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The flurry of activity in the Granite State this week has some calling it the start of the 2020 New Hampshire primary. Former Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley held some meet-and-greets and a town hall meeting on Sunday, and former Vice President Joe Biden is headlining the state Democratic Party’s fundraising dinner on April 30. Smack dab in the middle of the two Democrats is Republican Gov. John Kasich, who visited the state on Thursday to promote his new book.

It felt like a reunion of sorts for Kasich, his team, and over 200 supporters who came to hear him speak at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College. In a small gathering before his speech, he thanked key allies for their help during the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Even though Kasich was in the state in August to campaign for Gov. Chris Sununu in his gubernatorial bid, it’s his first foray back to New Hampshire since Trump won the White House.

Of course, there was an elephant in the room (and not just because the room was chock full of Republicans): is Kasich going to run for president again in 2020? Those waiting with bated breath will have to wait a bit longer.

“People ask why I am back,” Kasich said. “I am back to sell books.”

His new book, “Two Paths: America Divided or United,” came out on Tuesday and one of his first stops in his book tour was New Hampshire, so it’s easy to see where the 2020 speculation comes from.

He mostly talked about his 2016 campaign and national politics, with some advice to his followers who are unhappy with President Donald Trump.

“In course of running for president, something happened to me that never happened before,” he said. “I was, like, so boring, you know, and boring didn’t cut it.”

Kasich finished second in last year’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary, far behind Trump (35 percent to 16 percent). Yet, Kasich spent more time in the state than any other candidate, holding more than 100 town halls during the primary.

He took note of Trump not following through on some of his campaign promises, like ripping up the Iran nuclear deal and deporting “13 million Muslims out of the country.”

“You notice all that promise? It’s all been taken back,” he said.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich speaks at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College to promote his new book, “Two Paths: America United or Divided” on Thursday, April 27, 2017. (Photo Credit: John Kasich Facebook page)

He also encouraged unity, bemoaning the wide political divide in the United States.

“We all ought to spend about 10 minutes a day reading something we don’t agree with. All of us are absorbing only that that we agree with and getting rid of those things that we don’t agree with,” Kasich said. “Over time, I think things are going to settle down and people are going to realize that the difficulties that we face cannot be solved without unity. Difficulties cannot be solved unless we have deliberate and steady solutions to the problem.”

Out of the three “potential candidates” visiting New Hampshire this week, Kasich is probably getting asked the most if he is going to run again in 2020.

“He hasn’t been president for 100 days, yet,” Kasich told reporters. “I mean, everybody needs to take a deep breath. We’ll see how it runs out. He’s the president. Give him a chance. We’ll see how it goes.”

Why is he getting the question more? Well, it’s good political theatre. If there’s still #NeverTrump sentiment in a few years, Kasich is a good person they can rally behind, since he’s one of the few 2016 Republican presidential candidates who did not endorse Trump after he secured the party’s nomination.

That’s not to say O’Malley and Biden aren’t getting asked (both of whom have also skirted the question). The 2020 Democratic primary should be an exciting one, with 20 or so candidates expected to enter the race, but political pundits and the media love the idea of an incumbent president getting a primary challenger.

Challenges to White House incumbents aren’t as rare as people think. Five of the six presidents who served between 1968 and 1992 faced insurrections. When they do — like Ronald Reagan’s challenge of Gerald Ford in 1976, Ted Kennedy’s race against Jimmy Carter in 1980, and Pat Buchanan’s bid to unseat George H.W. Bush in 1992 — it’s usually because they were viewed as unsuccessful or unpopular, especially within their party’s base.

It’s very possible that Trump’s base could leave him in the next three years, but after his first 100 days in office, it appears they are still with him.

A University of Virginia Center for Politics poll of Trump voters released Thursday shows his approval rating at 93 percent with his base.

The most recent poll in New Hampshire shows that a majority of Republicans approve of the president, although not as high as the national average. About 80 percent of New Hampshire Republicans approve of the job Trump is doing as president, according to a University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll from February.

