Legislative Update: Speaker Election Drama - December 06, 2024 Windham Independent

Legislative Update: Speaker Election Drama

This letter was written the day before the Speaker election - my only edit today was adding the results at the end.

The Republican caucus had a spirited campaign for Speaker, with two respected legislators and their campaign teams investing a lot of time and effort into the race. On November 13, the Republican caucus chose to re-elect our current Speaker for our next term.

This should have been the end of campaigning, with us uniting behind the winner. Instead, as soon as the caucus ended, a Republican who campaigned for the losing candidate went outside the Representatives Hall and started telling people in the public hallway what just happened in our private caucus, adding that twenty+ Republicans would never vote for Speaker Packard, and that a Shawn Jasper scenario was next.

A decade ago, Shawn Jasper was elected as the House Speaker (against the will of the Republican caucus) by the Democrats and a few disgruntled Republicans. That two year term was wasted, despite the Republicans controlling the House, the Senate and the Governor office - a Speaker makes thousands of decisions every term, and since a Speaker can be removed at any time through a simple majority vote, they must keep the party who supported them happy, or they would lose their coveted position.

This year, despite Republicans having 221 House seats (178 Democrats, 1 Independent), a few Republicans are working to elect a Speaker of the House backed by the Democrats. Their candidate “campaigned” by saying nothing whatsoever, refusing to even state whether they were running for Speaker or not. To be fair, that saved them the need to answer awkward questions like why they did not run during our caucus, or why the will of the Republicans should be ignored in favor of the will of the Democrats.

I delayed writing this letter, hoping that people pushing this will come to their senses, but this stealth campaign is still going strong, and the consequences to our state could be dire.

I spoke with or messaged everyone I could to ensure people understand the massive consequences of this Speaker election, but now all I can do is wait for Wednesday’s proceedings.

Hopefully, sanity will prevail and most Republicans will remember that we are not sent to Concord to inflate our egos, we are there to serve the people of New Hampshire, which requires us to support the Speaker candidate our caucus picked.

I am looking forward to hearing from you at (603) 267 4142 (text or call) or by email at dpmwindham@gmail.com (please text or call me after you send an email to tell me to look for it). 

Daniel Popovici-Muller

2025-2026 Republican State Representative 

P. S. The results of the Speaker election were (388 votes cast, 195 needed to win, the third candidate withdrew before the vote):

Packard (R): 202, elected Speaker of the House for a third consecutive term.

Simpson (D): 162

Blank/Write ins: 24