New Hampshire changed on Tuesday, but how much? 

In these first days of a new political era, the simplest explanation for what transpired on Election Day is also the most common one: The American people have rejected the Trump administration’s Iran war, and they are sick of getting squeezed by the price of gasoline, groceries, healthcare, childcare, housing, college, and on and on.

If that is in fact what spurred the American rebuke of the Republican Party this week, from coast to coast and up and down ballots, this was a largely reactionary election. A potential blip, but a profound one nonetheless.

I wonder, though, whether the shift in New Hampshire runs deeper. It’s possible that voters delivered a verdict not only on war and high prices but also on two core tenets of modern American conservatism: one, that in order for most to prosper some must be made to suffer; and, two, that making sure the rich get ever-richer serves the best interests of families and the working classes.

It’s possible that the people have had enough of cruelty, enough of the greed-fueled myth of trickle-down economics. 

Over the past decade, New Hampshire Republican legislative majorities have frequently practiced each of those forms of exploitation. With their policies, they have helped drive this callous era by painting bull’s-eyes on the backs of immigrants, poor people, LGBTQ+ people, public school teachers, medical professionals, and others. They have also exerted downward pressure on low- and middle-income New Hampshire residents through tax cuts and repeals, universal school vouchers, an embarrassing pittance of a minimum wage, and fresh burdens on low-income Granite Staters, among countless examples.  

For years, the rhetoric and behavior of New Hampshire’s Republican legislative leaders have been at odds with the New Hampshire I experience daily, the New Hampshire where I grew up. Because this is not a cruel state filled with uncharitable people, I have spent a good part of my adult life wondering why so many cruel and uncharitable people were elected to pass cruel and uncharitable bills — all while ignoring the state’s fundamental challenges.

My hope is that Tuesday marks the end of broad bewilderment.

The responsibility on the soon-to-be Democratic legislative majorities in the State House is undoubtedly enormous. They are being asked not only to take New Hampshire in a new direction but to simultaneously seek opportunities to work with Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte, who survived her party’s bloodbath and will now serve a second term.

There are a lot of areas for cooperation between the Legislature and the governor’s office, and I suspect that a majority of New Hampshire residents would like to see plenty of it. 

Despite Ayotte’s narrow and rigid perception of what gives New Hampshire its imagined advantage over New England neighbors, she seems sincere in her desire to ease housing and childcare burdens, and each is a good place to start in a budget year. If U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders can envision avenues of cooperation with President Donald Trump, I’m confident Democratic leaders in New Hampshire can find common ground with the more moderate Ayotte. 

They will, of course, have to go around her at times, and they’re already eyeing a couple of spots to do just that. Cannabis should be legal in a state that has no moral qualms about promoting gambling and lining its highways with liquor stores, and so Democrats should force the issue. (Not for nothing, I would encourage Ayotte to ask her police officer friends who poses a greater public safety risk in general, a drunk person or a stoned person.) Democrats should also restore the Interest and Dividends Tax — the repeal of which almost exclusively benefited the top 20% of income earners — and direct that revenue toward investments in childcare, affordable housing, and countless other areas of structural crisis.

And, should the New Hampshire Democratic Party finally see fit to encourage a robust gubernatorial primary in 2028 rather than appointing a nominee, maybe the state can at long last find a candidate willing to address its greatest challenge: a thoroughly broken and inequitable school funding system.

If the people of New Hampshire are truly sick of high property taxes, while also recognizing that destroying public education is no kind of solution, they’ll have to rise above this state’s entrenched political myopia. They’ll have to raze New Hampshire’s monuments to economic myth — if for no other reason than to have long-delayed revenue conversations that place living people over rote ideology.

It’s doubtful those meaningful conversations will take place in earnest anytime soon, but Tuesday certainly felt like a step in the right direction.

New Hampshire voters set out to hire builders this week, so let the building begin.