We learned that Republican leadership can make lemonade out of lemons. After being denied use of indoor facilities at UNH because of COVID concerns and some bogus notion that members of the House booze it up during House session, they were creative in putting together a “drive-in” parking lot session. Even though we started 1 hour and 18 minutes late due to late comers and entrance bottlenecks, we managed to get parked and underway to begin the work of electing our new House Speaker and voting on House rules. While we did have some issues with our new hand held voting devices, once we got problems squared away, we went to work. Was it different? For sure. It was one for the history books. Did it get the job done? Yes, it did.
We learned that 350 or so legislators were able to gather together socially distanced and do their legislative work safely from their vehicles despite all of the whining and threatened lawsuits from our friends on the Left. We were able to get the work of the day done by voting using handheld remotes, tuning into FM 88.1 and texting to the House Clerk, Caucus leaders and to others in order to communicate. All manner of work was accomplished from opening ceremonies, to making motions, to voting, and all of the parliamentary maneuvers in between. Much praise should be given to the organizers of this session, including House leadership, the House Clerk and his staff, and some folks at UNH who worked so hard to make it safe and workable.
We learned that after remembering and honoring the late House Speaker Dick Hinch, the first order of business was to elect a new House Speaker by secret ballot. Yellow ballots were handed out to be marked, collected, and counted. The process took a little while, but in the end, Rep. Sherman Packard (R) prevailed over Rep. Renny Cushing (D) with a vote of 202-150. A point of interest is that Speaker Packard will be paying homage to his father by using the same gavel his dad used while he served as NH Senate President. Congratulations to Speaker Packard! May this be a successful and productive biennium for the people of New Hampshire.
We learned that despite efforts of the Democrat Minority to load up the House rules with Social Justice Warrior verbiage, we managed to keep the House rules to the necessary items of deadlines, parliamentary updates, and temporary, but sensible, COVID emergency rules. There was really no need to institute mandated sexual harassment training in our rules, as proposed by Rep. Marjorie Smith (D), since Majority Leader Jason Osborne (R) pointed out to everyone that the Republican caucus had already completed their training! Now, we are all waiting to see if the Democrat caucus will follow suit without having to be mandated to do so. We also clearly do not need to have the House Speaker be mandated by House rules to make sure that members of the House are safe. It’s interesting how our friends on the Left feel that good behavior and commonly understood responsibilities need to be mandated by rules.
We learned that rules on how to manage committees were also voted down by the House Majority because the Majority believe committee chairs are adults who already use common sense on how to best manage their committee hearings, and other affairs, to the benefit of their attendees while completing the work on scheduled bills. Clearly, with the way the House Democrats mis-handled their committee workload in the past two years it would be a grave mistake to take their advice.
We learned that the NH House voted to shoot down an amendment proposed by Rep. Shurtleff (D), which would have banned weapons in House chambers, excluding those carried by law enforcement (204-133). Much to the chagrin of members of the Minority who believe 4th graders are somehow going to get shot with “guns in the NH House”; we can actually teach our kids the importance of 2nd Amendment rights and that those rights should not go away when you visit places like House Chambers. That’s a valuable civics lesson for sure.
We learned that despite the fact that Rep. Shurtleff never saw anyone actually drinking alcoholic beverages during a House session, he proposed a House rule of no drinking or use of illegal substances during House sessions. Rep. Shurtleff had nothing but accusations and vague reports about some random beer cans being spotted in a trash can in a college campus arena (mind you, one that sells alcoholic beverages). Because it is a wholly unnecessary rule and goes without saying that House members conduct themselves with sobriety and respect to the institution, that rule failed 180-145. Suffice it to say, we all know that on regular session days when the House convenes for lunch, members of both parties have been known to have a drink with their lunch at local watering holes; sometimes together!
We learned that the House suspended rules to vote on, and subsequently pass (via a “car horn honking voice vote”) a resolution to condemn the violence happening that day in Washington, DC. There was also one regarding the Vaccine registry and emergency orders which could not garner 2/3rds House vote to suspend rules. There were other resolutions and items that failed to get enough votes to pass as well. One was floated by Rep. Cushing to condemn a Republican House member for a perceived “hate crime”. Rep. Cushing also wanted to add more members to the Finance Committee. Then there was an attempt by Rep. Altschiller (D), to unseat 6 Republican representatives based on her claim that they previously relinquished their seats. This was of course a ridiculous claim and resulted in her unsuccessful challenge of the ruling of the chair. All in all, there was a variety of things for the House to consider. I will say that thanks to lots of virtue signaling going on by the Minority party, and roll call votes designed by the Minority party to make the Majority party seem like drunken, disrespectful, uncaring, and irresponsible people, we had to stay much later than we needed to.
Finally, we learned that our NH House can and will operate in person, and do its work safely, despite the protestations of the Minority party who are all about remote meetings. The Majority party believes that our constituents deserve much more from us than spending our days on Zoom, that protocol and meaningful rules matter, and that if the US Congress and other legislative bodies across this country can meet in their respective chambers, then we at the NH House can, and should, certainly do the same. Stay tuned, the Biennium has just begun!
