-cent cigarette tax increase to help pay for it.
GLOBE GRAPHIC: Bluer shades of granite
Is New Hampshire on its way to becoming Massachusetts North?
Governor John Lynch pooh-poohs the very idea.
"New Hampshire is still the best state in the best country in the world," he said in an interview in his office last week. "We're still a state without a sales or an income tax, a very low tax environment, where the quality of life is second to none. . . . We don't have the traffic your state has."
He neglected to mention that he was born in Waltham.
In fact, more than a quarter of the state's 424 lawmakers are Massachusetts natives -- a mirror of the general population, which is about 27 percent Massachusetts-born, according to Andrew Smith , director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
But these newcomers do not appear to be responsible for New Hampshire's leftward list. Smith's surveys have shown that the Bay Staters who settle north of the border tend to be conservatives who want cheaper housing, lower taxes, and less-liberal politics. Rather, it is a different wave of immigrants -- highly educated, well-heeled arrivals from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut recruited to New Hampshire by the state's burgeoning healthcare, financial services, and high-tech industries -- that is slowly turning a red state blue, Smith said.
New Hampshire Republicans tend to blame the Democratic sweep in 2006 on a "perfect storm" of factors -- a popular, anti tax Democratic governor, the absence of a strong GOP challenger, resentment of President Bush, and the war in Iraq. Republicans stayed home; Democrats turned out in force. When it was over, even Democrats were shocked. One candidate who barely campaigned against a veteran Republican executive councilor was traveling in Europe on Election Day, when voters gave him a surprise victory.
Many GOP lawmakers insist the aberration will soon be corrected. They are confident, they say, that the New Hampshire electorate will not stand for what the Democrats have been up to.
"If anything, I think the liberal trend helps us," said Francine Wendelboe , a Republican from New Hampton . "All I've heard people talking about is they can't believe the stuff that's happening here."
Some lawmakers point out, though, that many of this session's apparently liberal laws actually transcend partisanship. Many libertarian-leaning Republicans supported the civil union legislation. Others supported the smoking ban because they believe employees' right to a healthy workplace should trump patrons' right to smoke. Politicians in both parties see New Hampshire's lack of a seat belt law as an anachronism that costs not only lives but taxpayers' money. Smith's polling has shown that a majority of the public supports all three measures.
And though the budget's bottom line is expanding, even Democrats know better than to venture down the road to an income tax or sales tax. The last time a Democratic gubernatorial nominee proposed such a thing, in 2002, voters awarded Republicans huge majorities up and down the ticket. Part of the reason for Lynch's success appears to be his steadfast embrace of "The Pledge," the promise most New Hampshire gubernatorial candidates make to veto a broad-based tax.
Still, it is a far cry from the days of Meldrim "Ax the Tax" Thomson , who as governor in the 1970s proposed arming the New Hampshire National Guard with nuclear weapons, waged a lobster war with Maine, and invited Nantucket to secede from Massachusetts and become part of New Hampshire. Back then, recalled Representative Marshall Lee Quandt , an Exeter Republican who ran Thomson's campaign operation in his hometown, "we'd tell anybody to go to hell."
In more subtle ways, too, the Granite State's rugged profile has grown more refined. Sushi and Starbucks have cropped up in Concord. Manchester Airport has been rechristened the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. The New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper, once run by the fire-breathing reactionary William Loeb, has been almost kind to Lynch.
Republican strongholds remain, especially in the southern part of the state. But they have also changed. Derry, a large town on the Interstate 93 corridor that has almost tripled its population since 1970, feels more like a suburb than a small town, said Greg Germanton, a Republican who runs a jewelry store downtown.
"It's good for business, but I think the sense of personal responsibility has gone by the wayside," he said. "People want government to take care of them."
And whether 2006 was a 100-year-flood or not, the fundamental makeup of the New Hampshire electorate appears to be changing: Democrats have won five of the last six gubernatorial elections. New Hampshire has not voted Republican in a presidential election since 1988, except for in 2000 -- and even then, the combined votes for Al Gore and Ralph Nader exceeded the total for President Bush.
Smith compares the New Hampshire Republican Party's hold on the electorate to the Old Man of the Mountain, the White Mountains rock formation that symbolized the state's flinty soul before crumbling one night in 2003. For years, the Old Man was on the verge of succumbing to gravity, held together by ropes and epoxy applied by its devoted caretakers.
"The fact that it finally fell down didn't come as a surprise to people who had been watching it closely," Smith said.
