While some of their fellow party members were publicly celebrating Charlie Kirk’s assassination, most New Hampshire Democrats stuck to posting the appropriate platitudes.
“Political violence is never acceptable,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan.
“We cannot tolerate or normalize political violence,” added Rep. Chris Pappas.
But posting is easy, the progressive equivalent of “thoughts and prayers.” What are elected Granite State Democrats prepared to actually do? If democracy is threatened by our political divisions, as they claim, what actions will leaders like Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Rep. Maggie Goodlander take to promote unity?
Here’s one.
End your McCarthy-style blacklisting of NHJournal.
The entire premise of representative democracy is that we argue and debate instead of fight and kill. Charlie Kirk is dead because there are Americans who believe some people aren’t worth talking with or listening to.
Kirk wasn’t killed because of any political power he had or votes he cast. He was killed for what he said. He toured campuses and engaged in dialogue with people who disagreed. A significant number of Americans on the left don’t believe people with Kirk’s views of politics, human sexuality, and social norms should be allowed to speak. They certainly don’t want these ideas and opinions to be heard.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination was an assault on dialogue, on the idea that our fellow citizens’ opinions deserve to be heard.
When New Hampshire’s four elected federal Democrats participate in party chair Ray Buckley’s boycott of NHJournal, they’re telling our tens of thousands of readers of the state’s center-right journalism outlet that, as conservatives and Republicans, they aren’t worthy of dialogue.
By blacklisting our journalists, Shaheen, Pappas, and the rest are saying policy questions from Granite Staters with a different political viewpoint don’t deserve the dignity of being heard.
At NHJournal, we’ve always made light of this political nonsense. When then-New Hampshire House Democratic Leader Renny Cushing sent a mass email telling his caucus to stop talking to us, we just rolled our eyes and kept reporting.
When you’ve watched Chris Pappas literally turn and run down a Manchester alley rather than face a reporter, we gotta admit, it was pretty damn funny.
But after what happened to Charlie Kirk, we’ve stopped laughing.
Let’s be clear: Nobody cares about NHJournal. We’re just a news outlet. But our readers—politically active voters, many on the right who felt Kirk’s loss deeply—do matter.
Democrats refusing to engage them because they are on the “wrong” side of the partisan divide was always petty and wrong. In the wake of what happened to Charlie Kirk, it looks ugly and anti-democratic.
Imagine, for example, if Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte refused to engage with left-wing outlets like NHPR, InDepthNH, or The Boston Globe. But she doesn’t. And she currently doesn’t have a major 2026 Democratic opponent. Coincidence, or something more?
If Sen. Hassan really believes Kirk’s death was a dangerous moment for democracy, she can prove it by engaging in dialogue.
If Rep. Pappas really wants to be a senator for all of New Hampshire, he could start by answering basic questions about his policies.
The same is true for all the Democratic candidates, by the way, and the State House Democrats, too.
In this spirit, we are issuing the Charlie Kirk Challenge to New Hampshire Democrats—elected officials and candidates:
1: You are all currently refusing to send your press releases to NHJournal. Please add us to any press list that includes our fellow members of the New Hampshire Press Association (NHPA).
2: Please end your participation in the blacklisting of NHJournal reporters. If you get a question on an issue that you are addressing with other NHPA members, please answer ours, too.
3: Please announce today that you are willing to participate in at least one debate in the 2026 election cycle that includes NHJournal among the panelists.
Meanwhile, NHJournal will do our part. For the next week, we are throwing the NHJournal podcast open to any elected New Hampshire Democrat. If you want to talk to our audience, the microphone is yours.
Once again, this isn’t about NHJournal. We didn’t ask the state’s elected politicians to single us out, or to end all dialogue with us. But here we are.
New Hampshire’s Democrats can either stick with empty platitudes, or put their principles into action.
Either way, we’ll be reporting it at NHJournal.com.
