Carol and Dan McGuire have represented Epsom in the State House for the better part of two decades, and it shows.
The couple’s home, just south of the Epsom traffic circle, boasts a two-story sunroom lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, all of them full. Their collection includes bound copies of New Hampshire election results and the official House of Representatives journals from many of their combined 14 terms in Concord. One cubby holds gavels from their time chairing legislative committees: five for Carol, one for Dan.
After moving to New Hampshire in 2005 as early participants of the Free State Project, the McGuires rose through the ranks of the state Republican Party, becoming a Libertarian influence over top-of-mind matters like education funding and taxation — projects that have no doubt earned them polarizing reputations, depending on who you ask.
Now, they’re getting ready to hang up their gavels, ending a combined 28 years in the Legislature. They will not run for reelection.
“It’s been long enough,” said Carol, who has served in the House since winning her first election in 2008.
Legislators vote on over 1,000 bills each year, and the dizzying volume, the McGuires said, makes it difficult to concentrate on what’s important. There are perennial efforts lawmakers see every year, as well as near-duplicates when leaders don’t coordinate before filing bills. Some lawmakers propose one or two pieces of legislation; others flood the system with dozens.
“I’m not learning much anymore. Things are starting to become repetitive,” she said. “Every year, we’ve got a bill on firemen’s retirement. Every year, you’ve got a bill on licensing massage parlors.”
Dan and Carol met while studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both of them aspiring engineers. They had retired in their 40s after making “very successful investments,” Dan said, and were living in Washington state when they heard about the Free State Project, a movement that seeks to spur a mass migration of “liberty-minded” people to New Hampshire to shape the state’s political makeup and pursue Libertarian policies.
The McGuires made the move in 2005 and were soon tapped by local Republicans to run for office. They have enjoyed a conservative voter base and have, for the most part, sailed through reelections. Both have also held local office — Carol is currently on the Epsom Budget Committee — and are heavily involved in organizations that advocate for lower taxes.
Free Staters, like the McGuires, are often seen as controversial figures, credited with pushing the state’s Republican party further to the right. Proponents characterize the movement as one concerned with advancing personal freedom; critics say their policies pose a threat by promoting individualism over community well-being.
Both of them currently serve on the House Finance Committee, which is responsible for taking a first pass at the governor’s budget proposal every two years.
Dan, the vice chair, said one of his proudest moments was eliminating the state’s interest and dividends tax.
A crowning achievement for Republicans, the move angered Democrats, who say the tax brought in necessary revenue for government services.
In Dan’s view, the tax was “most destructive to prosperity.”
“You just make that case over and over again, and eventually it happened,” he said.
Last year, Dan caught flack for trying to eliminate and defund several state agencies, including the the Office of the Child Advocate, the state’s Commission on Aging and the Council on the Arts, calling them “nice-to-haves” and not “must-haves.”
The McGuires are staunch supporters of Education Freedom Accounts, the state-funded program that gives money to families who wish to pursue alternatives to public schools, and they have advocated against increasing funding for public education.
Carol said they’re more concerned about academic scores than extracurriculars.
“Not everybody agrees on what a good school is, and we’re nerds. We’re engineers. We think reading and writing and math is what they should know,” she said. “Other people are concerned about the relationships, about athletics or things like that, that we personally think are not important, but we don’t get the chance to express that except by saying we’re spending too much and not getting enough.”
At last year’s annual meeting in the Epsom school district, the couple spearheaded a petition warrant article to cap spending at $25,000 per student and advocated for state-imposed limits on school spending.
Robert Topik, an Epsom resident, said that as a Democrat, he rarely agrees with what the McGuires stand for — Education Freedom Accounts, for example — but thinks they believe in what they’re doing.
“I don’t agree with their policies, but I appreciate that they’re willing to volunteer and put in the work,” Topik said.
Though their time in the State House is limited, with just a few dozen bills left to complete before the session ends on June 4, the McGuires have no plans to step away from politics completely.
So much is evident in their own conversations. While discussing their retirement with the Monitor, Dan and Carol would sidetrack into debates over the intricacies of state statute, from school funding to state employee pensions. They recalled one bill, for example, to provide mental-health support for local first responders.
It was a “great idea,” Carol said, but a poorly written law, putting the policy into unrelated statutes like the state employee assistance program.
It “doesn’t make a lot of sense,” Carol said, as Dan chimed in: “They’re not state employees.”
They’re exploring the possibility of becoming snowbirds — a lifestyle of travel incompatible with serving in the Legislature, which meets from January to June each year. In the meantime, Carol will look to get back to knitting the scarf she joked she’s added just six inches to over the past five years.
Dan, a five-time state bridge champion, wants to take his game national.
“It’s the kind of thing that you can’t do casually,” Dan said. “You have to work.”
