When supporters gathered in Manchester for the release of the Americans for Prosperity–New Hampshire legislative scorecard Tuesday night, two things were on display: the embrace of AFP’s liberty-minded policies by the state Republican Party’s leadership, and the divide within the party over the issue of housing and local control.
The scorecard tracks “the most important votes cast in priority issue areas that impact our society, such as taxes and spending, health care, educational opportunity, worker freedom, regulation, free speech, property rights, ending cronyism, and having a criminal justice system that focuses on rehabilitation,” according to AFP-NH Deputy State Director Sarah Scott.
The results: Three state senators — Tim McGough (R-Merrimack), Keith Murphy (R-Manchester), and Victoria Sullivan (R-Manchester) — all received a perfect 100 percent score. It’s notable, given that there have been many years when no members of the upper chamber achieved 100 percent.
Sen. Denise Ricciardi (R-Bedford) was the lowest-scoring Senate Republican with 63 percent.
And while every Senate Democrat received a failing grade, only one — progressive Debra Altschiller (D-Stratham) — scored a zero.
At Tuesday’s gathering, AFP Regional Director Greg Moore focused on the legislative successes that he says help preserve New Hampshire’s unique character.
“New Hampshire is and should be an outlier as a state with ‘Live Free or Die’ as our motto,” Moore told the crowd. “We should be pushing the envelope. We should be setting the example of freedom across the country. All the other 49 states should be looking up to New Hampshire and asking themselves, ‘How can we be more like that?’”
AFP’s support in the House was demonstrated by more than 20 percent of GOP House members getting a perfect score. That includes Speaker Sherm Packard (R-Londonderry) and House Majority Leader Jason Osborne (R-Auburn).
“I want to thank AFP for being the greatest ally we have,” Osborne told the gathering Tuesday. “And if they ever find any Democrats who support individual liberty and individual responsibility and lowering taxes and reducing the barriers that drive up the cost of living for Granite Staters — I would encourage them to endorse those candidates.”
Moore told NHJournal that having the support of the leadership is a significant sign of progress for the liberty agenda.
“It used to be that our supporters were backbenchers who were forced to fight against the leadership to get support for their ideas. Now it’s the leadership that’s with us.”
Several attendees noted that while scores in the Senate are trending up, in the House, they’re fading. That reflects the change on the political right, where more people are embracing populism — and with it, support for bigger government.
In Coos County, where both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have performed well at the ballot box, Republicans have won all the seats in the delegation. But none of the Coos members scored above a “C” on the report card.
The divide between the small-government, laissez-faire economics of AFP-NH and the more pro-government-action populists is on clear display in the debate over housing legislation.
Among the bills scored by AFP-NH were two that banned communities from using mandates requiring an excessive number of bedrooms or parking spaces to block new home construction. Many Republicans opposed these bills, arguing that local communities should have the power to make these decisions, even if it meant the state’s housing crisis would continue.
AFP-NH also tracked the vote on making New Hampshire a right-to-work state, which failed yet again in the Legislature due to a lack of GOP support.
Still, Moore said, the focus should be on success, and advocates of less regulation and more freedom in New Hampshire have had many victories in recent years.
“We are a state that has — and should be — leading the way.”
A copy of the full AFP-NH report card can be found here.
