HANOVER — A Hanover state representative who is about to graduate from Dartmouth College and faced questions about his residency during the coronavirus pandemic will not return to the House when it reconvenes Thursday.
Rep. Garrett Muscatel, D-Hanover, resigned from his Grafton District 12 seat Monday after the state GOP questioned whether he still lives in or intends to return to the Upper Valley.
Muscatel, who will graduate from Dartmouth College on Sunday, saw his student housing canceled in March when the school announced the closure of its campus and moved to online classes. Dartmouth reported in late March that Muscatel left campus for Hawaii, where he planned to care for his grandparents.
Muscatel has enrolled in Stanford Law School for the fall term after announcing in April he will not seek reelection. He has endorsed fellow student Riley Gordon, a former president of the Dartmouth College Democrats, to succeed him.
“From all indications, Rep. Muscatel moved out of his district in March to move back to California,” New Hampshire GOP Chairman Stephen Stepanek wrote in a Monday letter to House Speaker Steve Shurtleff, D-Concord.
Stepanek went on to call for Muscatel’s resignation, which came the same day.
In a separate letter, Muscatel said, “unexpected circumstances have made continuing to serve at a full capacity impossible.”
“I believe it is in the best interest of the House to focus on improving the lives of all Granite Staters, and I refuse to obstruct that mission in any way,” he wrote to Shurtleff.
Messages and emails left for Muscatel on Tuesday and Wednesday were not returned.
Muscatel initially told WMUR he is “and will continue to be a New Hampshire resident” after it first reported the GOP’s concerns late last month.
He said he still lives in Hanover and charged that Republicans were “attacking college students with spurious accusations.”
During his two years in the Legislature, Muscatel has championed the rights of college students, many of whom are from out of state, to vote and participate in policymaking.
He was one of several plaintiffs in a case that challenged SB 3, a 2017 law that removed the use of an affidavit allowing new voters to attest to a New Hampshire domicile if they didn’t have the proper paperwork in hand.
A judge in April struck the law down “for unreasonably burdening the right to vote.”
“We’re going to miss him greatly,” Rep. Sharon Nordgren, D-Hanover, said Wednesday morning.
Muscatel, a member of the House Committee on Commerce and Consumer Affairs, was heavily involved in crafting health care legislation, including a measure to cap the cost of insulin, Nordgren said. He also led a bipartisan effort to force colleges to pay athletes for their work.
Hanover Town Clerk Betsy McClain said Muscatel was still on the town’s voter checklist, as of Wednesday morning.
Dartmouth students who have left Hanover because of the coronavirus pandemic can continue listing the town as their domicile so long as they plan to return, she said, comparing them to seniors who leave for warmer weather every winter.
Hanover’s supervisors of the checklist also work with Dartmouth to obtain the names of seniors slated for graduation, McClain said.
That list, which had 901 names on it this year and is not a public document, is used to send “30-day letters” that ask whether the students intend to continue living in town. The letters will be sent this week and will include emails to students because of the pandemic, McClain said.
“We do this outreach every year basically to manage our checklist,” she said. “We’ve got over 11,000 registered voters and if we took no action as academic classes rolled over, you could imagine how exponentially our checklist would grow.”
Gordon, who filed his candidacy paperwork Tuesday, says he doesn’t think Muscatel’s resignation will affect his House run.
“It doesn’t change the fact that students who are planning to return to campus still have a claim to Dartmouth and Hanover as their domicile,” he said in a phone interview.
Gordon added he should be able to serve a full two-year term, “unless of course there’s a pandemic that kicks me out and cancels my housing as well.”
“I think it’s just kind of a unique COVID-related situation for Garrett,” he said. “But it doesn’t really change anything for me.”
Tim Camerato can be reached at tcamerato@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.