In an email to GOP members of the New Hampshire House and obtained by NHJournal, incoming state Rep. Kim Rice (R-Hudson) officially announced her candidacy for Speaker of the House by “committing to uniting our caucus.”
But supporters of current Speaker Sherm Packard (R-Londonderry), who was chosen as the Republicans’ caucus leader last month, say if a handful of Republicans team up with Democrats to deny Packard the gavel, the result will be a GOP civil war.
The House is scheduled to convene at 10 a.m. Wednesday morning for Organization Day and choose a speaker.
“Either Republicans decide that we are going to deliver the agenda we were elected for, or we’ll hand Democrats wins for the next two years and abandon every Republican priority,” one GOP House member told NHJournal on background. “We’ve been down that road before, and it’s not pretty.”
In her email, Rice claims she originally “had no intention of running for Speaker; however, upon receiving multiple requests to do so, observing the significant division within our caucus, and the current leadership’s failure to take steps toward unification, I felt compelled to act in order to restore our focus.
“While it is customary for the Party to endorse the nominee from the Caucus, it is important to note that 42 percent of our members have expressed dissatisfaction with the existing leadership,” Rice wrote, a reference to the vote between Packard and Rep. Len Turcotte (R-Barrington).
Since word of Rice’s potential candidacy emerged, speculation has swirled that the true target of her anger — and that of her supporters in the caucus — is Majority Leader Rep. Jason Osborne (R-Auburn).
“The manipulation of Republican primaries due to personal conflicts only undermines our Party. It is worth mentioning that I was encouraged by current leadership members to run again, while they simultaneously recruited a third candidate to instigate a primary challenge against an incumbent,” Rice wrote.
Rice supporters say Osborne encouraged her to run this year. Osborne also backed Mark Edgington, a libertarian-leaning Republican in the same primary as well. The goal was to hand a primary defeat to incumbent Rep. Ralph Boehm (R-Litchfield). Boehm joined Democrats in the House in defeating a bill to move the primary to late June earlier this year.
After NHJournal broke the story that Edgington had been convicted of second-degree murder in 1988, he dropped out of the primary. Both Boehm and Rice were elected to the House in November.
If a small Republican minority teams up with a unified Democratic caucus to block the party’s choice for speaker, it will be a replay of events in the House 10 years ago this week. That’s when Republican Shawn Jasper (also of Hudson) teamed up with Democrats to take the gavel from fellow Republican Bill O’Brien.
But as several Republicans noted Tuesday, the difference today is that Republicans control the governor’s mansion and legislature, giving them the numbers needed to pass their agenda. In 2014, Democrat Maggie Hassan was governor, limiting legislative options.
“If a handful of Republicans let the Democrats pick our speaker, there will be two years of civil war,” one House member told NHJournal on background. “Nothing Republicans ran on will get done.”
None of the House members who spoke to NHJournal Tuesday was willing to predict what the outcome of the speaker’s vote would be. Turcotte told NHJournal he didn’t know what the outcome would be.
“Who the heck knows?” said Turcott. Asked how he would be voting, Turcotte said, “When I challenged Sherm for speaker, we signed a caucus rule saying we would not challenge the winner of the caucus at Organization Day. I ran my campaign with the tagline ‘Restoring Trust and Integrity’ into our caucus.
“I keep my word.”
