When the governor’s pen hit the paper on legislation to raise the state’s minimum age for marriage, it was the end of a two-year saga for Cassie Levesque, the teenage driving force behind the bills.
But Levesque is not done yet – the marriage bill campaign has inspired the 19-year-old to run for state representative.
“I want to do a lot more. I want to bring bills like the child marriage bills,” Levesque, of Barrington, told the Monitor before the trio of measures she championed were signed into law by Gov. Chris Sununu.
The governor praised Levesque at a State House bill signing ceremony Monday, saying she “enlightened the entire state.”
“The thanks really goes out to Cassie to make this happen. I think this is just one of those great examples of the power of New Hampshire citizens,” Sununu said.
The legislation ups the minimum age of marriage to 16, the legal age of consent in the state. Existing state law dating back more than a century previously allowed girls to get married at age 13 and boys at 14 if they had court and parental approval. The bills also bar using the sanctity of marriage to shield the crime of rape, and they set higher and clearer standards for judicial review of a petition for a minor to marry.
State Rep. Jackie Cilley of Barrington, who sponsored two of the bills and helped shepherd the measures through the Legislature, is retiring, and Levesque is one of two Democrats and five candidates overall who are vying to succeed Cilley in the state House of Representatives.
Levesque said one reason she’s running for office is that she wants to “get people’s voices heard” at the State House.
Last year, as a senior at Dover High School, Levesque began her push to raise the marriage age as part of a Girl Scouts project that ultimately earned her the organization’s gold award. She said she was familiar with the issue, as both her grandmother and great-grandmother entered into child marriages in their teens to escape abuse at home.
Levesque turned to Cilley, her state representative whom she had known for a decade, to steer the bills through the State House.
Levesque’s first round of measures last year – which would have raised the marriage age in New Hampshire to 18 – failed amid questions over whether teens could marry while one of them was deployed for military service. Legislators said that without being allowed to marry, a spouse would have no ability to receive military death benefits.
But Levesque and Cilley resumed their drive this legislative season with the new bills raising the marriage age to 16, which is legal age of consent in New Hampshire. They won the support of Sununu, who praised Levesque in a January letter to lawmakers urging passage of the measures.
“She has remained committed to this case and maintained her advocacy throughout the twists and turns of the legislative process over the last year,” Sununu wrote.
Hours before Monday’s signing ceremony, Cilley told the Monitor that “this set of bills is the capstone to both to a personal relationship and having watched a young woman mature through her Girl Scout career.”
Levesque said she learned during her year-plus State House odyssey “that there are going to be people who will block your angle.”
“But you have to keep pushing, and I learned never to give up,” she said.
And she added that she also learned the importance of networking.
Levesque said her next mission is to “hopefully raise the (marriage) age eventually to 18.”
She said that Cilley, a progressive leader and former state senator who fought for but ultimately lost the 2012 Democratic gubernatorial nomination to Maggie Hassan, was “a big inspiration” in her decision to run for the House.
Cilley said she’s confident Levesque “will put the same determination and effort into campaigning for, and serving in, the Strafford, District 4 seat.”
“I’m always delighted that young people are interested in stepping up to serve,” Cilley added. “Cassie has clearly become very interested in public service as a result of her work on the legislation to raise the age of marriage in New Hampshire, and that is a good thing.”
Levesque’s age wasn’t lost on her, either, and she explained that one reason she’s running is to make sure the voices of her generation will “be heard in the capitol.”
“So many of our representatives are older people,” she said.