Those percentages would need to decrease for anyone to seriously consider mounting a GOP primary challenge. What does this mean for Kasich? It looks like he’s playing the “sitting-and-waiting game.” If the opportunity presents itself, don’t be surprised to see him be one of the first Republicans to declare their candidacy. For now, he told NH1 News that he will “see how things develop in the future.”

Kasich is still popular in the Granite State, and he said he had a feeling he would return often because he has many friends here, so he could become a regular face in these parts over the next three years.

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The budget battle is over between House Republican leadership and conservative members in the New Hampshire State House for now, but the political divide between the two factions continues to grow. The NH House Freedom Caucus announced plans Wednesday to start its own political action committee, signaling that the fight for control of the chamber is far from over.

The House Freedom Caucus, a 32-member group taking its name after a similar conservative coalition of Republicans in Congress, is pushing back against House Speaker Shawn Jasper in the next election. They are planning on using money from the PAC to support candidates who believe in “limited government and personal liberty.” The PAC will be chaired by Rep. Dan Hynes, R-Merrimack.

“Last year, Speaker Jasper utilized his PAC to target conservative Republican members in primaries,” said Rep. J.R. Hoell, R-Dunbarton, one of the leaders of the conservative group. “The NH Freedom Caucus PAC will help to protect those members and candidates who stand on principle and refuse to be dominated by a big government House leadership.”

Jasper says he has no plans to target conservative members. In 2016, his leadership PAC helped out some Republicans, but left others to fend for themselves. The main NH House GOP PAC also said it plans on supporting all Republican candidates.

The Committee to Elect House Republicans is committed to growing the House GOP Majority by supporting ALL GOP nominees. #nhpolitics

— NH House GOP PAC (@ctehr) April 19, 2017

Members of the House Freedom Caucus are not convinced.

“For many individuals who might consider running to serve in the House, they need to know that there will be help if they don’t immediately pay allegiance to a Speaker that is working to rapidly grow government, whether through his vote on Medicaid expansion or on budgets with 10.5 percent spending hikes,” said Rep. Greg Hill, R-Northfield, a member of the caucus.

Conservatives haven’t been supportive of Jasper in the role as speaker for a while. He won the speaker’s post in 2014 with an overwhelming majority of support coming from Democrats. Only a few dozen Republicans voted for him over former House Speaker and conservative firebrand Bill O’Brien.

In the last session, he was heavily criticized by conservatives for supporting a reauthorization of Medicaid expansion and working with Democrats to get it passed.

He also barely won the speakership in 2016 over Rep. Laurie Sanborn, R-Bedford, and a leader of the other conservative House Republican Alliance (HRA) caucus. He defeated her by a five-vote margin, 109-104, on the second ballot in December. Jasper assured lawmakers that he would unify the caucus in time to get legislation passed. That doesn’t seem to be the case so far.

The first test of the legislative session was right-to-work. Conservatives overwhelmingly supported the bill, but moderate Republicans and members of the House Republican leadership weren’t sold on it, due to their ties to unions or people they know in them. Despite the bill passing in the Senate, it failed in the House and people blamed Jasper for not trying hard enough to get it passed. The vote revealed a splintered Republican majority in the House.

The second battle between conservatives and Jasper was over the budget. Members of the House Freedom Caucus did not support the budget that came out of the House Finance Committee earlier this month. They didn’t like that spending increased over former Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan’s budgets and that the budget lacked tax cuts.

They banded together to vote against the budget until their demands were met. Democrats were already voting against the budget to defy the Republican majority in the House from passing a budget. Conservatives essentially joined them to derail budget negotiations. What resulted was a chaotic two days and the House, for the first time since at least 1969 when they started keeping records of it, failed to pass a budget to the Senate.

Jasper didn’t mince words when he called out the House Freedom Caucus for voting against the budget.

“This is just a movement of people who, I think, are totally disconnected from their constituents and totally disconnected from the facts,” he told reporters after the vote.

It’s important to note that members of the HRA also voted against the budget and led to its defeat. Jasper took aim at their group last week, with leaders of the HRA claiming they have been denied the right to meet in the State House as punishment for their budget opposition.

