A few months ago, 19-year-old state Rep. James Thibault received a letter in the mail telling him to kill himself.
The Republican representing Franklin, N.H., and Northfield, N.H., didn’t lend it much credence, but the erratic handwriting and vague, threatening message still felt unsettling.
He knew it could happen in politics, but receiving a death threat as a teenager wasn’t on Thibault’s bingo card when he ran for public office. He didn’t expect that “normal people” like himself and the rest of New Hampshire’s 400 state representatives would be targeted by that kind of vitriol.
“Just because of our votes or because of our opinions, we’re getting things in the mail saying people want to kill us or have us kill ourselves, and its really evil,” Thibault said.
He and other young state representatives across the political spectrum who spoke at a panel Monday evening agreed: Political violence and polarization have gotten out of hand. Something needs to change.
Thibault, his fellow Republican Sam Farrington and Democrats Jonah Wheeler and Jessica Grill gathered at Saint Anselm College last Monday to share their experiences and hopes for change at a panel hosted by the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy.
The event formed in response to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk this fall. It was the latest of several instances of political violence in the U.S. lately, including the shooting of two Minnesota lawmakers, a fire set to the Pennsylvania governor’s residence and two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump.
Young legislators of both parties said they see political polarization in their own communities, in the political news cycle and from trolls on social media. They also felt it after Kirk’s assassination in September.
Wheeler, who represents Peterborough, N.H., and Sharon, N.H., woke up from a nap that day to a news notification on his phone. He didn’t fully realize what had happened until he went downstairs and his friend mentioned the assassination, but the reaction he saw most among his peers, Wheeler said, was one of shock.
“When all of us, livestreamed on our cell phones, saw him with a bullet fly through his neck and blood rushing out in front of thousands of college students who were there to hear his opinion and debate, I think the entire country — as happened, as we all experienced — went through a moment of real retrospection,” Wheeler said. “It made us think, where are we as a society?”
In his own interactions, Wheeler said more young people have lost the civility and respect displayed by older generations. Grill, from Manchester, said modern culture is more isolated and “people are meaner” as a result.
The panelists placed much of the blame on cell phones and social media. Thibault said the recently enacted ban on cell phones in schools is “actually a great help” that encourages students to talk to each other in person.
Legislators pointed to the pandemic and the ensuing social isolation as another contributing factor that pushed many young people toward online rather than in-person communication.
“When you’re looking at somebody in the eye, it’s a lot harder to go, ‘I hate you. You’re terrible,’” Wheeler said.
Farrington, a senior at UNH, added that people who feel comfortable attacking each other online often turn quiet in person.
“Most of the people who do that, you know, the Facebook warriors, they won’t say a word,” Farrington said. “They won’t even look you in the eyes.”
Political polarization has made its way into the state legislature, with party leadership both punishing non-conforming viewpoints and taking combative stances on social media.
To some extent, those politics can be performative, the panelists said, and disagreements tend to fade in more casual settings. There’s a persona switch, they said, where personal interactions have a different tone than the staunch debates on the House floor.
Grill chairs a just-for-fun karaoke caucus, which invites legislators to karaoke nights at Tandy’s Pub & Grille in Concord.
“I’ve had some of the most productive conversations about legislation at the bar after hours compared to the kind of debates we have on the floor,” Grill said.
Other young representatives are also looking for ways to bridge the divide, or do to away with it altogether.
Wheeler is known for breaking ranks with Democrats, like his vote to support a bill that would’ve allowed the separation of bathrooms by biological sex instead of gender. He faced a raucous crowd of constituents at a town hall soon after but said it’s important to look beyond the party line.
“I think we have to be willing to break free of the silos,” Wheeler said. “None of us fit into the one-size-fits-all purity politics that we’re told that we’re supposed to fit in by the establishment and cable news pundits.”
One way to encourage that in the Legislature, he said, would be to go back to a mixed seating chart, where Democrats and Republicans are forced to sit next to each other.
Nowadays, the chamber is split down the middle — Democrats on the left, Republicans on the right. The members who sit near the middle, Wheeler said, where the two parties meet, are more prone to asking each other and discussing how they’re going to vote on controversial bills.
“On the two sides of the room, people are sitting there stone-faced because they already know how they’re going to vote,” Wheeler said. “If I were speaker for a day, I would mix the seats again.”
More broadly, Thibault looks to faith, prayer and expanded free speech to help protect the expression of ideas. The Legislature passed a new law in recent years to make public college campuses in New Hampshire open to free speech, without any designated zones. Thibault hopes to expand that to high schools and is considering proposing a bill to do so in the next couple of years.
Wheeler and Farrington agreed, saying the only way to counter speech you don’t like is to respectfully speak your own mind.
“The only solution to all these problems, you know, civility and yelling and anger — the only solution — is free speech,” Farrington said.