Granite State Is Turning Less Flinty

Is the Granite State going soft?

For years, New Hampshire was the only state without a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, one of only two states with laws banning gays from adopting and one of only two with neither an income nor a general sales tax.

In three short months, lawmakers did away with the first two distinctions and came perilously close to ending the third.

Other anomalies: The Democrats control the Senate for the first time since 1912. The state’s first female governor, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, is in the middle of an easily won second term. And the publisher of the state’s largest and most conservative newspaper retired this month.

Some see this as proof that the flinty “Live Free or Die” state is moving toward the political center.

“Folks outside of New Hampshire are beginning to say, ‘What’s going on up there? You’re changing!’ ” state House Minority Leader Peter Burling, a Democrat, said Thursday, two days after lawmakers passed the King holiday bill.

He said the shift has been brought about by Democrats trying to “haul New Hampshire back into the mainstream of American politics” and by moderate Republicans going along. He also gives Shaheen some credit.

“She is simultaneously a symbol of the centralization of New Hampshire politics and a cause of it,” he said. “In many ways, she truly empowers the center to get what it wants.”

Democratic activist Deborah Arnesen, whose losing bid for governor in 1992 was based on a proposal for an income tax, attributed the changing climate to the public, not legislative leaders.

“Change is in the air,” the former state representative said. “It’s as if in anticipation of the new millennium, New Hampshire is not only catching up, it’s leading.”

Arnesen pointed to the recent retirement of Union Leader Publisher Nackey Loeb as proof that the fiercely conservative agenda the newspaper espoused is in decline. Loeb’s late husband, William Loeb, was credited with being the architect of the state’s anti-tax pledge, which every governor elected for the last three decades has been forced to take.

“The Union Leader is not the same powerful player because there are so many alternative ways of getting information,” Arnesen said. “To some extent, I think Nackey realizes the torch has been passed, and rather than see the torch flicker, she left.”

Another indication of the shift toward the center is the number of voters who are unaffiliated with either major party. Republicans still outnumber Democrats, but they are losing ground, while Democrats and independents are gaining. As of 1998, there were 272,110 registered Republicans, 271,694 independents and 203,563 registered Democrats.

Until this year, talk of an income tax in New Hampshire was political poison. But when the state’s high court demanded that the Legislature come up with a fairer way of paying for public schools than using local property taxes, the House voted for an income tax.

The House backed down when Shaheen threatened a veto. Ultimately, the state enacted a uniform, statewide property tax plus a hodgepodge of smaller tax increases.

Some said lawmakers were willing to at least consider an income tax because of an influx of young, wealthy families who demand good schools and a growing population of retirees who want other services.

Others dismiss the idea that any of the events at the statehouse represent a philosophical shift, particularly the gay adoption and King holiday votes. Instead, they say, these events merely reflect New Hampshire residents’ belief in less government in people’s lives.

“In our own way, we are an extraordinarily tolerant state, but sometimes we resist being led to other people’s definition of tolerance,” said Tom Rath, a lawyer and Republican analyst. “Those bills reflect the essence of the state’s political philosophy. It’s almost a New England sort of social libertarianism, that certain things are really not everyone’s business.”

To the dismay of the Christian Coalition, the Legislature passed a law in 1997 wiping out three criminal abortion statutes dating from the 1800s, making New Hampshire the only state without any restrictions on abortion.

Lawmakers also passed a bill last year giving equal rights in housing, employment and public accommodations to homosexuals.

As for legislators voting for an income tax, observers such as John Camobreco, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, said that might never have happened if the Supreme Court hadn’t put on the pressure.

“When we talk about New Hampshire changing, we have to put it into context,” he said. “The context was a crisis.”