NH House Democrats nominate Simpson to be next speaker ahead of Dec. 2 vote

Rep. Alexis Simpson, who has led the New Hampshire House Democrats as minority leader for two years, is the caucus’ pick for speaker of the House.

House Democrats met in Concord Thursday to vote on who to rally behind to lead the chamber. On Dec. 2, the entire New Hampshire House of Representatives will meet to officially elect the speaker. After Democrats won a supermajority in last week’s elections, the party controls who holds the speaker’s gavel. Thursday’s meeting was an attempt by Democrats to get on the same page before the final vote. Still, fractures have emerged within the party in recent weeks after Rep. Jim Maggiore, a former Republican candidate who now represents North Hampton as a Democrat, unsuccessfully challenged her for the role and rallied a group of supporters unhappy with Simpson’s leadership.

The final vote was 200-75.

Simpson is a Christian minister who represents Exeter. This will be her fifth term in the House. Simpson’s priorities as a lawmaker have typically aligned with that of her party at large: protecting abortion rights, opposing Republicans’ education freedom account program and funding the state’s Housing Champions program, for instance.

“When the people in this room knocked on thousands and thousands and thousands of doors, and they know their constituents, they bring those conversations and those stories with them,” Simpson said. “And we know that people are struggling, needing lower property taxes, needing more affordable housing, needing to lower the cost of childcare, and to find accessible, affordable childcare throughout the state. So those are just a few things that we will be working on.”

She said that starts with the upcoming budget and will be working with her team in the coming weeks on the spending plan.

Her pitch to fellow representatives relied on her previous leadership. She argued that she and her team had spent the last two years preparing for this moment and were ready to put the party’s agenda in motion. Maggiore cast Simpson as an uncollaborative leader and argued he would do a better job of gathering input from the entire caucus. Maggiore’s voting record became a point of contention. The former Republican was one of few Democrats to vote in favor of Medicaid work requirements, cutting the Office of the Child Advocate budget and tabling a minimum wage increase, among other things.

Asked about the criticisms of her leadership style, Simpson said she was “sorry that that debate took place” but is “going to spend some more time thinking about that” and contended that she has “always had a collaborative approach.” She said she’ll “make an extra special effort to reach out to those who have felt that way.”

The speaker’s wide-ranging duties include presiding over votes, making committee assignments and controlling how bills work their way through the Legislative process. The speaker also serves as the leader of the chamber and caucus. That includes administrative tasks such as hiring and managing House staff, but it also means leading negotiations with the Senate or governor’s office at times and setting the tone for how the chamber will operate. With a whopping majority totaling 291 Democrats (pending recounts), she’ll likely face challenges finding consensus at times and could see intraparty factions she’ll have to mediate.

Simpson characterized that as a positive, saying the caucus was “a big tent even when we were a smaller caucus, and so we have experience with ideological diversity that we’ll lean on.”

While the goal Thursday was to coalesce around one candidate, it’s possible that last-minute jockeying over the position will continue heading into December’s full chamber vote.