State House Dome: Redistricting makes all the difference in NH midterms

Nov. 13—IF NOT FOR REDISTRICTING, Democrats would have a bigger share of power at the New Hampshire State House after Tuesday's election.

According to Democratic partisans, if you tabulate all of the votes in this election, their candidates outpolled Republicans, 50.5% to 49.5%.

This includes votes in uncontested races, which can skew the numbers a bit, but you get the idea.

To bring into focus how new voting maps in many cases made the difference between winning and losing, you have to look at individual races.

Take these three:

—State Senate District 9: Sen. Denise Ricciardi, R-Bedford, comfortably won a second term against first-time candidate and Bedford Democrat Matt McLaughlin by a vote of 13,687 to 12,510.

The Senate redistricting plan (SB 240) moved three Democratic towns out of District 9 — Dublin, Hancock and Peterborough — and added two "purple" communities, Hinsdale and Winchester.

Based on Tuesday voting, McLaughlin likely would have won the old district, 14,894-14,048.

—State Senate District 16: Ex-Republican state Rep. Keith Murphy of Manchester easily beat Manchester Alderman and Democrat June Trisciani, 13,494-11,783.

By most accounts, this was the Senate district most changed by redistricting.

It was so partisan that incumbent Sen. Kevin Cavanaugh, D-Manchester, decided he could not possibly win and instead tried without success to take out Executive Councilor Ted Gatsas, R-Manchester.

The new map removed from District 16 the Democratic towns of Bow and Dunbarton and Manchester wards 2 and 12.

In their place, the district added the red towns of Goffstown and Raymond.

Cavanaugh could do the math.

Trisciani did pretty well, considering she launched and won a write-in nomination after no Democrat signed up.

Last Tuesday, the Democrat running for the state Senate in Cavanaugh's old District 16 solidly beat the Republican, 13,684-12,627.

—Executive Council District 1: As we first reported last spring, three Republican executive councilors, David Wheeler of Milford, Joe Kenney of Wakefield and Gatsas presented their own redistricting plan to Senate Redistricting Committee Chairman James Gray, R-Rochester.

Although the trio did not get all their wish-list items, they got enough to help them score clear wins Tuesday.

Kenney's District 1 changed the most. Redistricting removed 39 towns and city wards, including the college towns of Plymouth, New London and Hanover and the cities of Lebanon and Claremont. In their place, 26 wards and towns, including Rochester (where he went to high school), Dover, Franklin and Somersworth, along with Durham and Madbury.

Nearly 100,000 from those changed towns and wards cast ballots.

Kenney won a competitive race against Somersworth Mayor Dana Hilliard, 63,230 to 59,060.

This isn't a perfect apples-to-apples comparison since Hilliard didn't even live in Kenney's old district.

Yet if you examine how voters made a choice for Executive Council in Kenney's old district Tuesday, the Republican would have narrowly lost, 60,553 to 59,990.

All of this is to remind how the impact of the 2020 outcome reverberated all the way to Tuesday.

If House Democrats had overcome the 750 total votes that handed House Republicans their majority in 2020, what would these redistricting maps have looked like?

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader and Senate President-to-be Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, led his GOP ticket in "over-performance," winning his seat by 16% even though those towns favored former President Donald Trump by 0.8% in 2020.

Senate Republicans unanimously nominated Bradley for president Wednesday.

This is why Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said his party's campaign to become the dominant party in New Hampshire is a "10-year strategy." In the last analysis, it will come down to which party gets to write the redistricting maps after 2030.

Maps helped some Dems

The Republican Party's goal in redrawing maps in a swing state such as ours is always to make Democratic districts more Democratic.

They sure did.

Many GOP observers thought their best hope for a pickup in the Senate was Hampton Falls businessman Lou Gargiulo in District 24, which Sen. Tom Sherman, D-Rye, left to run for governor.

Gargiulo gave Sherman a good run in 2020 and once again put more than $200,000 of his own money into this race, against state Rep. Debra Altschiller, D-Stratham, who was badly outgunned financially.

This mattered little, thanks to Senate redistricting, with Altschiller coasting to an easy win over Gargiulo, 17,969 to 14,313.

How? Well, the Senate redistricting map added to this district the blue college town of Exeter, which Altschiller won by 2,500 votes.

It took away from Gargiulo the very red Seabrook, a town he took from Sherman by 900 votes in 2020.

Two dozen lose in House

All politics is local, and every two years, at least a dozen House incumbents go down to defeat.

This time when the polls closed, 24 were left without seats in Representatives Hall, including 18 Republicans and six Democrats.

The voters retired state reps in nine of 10 counties, with western and very blue Cheshire County the only one that kept every incumbent who ran.

Those who didn't survive Tuesday were Reps. Dawn Johnson and Richard Littlefield, both R-Laconia; Karen Umberger, R-Conway; Jerry Knirk, D-Freedom; Eamon Kelley, D-Berlin; Timothy Egan, D-Sugar Hill; Bonnie Ham, D-North Woodstock; Mark Alliegro, R-Campton; Cody Belanger, R-Epping; Melissa Litchfield, R-Brentwood; Patrick Abrami, R-Stratham; Kurt Wuelper, R-Strafford; Chuck Grassie, D-Rochester; Fenton Groen, R-Rochester; Margaret Kennedy, R-Warner; Matthew Pitaro, R-Allenstown; Nick White, R-Pembroke; Andrew O'Hearne, D-Claremont; Tom Lanzara, R-Nashua; Melissa Blasek and Mary Mayville, both R-Merrimack; Dick Marston, R-Manchester, Josh Query, D-Manchester, and Susan Homala, R-Hollis.

