The 2026 New Hampshire House session ended with a bit of political theater: a debate about censuring Rep. James Spillane (R-Deerfield.) I am an old theater kid, so normally I enjoy political theater, but this piece of theater featured a boring and utterly unsympathetic protagonist. I am talking about Rep. Spillane, not myself.
The piece of theater was also cut short. I was expecting two more scenes: Rep. Spillane was supposed to apologize, and I was supposed to accept his apology. Neither speech ever happened, since the usual opportunity for “unanimous consent” remarks at the end of the day vanished after Majority Leader Jason Osborne (R-Candia) made the wrong motion.
I am surprised that I was the focus of the ethics complaint. I joined the complaint merely because I was outraged by his mistreatment of Cathryn Harvey (D-Spofford), who is the ranking Democrat on the committee he chairs, House Fish & Game. Fifty years ago, my late father ironically was a member of that committee. Even more ironically both my father (who died in 2011) and my late mother (who died in 2024) got dragged into this ethics complaint.
The member from Deerfield claimed that I was a “r—d” who opposed one of his bills because supposedly “my mother f—ed her cousin” and because I supposedly dropped acid in the 1960s. This was in the context of a Twitter exchange where I was defending Harvey against charges that she was a liar. She most certainly is not a liar.
He was apparently referring to CACR 15, “relating to the right to hunt, fish, and harvest game and fish.” This CACR got 199 yea votes and 128 nay votes on March 11 — 36 votes short of the required three-fifths of the membership of the House. I was one of the 128 nay votes, for reasons which went beyond what was said in Harvey’s excellent — and truthful — minority report.
All of my own bills failed this year, but bad legislation is still one of my pet peeves. I opposed CACR 15 simply because it was a bad bill, not because of any personal hatred toward Rep. Spillane.
This current incident was, by the way, not the first time my mother was insulted by some of my colleagues.
Another one of my pet peeves happens to be people saying things during legislative proceedings without verifying the facts first. And frankly I was guilty of that two years ago during a House Judiciary Committee debate about the bill Senate Bill 576 in 2024 “relative to reporting the death of voters.” I mistakenly shared what I thought was a sweet story about my last conversation with my mother. My mother died right before the 2024 First in the Nation Primary. Voting was very important to her: For over 60 years, she voted in every election. The very last thing she told me, was that she had written in Biden and sent her ballot to Portsmouth City Hall.
SB 576 maybe wasn’t that bad a bill, since Gov. Sununu eventually signed it. But it was unnecessary. It required executors of estates to send a report to the applicable town or city clerk if the dearly departed was a voter. This is not needed because the town or city clerk’s office immediately gets a copy of the death certificate. In many cases, including my mother’s, the estate never needs to go to probate, so there is no executor. Also, the executor (if any) is named several months after the death. We were asking executors to report something which was already reported a long time ago.
When my committee debated SB 576, I did not know whether or not my mother’s absentee ballot was counted, but I said I thought it should have been counted, since she was alive when she filled out her absentee ballot. Her absentee ballot was in fact set aside on January 23, 2024, and not counted, because the City of Portsmouth already knew she was dead. They had the death certificate.
I was wrong. I was unclear on the facts and I was unclear on what the existing law said. I should have known those things before speaking on SB 576. I made a mistake and I apologize for being wrong. But I still believe that I didn’t deserve the abuse to which I was subjected long after I made that mistake.
Rep. Spillane has done a lot more than simply get one fact wrong. He has made more than one mistake. He has a lot to apologize for. My mother taught me that it was wrong to call people “r—ds,” but she might have made an exception for Rep. Spillane. She did not suffer fools wisely.
Timothy Horrigan is a state representative from Durham.