NH State House, NH-SoS: The new members of New Hampshire's state House convened for the first time on Wednesday and voted to hold a special election for Strafford District 8 (usually referred to locally as Rochester Ward 4), a replay of the November contest that ended in a tie between Democratic state Rep. Chuck Grassie and Republican challenger David Walker. With this seat vacant, the GOP has a tiny 201-198 edge in the gigantic 400-person chamber.
The vote came about shortly after the state GOP fired off a premature tweet congratulating “Rep. David Walker,” which set off speculation that the chamber’s narrow GOP majority would instead try to seat him as the winner despite the tie. That errant tweet may, however, have been fatal to such a gambit: As a spokesperson for the state Democratic Party argued, “There’s a very real case to be made that accidentally tweeting this too early derailed the entire @NHGOP strategy to take this seat. Incredible.” Still, the special almost didn’t happen, as supporters defeated a motion to halt consideration of the resolution calling for a special election by just a 193-187 margin.
Republicans, though, had much more luck earlier in the day on other key votes, beginning with the speakership election that saw Sherman Packard win another term 205-184; a total of 10 Democrats were absent while a few others sided with the GOP. Then, by a 237-175 margin, lawmakers also chose to keep Republican Secretary of State David Scanlan in his post and turned aside former Democratic state Sen. Melanie Levesque in a vote in which the state Senate (where Republicans hold a 14-10 advantage) also got to participate.
Scanlan became New Hampshire’s chief elections official early this year when incumbent Bill Gardner, who had held the post since 1976, resigned and transferred his powers to his deputy. (Gardner was nominally a Democrat but in recent years had regularly sided with the GOP on voting matters.) Scanlan will be up for another two-year term after the 2024 elections.
The votes for both House speaker and secretary of state were conducted via secret ballot, making it difficult for Democrats to punish deserters. However, at least one Democrat, state Sen. Lou D'Alessandro, was open in his support for Scanlan, just as he was for Gardner four years ago.