(The Center Square) — New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte has vetoed a Republican-backed bill that would have allowed cities and towns to hold partisan elections for governing school boards.
The legislation, approved by the state Legislature in a largely party line vote, would give local governments the option of allowing candidates for nonpartisan local school boards and committees to run on party lines.
But Ayotte, a first-term Republican, vetoed the bill for seeking to fix “a system that is not broken” and said allowing partisan elections for local school boards could lead to more political divisions in the state.
“Local school board elections are run properly and in a nonpartisan manner, and there is no need to fix a system that is not broken,” Ayotte wrote in her veto message. “Making these local elections into partisan fights will create unnecessary division between Granite Staters.”
The measure squeaked through the GOP controlled Legislature in the final days of its session, despite a recommendation by the Senate Election Laws and Municipal Affairs Committee that the bill be killed. Democrats, who constitute a minority in the Legislature, voted in unison against the plan.
Backers of the proposal argued during legislative hearings that school board elections are already partisan affairs, and said allowing candidates to put their party affiliations on the ballot will help voters stay informed. House Election Laws Committee Chairman Ross Berry, R-Weare, told a Senate panel in May that the changes could also help drive turnout in small town school board elections that traditionally see lackluster interest from voters. “Non-partisan elections often enable candidates to disguise their true intentions,” Berry said in testimony. “This bill would assist voters in understanding what or who they are voting for.”
The New Hampshire School Board Association took no official position on the proposal, but still argued against its passage during a recent Senate panel hearing. A key concern for the group is the ability of political parties to caucus behind closed doors. “Less politics in school is a good thing,” Barrett Christina, the association’s executive director, said in testimony in May. “The partisan election provision has been in town law since 1970, but no towns have adopted the option, and they don’t think bringing this to schools is a good idea.”
The bill will likely be brought back up by the state House of Representatives and State when lawmakers reconvene this fall to consider overriding Ayotte’s vetoes from the recent session.
Lawmakers backing the measure would need a super-majority, or a two-thirds vote in both chambers, to override the governor’s objections and make it a law.
