New Hampshire Pro-Freedom Candidates Make Waves (So Watch Your Local Races)

Almost all of the political jabber is about which
party gets to control the Senate or over a few tight gubernatorial
races. But local contests count in people’s lives too, and offices
further down the ticket are often more accessible to both
candidates and voters. There may be no place where that is more
true than in New Hampshire, which enjoys a 424-member legislature.
Libertarian-oriented Free Staters moving to the Granite State have
had such success in making waves that Democratic State
Representative Cynthia Chase
proposed to “restrict the ‘freedoms’ that they think they will
find here” just to make the state less attractive to migrants.

That genius is
still in office, sad to say. But a lot of liberty-friendly
people—some Free Staters, others locally sourced—have joined her in
the legislature. This year, the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, “a
non-partisan coalition working to increase individual freedom in
New Hampshire” boasts that “a
stunning 80% of NHLA-endorsed candidates advanced to the general
election.” Many of those candidates—mostly Republicans, but some
Democrats, too—are incumbents. There are a lot of them.

Are those lawmakers getting anything done?

Last month, Dick Desrosiers, Chairman of the Hampton Democratic
Committee, complained
in a letter to the editor:

As a result of the 2010 election, the New Hampshire Liberty
Alliance (NHLA), a main organization for carrying out the
strategies of the FSP, orchestrated the election of Representative
Bill O’Brien to the position of House speaker. As speaker, Mr.
O’Brien employed strong arm tactics to oust long-term Republicans
and replace them with Free Stators. He used such tactics to
introduce and pass legislation to remove any and all government
impacts on liberty and property rights and diminished the
importance of protecting and promoting the common good.

Yes, I thought that was an endorsement, too. But really, he was
expressing unhappiness with the situation. Go ahead and read the
rest of it.

And keep an eye on those local races in New Hampshire and,
hopefully, near you.