By Rep. Travis Corcoran and Ian Huyett
It’s no secret that Tuesday was a bloodbath for Republicans, nationwide, based on voter unhappiness with the Iran war and high gas prices. That discontent hit hard down ticket as well: here in New Hampshire we lost control of the House and the Senate in Concord in a devastating way. The Dems are within one vote of having a veto-proof majority, which means that only absolute party discipline will prevent an income tax, a sales tax, and more.
No cloud is so dark that it doesn’t have a silver lining. We will hold the line, we will fight back, and we will use our time in the wilderness—the next two years—to lay the groundwork to take back Concord in 24 months.
But just because the next statewide election is two years out doesn’t mean that we can’t fight and win important battles before then.
In the spring of 2027, Granite State conservatives have an opportunity to break the left’s total stranglehold on New Hampshire’s local governments—the source of most taxes in the state.
We can and will focus on the spring 2027 local elections, and win local seats that we’ve just conceded to the left for decades. These victories will not only check spending locally, they will also forge networks and enable New Hampshire Republicans to come back with greater resilience in 2028.
Local Control isn’t the same as good government
During the US Revolutionary War, Mather Byles asked “Which is better – to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants one mile away?”
In New Hampshire, town operations—plowing, roads, police—are about 20% of the total tax burden, and state taxes, like highways and state police, are 40%. Local public schools are also 40%. In short, we’ve got a “three thousand tyrants one mile away” problem—and we need to fix it.
For decades we’ve been focusing our attention on control of Concord, and ignoring control of schools—even though schools are responsible for just as much, if not more, of our tax burden. Now is the time to change that.
Republican officeholders do not necessarily produce conservative governance
This is not to say that Republicans have never once been elected to school boards in New Hampshire; they have.
The problem is that once in office, they’re bowled over by the machine and overwhelmed. They think they have to do things the existing way “because that’s just how it is.”
One of the authors, Ian Huyett, did a stint of advocacy work in Massachusetts before returning to the Granite State. In the Bay State, he was shocked by a surprising fact: in some of Massachusetts’ local governments, Republicans do not simply warm seats—they genuinely govern. In contrast, New Hampshire’s school boards and other local bodies are uniformly controlled by the left, even if the people in the seats are nominally Republicans.
Supposedly conservative school boards consistently hire militant progressives as their superintendents, administrators, and lawyers. Their administrator headcount and pay usually rise at the same rate as in any other district. Students in these districts are taught that white children are inherently privileged, and girls are exposed to male genitals in school locker rooms.
The problem is not voters, and it’s not the candidates; it’s something else.
In practice, local policy is largely set by a kind of deep state. Elected board members are hemmed in by a phalanx of permanent left-wing institutions. Understanding the “deep education state” is critical to recognizing the solution.
Who are our entrenched opponents?
1. New Hampshire School Boards Association (NHSBA)
The private New Hampshire School Boards Association, or NHSBA, is the foundation of the left’s monopoly over schools. On the right, the NHSBA is well-known for promoting model policies created by progressive activist groups like GLSEN. Yet the NHSBA’s most powerful role is actually in steering the culture and personnel that surround school boards.
2. Education law firms
Through its trainings for school board members, NHSBA helps encourage school boards to hire left-wing activistlaw firms like Drummond Woodsum. These firms adopt experimental, progressive legal theories and confidently present them to credulous school board members as settled law that must be obeyed.
For example, Drummond helped persuade school boards to adopt GLSEN’s model policy on gender identity—which told teachers to lie to parents about their child’s gender identity—by telling board members the policy was required by federal law. In front of the New Hampshire Supreme Court, however, Drummond downplayed this flimsy argument and characterized the policy as a permissible, “discretionary” policy choice by school boards.
3. Superintendents and administrators
The NHSBA also takes a hands-on role in selecting superintendents—it boasts that it is “the foremost provider of this service in New Hampshire”—and helps steer militant progressives into these highly paid positions. While New Hampshire has many successful Christian schools, public school administrators are never hired from them. Gatekeeping these superintendent jobs allows the NHSBA to weave a wealthy, powerful, and progressive patronage network into every community in the state.
The NHSBA then gaslights school boards into viewing the superintendent with awe and reverence. Its training materials say that board members must not challenge the superintendent’s actions, cannot take part in selecting school principals, and should generally not even physically visit schools. Doing these things would “throw the system into chaos.”
Together, the NHSBA, activist law firms, and superintendents form a triangle that encloses every school board, nullifying all of the policy objectives of Republican voters. Cornerstone has seen the same pattern reoccur multiple times around the state: Republican-elected boards will promise to enact a sensible policy—like sex separation in locker rooms—only to wilt within the pressure cooker of progressives’ institutional power.
How do we solve this?
Because New Hampshire is a small, highly-representative state, the most courageous conservatives are pulled inevitably towards Concord. Even those who do not serve in the state legislature are drawn into statewide politics.
With few exceptions, those conservatives left over for local offices are less confident, less tenacious, and more credulous. While high-agency conservatives are sometimes elected to school boards, they never control the majority needed to wrest real control from the deep state.
We need to—and will—do two things. First, we must recruit and elect cadres of talented and driven volunteers to work on school boards. Secondly, we must provide networking, training, support, and a program to those volunteers once they’re elected.
Step 1: Recruit and Elect
In January—just eight weeks from today—registration will open for March’s town elections. These local races are, for multiple reasons, unlikely to be subsumed by Iran and gas prices in the same way as the midterms.
Thankfully, Democrats have just freed up many of our most capable Republican leaders to focus on new projects. If even some of these Republicans register, we may—finally—have the talent and energy we need to wrest some local institutions from the left and truly govern our towns.
Now is the time to sign up to take the state back, to talk to others who might be available, to put forward names of committed patriots. Contact the authors to find out how we can help.
Step 2: Networking and Support
Once we have the right people in the right districts, conservatives can work with each other, support each other, and have fellowship with each other as we take the next steps.
These can include, among other things, voting to pull school districts out of the NHSBA and instead look to the alternative School District Governance Association for training, model policies, and personnel-search services and voting to fire progressive activist law firms and instead hire conservative-run firms specializing in education law. Most importantly, school boards could play by the same rules as the left by recognizing that personnel is policy, and replacing their existing commissars with superintendents, principals, and other staff who will faithfully implement the elected board’s policy views.
To reshape local politics, we do not need to reinvent the wheel: the left has already shown us what to do. By following their example, we can unleash the potential of New Hampshire and return to Concord stronger than ever in 2028.
Travis Corcoran is the author of two Prometheus Award-winning science-fiction novels and writes nonfiction for national magazines, including Make and Fine Homebuilding. He has programmed cruise missiles and CNC knitting machines, founded two companies, and been elected three times to the state legislature. He lives on a 56-acre farm in Weare with his wife.
Ian Huyett is Associate Director and Head of Litigation at Cornerstone, New Hampshire’s leading Christian advocacy organization.