It’s never been easy to police bad behavior in the New Hampshire House, a place where intemperate outbursts and political insults have long been common. But increased polarization and eroding social norms keep making that harder. And a string of recent incidents — from threatening social media posts, to rude gestures on the House floor, to a lawmaker’s removal from her committee post without explanation — all point to a citizen Legislature where basic civility is getting harder to come by.
Ask Deputy House Speaker Steve Smith about how House leaders might better contain bad behavior, and he’ll tell you a big problem is that any real action would require a majority of lawmakers to agree it was warranted.
“We can condemn it, but there is nothing we can do about it though,” Smith said. “Any disciplinary measure would be a vote of the House, so it’s tough.”
Smith was referring to a now notorious social media post by Rep. Travis Corcoran, R-Weare, earlier this week: “We need a final solution for theater kids in politics,” Corcoran wrote, in response to a legislative karaoke night organized by Rep. Jessica Grill, D-Manchester, who is Jewish. “Final solution” is the term leaders in Nazi Germany used for their plan to commit genocide against European Jews.
Corcoran, who was first elected to the House in 2022, regularly posts inflammatory and racist comments on social media. So, in some ways, the very fact that this week’s outburst prompted criticism from top Republicans was remarkable. House Speaker Sherman Packard called the “final solution” comment “deeply inappropriate.” But Packard and GOP leaders rarely call out lawmakers for anti-social behavior — unless they are Democrats.
Last month, the House voted to censure Rep. Paige Beauchemin, D-Nashua, for directing an obscene gesture at Gov. Kelly Ayotte during Ayotte’s state of the state speech. Smith, the deputy speaker, said Beauchemin’s action “disparages us all” when he urged other lawmakers to vote to censure her from the House floor.
For plenty of House members, the tenor of the Legislature these days can feel like an object lesson is what’s gone wrong in our politics.
“Many people get elected by acting like a jerk,” said Rep. Jared Sullivan, D-Bethlehem.
Sullivan described the climate in Concord as what you get when, instead of focusing on policy, lawmakers endlessly question each other’s motives and look to weaponize fear — something he said leaders on both the left and right practice.
“Whether it’s marginalizing illegal immigrants or trans people, that’s what the right does, or maybe it’s us, marginalizing people, calling them racists when maybe that’s not true,” Sullivan said. “Once you use that language regularly and so freely, where we end up is in a world where people just become polarized.”
Corcoran’s “final solution” tweet wasn’t the only thing to merit some form of pushback by House leaders this week. Rep. Wendy Thomas, D-Merrimack, was removed from her seat on the House’s Science, Technology and Energy Committee.
Losing a committee assignment is often the only real consequence that any lawmaker can face for offending leaders. But in Thomas’s case, it’s still not clear why she lost it; she says no one in House leadership has offered a clear explanation. But she has her theories.
“I recently wrote an article calling Kelly Ayotte a liar and incompetent for her handling of the ICE facility,” she said. “I wrote an op-ed calling out the Free Staters for their destructive behavior.”
Smith, who presided over much of this week’s House sessions because Packard was out with a health issue, said he’d like things in Concord to happen with less rancor. But he said he believes the typical Granite Stater cares primarily about outcomes.
“If the taxes don’t go up and the roads get fixed, and beyond that they can forget we even exist,” he said.
Weeks like this might make that hard, however.
These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.