This group covered the spectrum, fitting into no ideological pattern.

Blasek was a staff director of Rebuild N.H., the conservative group that gave Gov. Chris Sununu a lot of pushback on COVID-19 mandates.

Query was one of the most liberal members of the House Democratic caucus.

Umberger and Abrami served in House leadership and were among the most well-liked Republicans by Democratic colleagues on their respective committees.

Sununu dumps, dodges

Sununu wasted little time pouring cold water on former President Donald Trump's plans to announce Dec. 15 that he will run for president again in 2024.

"Do you see a lot of people saying, 'Gee, I can't wait to be arm-and-arm with former President Trump' after the results we had yesterday?" Sununu told Fox News last Wednesday. "I can't imagine that. There's going to be a lot of distancing: of money, of voters, of folks saying clearly they have decided it's time for us to move on."

Sununu said Trump's early decision would hurt the GOP chances of winning the runoff in Georgia, which could decide control of the U.S. Senate.

"It is a horrible idea, horrible timing. I don't know who is advising the former president to make this decision. They should all be fired," Sununu said.

Last week, Sununu refused in multiple interviews to say whether he has any interest in running himself in 2024.

The governor stressed his focus was on the "challenges" the state faces, including a workforce shortage, high energy prices and a need to expand capacity to treat mental health.

Corey Lewandowski of Windham, Trump's 2016 campaign manager, didn't appreciate Sununu's slight.

"I would love to ask how the endorsed Sununu candidates did in the general elections, but all his candidates lost in the primary — Massachusetts governor, New Hampshire CD 2, U.S. Senate, etc.," Lewandowski told the New Hampshire Journal.

Filling knowledge gap

House Human Services and Elderly Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Pearson, R-Hampstead, knew after Tuesday he had some work to do.

The panel he leads has had a reputation for producing consensus even while tackling some of the most emotional issues affecting New Hampshire residents' health.

Gone from the committee are three medical experts — Knirk, a retired surgeon, who lost, and two who were retiring, Rep. Jeff Salloway, D-Durham and an ex-UNH professor in medical studies, and Gary Woods, D-Bow and a former president of the New Hampshire Medical Society.

House Speaker Sherman Packard, R-Londonderry, makes the final decisions, but Pearson already has identified four potential replacements with medical expertise.

Returning Rep. Jim Murphy, D-Hanover, is a surgeon at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.

Voters elected Trinidad Tellez, D-Manchester, who retired from the Department of Health and Human Services and William Palmer, D-Cornish, a hospitalist.

Finally, a new House Republican is David Nagel, R-Gilmanton, who worked in the pain management field.

Bipartisan call on polling

Republican political strategist Mike Dennehy and Democratic chairman Buckley both came out of this cycle calling for the news media to end its fascination with polling.

"Public polling in New Hampshire and around the country took a beating yesterday, and it is past time for media outlets to stop reporting these surveys because it makes them look bad and it can wreak havoc on the election process," Dennehy wrote in a commentary.

A week before the election, Saint Anselm College's poll had Bolduc beating Hassan by 1% and Karoline Leavitt beating Chris Pappas by 6% in the 1st Congressional District.

Two days before the vote, the University of New Hampshire's poll had Hassan and Pappas barely ahead and concluded both were "too close to call."

Bolduc lost by 10 percentage points. Leavitt lost by 8.

"Yes, polling makes for good news stories, but the media should immediately stop reporting surveys from these flawed polling centers and hold them accountable for their poor work and results," he wrote.

"Polling centers should prove they can get it right before they have their results reported."

In fairness to home-grown pollsters, many national firms got this one wrong as well. Witness the results of Senate races in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Colorado and other states, all with bigger margins last Tuesday than polls entering into that final weekend.

Buckley said a focus on polling means voters get less information about the candidates on the issues that matter.

"Polls should be removed going forward. Frankly, I think candidates should be judged on their positions, and that should be the deciding factor," Buckley said.

Hiccups in early returns

The rush to get results out as quickly as possible on Election Night led to some miscues, including one by yours truly.

As of last Wednesday afternoon, unofficial results had House Finance Chairman Ken Weyler, R-Kingston, facing the prospect of a recount since he had won his House seat by only seven votes over Kingston Democrat Trisha Tidd.

Once Secretary of State David Scanlan reported the official numbers, Weyler had topped the ticket of four candidates running for two seats, beating Tidd by 640 votes.

This didn't take long

A liberal grassroots organization tied to two-time New Hampshire presidential primary winner Bernie Sanders is ramping up a "Don't Run Joe" movement.

RootsAction announced last July that they would start running digital ads right after the midterms.

Biden said he expects to run and will make a final decision in early 2023.

"We cannot risk losing in 2024. We shouldn't gamble on Joe Biden's low approval rating," one advertisement read.

Kevin Landrigan is State House Bureau Chief for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News. Reach him at klandrigan@unionleader.com.