Three co-chairs of the HRA received a letter stating that their “activities in the State House Complex are hereby suspended” because the organization failed to produce bylaws.

Jasper said he came to his decision on the belief that the HRA has turned into a lobbying group instead of a conservative caucus of Republican representatives, whose membership might extend to people who are not elected officials.

“Once again Speaker Jasper looks to silence the conservative caucus of the State House,” the HRA co-chairs said in a statement. “The Speaker is pathetically trying to provide himself with political cover after failing to pass a budget, something that hasn’t happened in New Hampshire since 1969.”

This was another reason the House Freedom Caucus decided to create a PAC. They don’t believe Jasper is going to spend the funds to help conservatives get elected to the House.

“Based on his recent actions of maligning conservatives in the press and banning conservative House groups from the State House meeting rooms, we have every reason to believe that he will continue to undermine conservative candidates in the next election,” Hoell said.

It’s possible Jasper could see a primary challenger in 2018 if the House Freedom Caucus is serious about padding war chests for conservative candidates. It could also make some representatives who live in relatively safe Republican districts a little nervous as well.

@NHGOP #Republicans were elected on a agenda we can not abandon it or let it fail due 2 Division & score settling #NHPolitics #NorthCountry https://t.co/n7q9NP4SXC

— Leon H Rideout (@RepRideout) April 19, 2017

The next big-item, divisive bill that comes up in the House could further expose deeper wounds within the Republican Party. The House is expected to vote on the budget again later this year, after the Senate passes its version. Who knows what will happen in round two.

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Some New Hampshire Democrats believe a bill that would require school districts to provide parents at least two weeks’ notice about material related to human sexuality is overstepping the state’s role in local education.

“My concern is that it mandates a two-week notice,” said Rep. Mary Heath, D-Manchester. “The biggest problem is that this will not solve the problem. Every school principal needs to talk with their teachers about the importance of parent communication. It should be a local matter as to how that policy is developed based on the school and [grade] level.”

Rep. Victoria Sullivan, R-Manchester, is the prime sponsor of the bill (House Bill 103) and she introduced it after her 8-year-old son said he watched a video at school that depicted a young boy being sexually abused by his uncle and confronting his abuser alone.

Sullivan said the bill would “simply give parents more control and a stronger voice.”

“Local control begins with the parents and the taxpayers,” she told NH Journal. “We have seen parents pushed further and further out of the conversation when it comes to education.”

This isn’t the first time this bill has been in the Legislature. Former Gov. Maggie Hassan previously vetoed the legislation in 2015. It was then reintroduced in the House in 2016, but ultimately failed in the Senate.

State law already allows parents or legal guardians to have a say if they believe that material put in front of their children by schools is objectionable. They would need to notify the school principal in writing of the material they object to and then the student can participate in an “alternative agreed upon” curriculum by the school district and the parent that still meets state requirements for education in that subject area.

Heath said the two-week parental notification is unnecessary because parents can already “opt out” their student if they find any curriculum to be questionable, and the bill undermines the importance of sexual education in schools.

“Good communication with parents is essential,” she told NH Journal. “At the same time, some parents and especially those to the ‘far right’ don’t believe their children should learn anything beyond the ‘basics.’ I understand that, hence the ‘opt out’ [option]. However, House Bill 103 sends the wrong message about the importance of comprehensive sexuality education.”

The national Republican Party platform includes a section on the importance of returning control of public education to the states, school districts, and parents of students. In regards to sexual education, they call for a replacement of “family planning programs.”

“We renew our call for replacing ‘family planning’ programs for teens with sexual risk avoidance education that sets abstinence until marriage as the responsible and respected standard of behavior,” the platform states.

The New Hampshire Republican Party platform does not include anything about sexual education.

Currently, 22 states and the District of Columbia require school districts to allow parental involvement in sexual education programs. Three states — Arizona, Nevada, and Utah — require parental consent before a child can receive instruction.

The bill will now head to the Senate Education Committee to debate the bill and with Republican Gov. Chris Sununu in the corner office, it’s possible that he would sign the legislation into law. He has not indicated if he supports the bill yet.

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