Rouillard/Panasiti: Mike Moffett For House Minority Leader

By Claire Rouillard and Reed Panasiti, NH Journal

As former lawmakers, we’ll always care about New Hampshire and what happens in our legislature. And given Tuesday’s blue tsunami, we understand that our New Hampshire GOP needs to retool and recalibrate.

When an army suffers a defeat, a team misses the playoffs or a business fails, such organizations wisely rethink their policies, practices and personnel. What went wrong? How can things be remedied?

The same goes for political parties — including New Hampshire’s legislative Republicans, who suffered immense setbacks on Nov. 3.

What happened?

Certainly, disaffection with Washington, D.C., had much to do with it. Angry voters couldn’t vote against Donald Trump, but they could vote against his party.

And Democrats certainly had success in demonizing their opponents in various ways, including turning “Free Stater” into an epithet. But many of these so-called Free Staters are our friends, good people who came to New Hampshire because they cared about freedom and limited government. These folks deserve much credit for many legislative successes that resulted in New Hampshire being rated as a top state in which to live by many surveys and metrics.

But while Concord Republicans have little control over Trump or Dem machinations, there are areas where it’s fair to reappraise our missions and messaging. One area involves education. We should continue to support families, school choice and what’s best for individual students. And while we absolutely support assessments, transparency and accountability in public education, it may be a fair criticism that some GOP education rhetoric was over the top. We need to do better with our education messaging. The New Hampshire education community includes countless folks with whom we share much common ground and whom we can’t alienate. We can affirm our support for school choice without diminishing the learning option that most families choose — public education.

The Nov. 3 debacle provides lessons and opportunities. The aforementioned armies, teams and businesses typically look for fresh faces and new energy as they adjust and rebound from setbacks. So, we’d like to suggest a fresh face regarding legislative leadership as the new term beckons.

State Rep. Mike Moffett.

Among his many qualities and attributes, Mike is an educator, having taught in public, parochial and military schools, as well as at the community college and university levels. He’s served on both public and charter school boards, as well as two terms on the House Education Committee. He can help heal the rift between our party and that vital and vast education community.

Mike is also a leader, a decorated Marine Corps infantry officer who served in the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. Leadership is in his DNA.

Mike is a communicator, both via written and spoken words. He can skillfully convey lessons, insights, perspectives and messages.

Mike is a traditional conservative Reagan Republican. Originally from the North Country, his Granite State family roots go back multiple generations.

Mike’s conservative bona fides are borne out by his high rankings from the House Republican Alliance and the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance. But ideology hasn’t prevented him from being liked and respected by folks from both sides of the political aisle. With Republicans now in the minority, we need a leader who can work with the majority to help us get wins where we can.

Mike brings people together. He was the prime mover behind the Legislative Softball Classic and then the Legislative Golf Classic, which brought together Democrats and Republicans at sports venues to raise tens of thousands of dollars for Manchester’s Liberty House and homeless veterans.

Mike has repeatedly demonstrated legislative effectiveness and an understanding of our body. As chairman of the House Committee on State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs, he made sure things ran efficiently and on schedule. His committee members got along splendidly, and reports were well written and on time. Everyone who testified before that committee was treated with the utmost respect. And Mike showed great political skill as well.

Here’s one example.

Mike’s committee was assigned a measure submitted by the House Democratic leader that criticized President Trump and his tariff policies. Such a resolution typically would come out of committee with a strictly partisan vote and go on to the House floor for partisan speeches and another partisan vote. But Mike understood concerns about how tariff policies negatively affect New Hampshire. So, he got the measure amended in committee to remove Trump’s name. The committee then debated the policies, not the person, and it passed 15-2. There was no minority report, and it went on the House consent calendar. Typically, such a measure would be pulled from that status for a partisan floor debate. Mike was remarkably successful in discouraging either side from bringing it to the floor for debate and a roll-call vote. So, it eventually passed unanimously on the consent calendar. This would have been a national story, except that the very next day, the Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s tariff policies, and that ruling became the big tariff story instead.

Mike is a winner, going back to his days as captain of the Plymouth State basketball team. He was a winner on Nov. 3, winning a fifth term in a purple district despite the blue tsunami. The people who know him best happily keep sending him to Concord.

As our party regroups and assumes the role of loyal opposition, we need a fresh leadership face and new energy as we rebound. We hope Rep. Michael Moffett will consider stepping up to include his name among those seeking to lead the House GOP caucus.

Claire Rouillard (R-Goffstown) and Reed Panasiti (R-Amherst) each served multiple terms in the New Hampshire House. Rouillard was vice chair of the Judiciary Committee, while Panasiti served on the Commerce Committee.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.