With a new legislative session around the corner, the capital region’s 49 state lawmakers are preparing to return to the State House.
This year brought a $16 billion state budget, local zoning overhauls aimed at creating more housing and the elimination of required safety inspections for cars.
None of that happened without the participation of the public officials elected to represent the people of New Hampshire in the State House. So, how often did legislators show up for work?
Many lawmakers get an “A” by that metric, earning an average of 94% attendance score on voting days, according to state data analyzed by the nonpartisan nonprofit Citizens Count.
The capital region was on par with that average: On average, local lawmakers also participated in nearly 93% of all roll-call votes.
Roll calls often cover more partisan and divisive issues than other voting methods, like a consent agenda or a voice vote. They are the only method that tracks whether and how each lawmaker votes on a bill. State data measures participation in roll-call votes and does not represent all votes taken in the 2025 legislative session.
Most local lawmakers — 30 of them — attended 100% of voting days. Rep. John Leavitt, one of several serving Dunbarton and Hooksett, had the lowest attendance score in the capital region, at 56%.
Leavitt said that’s because he’s caring for an aging parent, and he’s decided not to run for re-election in 2026 because of those time constraints.
Daring to break with their party
In roll-call votes, just 26 of New Hampshire’s 424 lawmakers voted with their party less than 90% of the time.
Among those are two representatives from the Concord area. Louise Andrus, a Republican whose district includes Andover, Salisbury and Webster, departed from the party line 15% of the time. Tom Schamberg, a Democrat from Wilmot, did so 11% of the time.
Schamberg said that when he approaches a bill, he first considers how it’ll impact his own constituents, then how it’ll affect the rest of the state. Sometimes, that differs from what his fellow Democrats believe.
“I wouldn’t say a lot of times, but a good number of times the party has a different view on why they want this bill to pass versus what I think is better for my constituency,” Schamberg said.
For example, Schamberg was one of nine Democrats to support a bill this year that allowed landlords to evict tenants at the end of their lease without any other cause necessary.
Many of his colleagues argued that would open the gate for landlords to kick tenants out for arbitrary reasons, potentially hurting renters in an already-struggling housing market. Schamberg, who describes himself as a “moderate centrist” on economics, disagreed. He thought the people who own those buildings deserve to choose who their tenants are.
“Sometimes the party goes, I think, too far to the left on issues, which is sometimes opposite of the other party across the aisle — they go too far to the right sometimes,” Schamberg said. “So, I look what’s best for my two towns I represent and what’s best overall.”
Andrus said she disagreed with her party on a slew of bills that overrode local zoning controls in an effort to clear the way for housing. She didn’t feel it was right to take zoning rights away from towns.
“The way I feel, by the state making some of the mandates they made in the zoning, they took away our right to vote,” Andrus said.
If party leadership doesn’t like her vote, Andrus said she doesn’t care.
“If I agree with them, good. If I don’t agree with them, as far as I’m concerned, that’s good,” she said. “I may be a Republican, but I don’t work for them. I work for my constituents.”
Partisanship stays high in the State House
The remainder of the capital region’s legislators all vote with their party more than 97% of the time, according to the Citizens Count analysis.
New Hampshire is often hailed for its ability to work across the aisle, but the major political parties have moved further apart in recent decades.
Citizens Count has tracked party unity — calculated by measuring the number of roll-call votes in which the majority of one party opposed the majority of the other party — for 26 years.
These so-called “party unity” votes made up just 61% of Senate roll-call votes back in 1999. Now, they account for 90%. In the House of Representatives, that number jumped from 66% to 93%.
“More frequently, we have the majority of Democrats voting against the majority of Republicans without crossing party lines,” said Anna Brown, executive director of Citizens Count.
Party leaders on both sides of the aisle said roll-call votes are more partisan than other types of votes and don’t represent the issues where legislators are more aligned. The number of roll-call votes taken in the House has trended upward over the past 20 years.
“Hundreds of bills move through the consent calendar with unanimous, bipartisan support and little public attention,” Exeter Rep. Alexis Simpson, the House Democratic leader, said in a statement. “Much of the most meaningful lawmaking happens in committee, where members work across party lines to reach consensus, leaving the most divisive issues to dominate floor debate and produce roll-call votes.”
Rep. Jason Osborne, the Republican majority leader from Auburn, echoed that sentiment, and said more partisan roll calls are a sign of “improved operational efficiency.”
“Party-line votes tend to stand out because they involve fundamental differences in philosophy, not because cooperation has disappeared,” he said in a statement.
At the same time, lawmakers on both ends of the political spectrum have said their party leaders foster a culture that can smother disagreements and encourage lawmakers to toe the party line, as the Monitor previously reported.
Brown said having distinct parties and political values isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A line in the sand can help voters know what they’re getting when they select a candidate, she said, and each party is effectively uniting to accomplish its own priorities.
Historically, though, that’s not how New Hampshire does it, Brown said.
As of Nov. 3, roughly 375,000 people — 39% of the state’s registered voters — had not declared a party allegiance, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
The Granite State is also home to many so-called “ticket-splitters” who don’t go all red or all blue down the ballot. Voters routinely send members of different parties to Congress, the State House and the corner office.
“That right there tells you that voters in New Hampshire want something other than strict party lines,” Brown said. “They themselves are choosing the ability to cross party lines, so I would argue it makes sense that they are interested in lawmakers who do the same.”