While the 2022 elections were full of surprises, one thing in New Hampshire felt inevitable: Jeb Bradley’s ascension to the presidency of the state Senate.
It followed a 40-year transit through New Hampshire politics for Bradley that includes service at every level of government, including Congress.
Over nearly 15 years as a Republican state senator, Bradley has earned a reputation as a congenial dealmaker – a reputation that will be put to a test this year with a closely divided State House.
Sitting in his third floor office at the State House recently, Bradley, a self-described glass half-full guy, was ready to predict comity this year in Concord – between the House and the Senate, and among pragmatic lawmakers in both parties.
“I think the middle will hold, the most important things that have some level of bipartisan support are going to get forward, and that’s how I see this iteration of the Legislature,” Bradley said.
Bradley who served in the state House of Representatives in the 1990s, knows iterations of the Legislature. He’s known serving on the municipal level in the 1980s, when he was a registered Democrat. He’s also known riding a GOP wave to a seat in Congress – and being washed out of office in 2006 when voters soured on the Bush administration policies he mostly backed.
Bradley will tell you he’s learned plenty from his political ups and downs. Yet he insists his basic approach to politics remains informed by his boyhood, when he worked in the hardware store his family owned in Wolfeboro.
“I sold everything from nuts and bolts to lawnmowers, and when you worked in a hardware store there were always a number of ways to solve people’s problems,” Bradley said. “So I think it just depends on the kind of situation that you are faced with.”
The situation Bradley faces this year — a 14-10 Republican Senate majority, a nearly evenly split New Hampshire House, and a governor eyeing a possible presidential run — could get complicated. But if Bradley’s career illustrates anything, it’s an openness to opportunity and a willingness to shoot for agreement,
“ ‘No’ is always the easiest way, and sometimes that’s all you got,” he said. “ ‘Yes’ is always harder, because you have to touch base with so many different points of view and bring them together.”
Bradley’s record shows he’s gotten to yes on multiple policy fronts. Take energy and environment:
“Jeb Bradley is sort of the founding father of most of the important policies that have enabled clean energy to grow in New Hampshire,” said Sam Evans-Brown, who leads the advocacy group Clean Energy New Hampshire.
Evans- Brown credits Bradley for protecting clean energy initiatives when fellow Republicans have tried to undercut them.
He cites a 2021 bill that began as something hostile to community power and net metering initiatives – two priorities of backers of renewable energy in the state. And then Bradley got involved.
“By the time the bill got to the finish line, it was a complete polar opposite or how it began,” Evans-Brown said. “It went from being a bill that would have gutted community power to one that really strengthened the program.”
Bradley’s knack for forging compromises on fraught topics has even generated a slang term around the state house: “a Bradley special.” Former Democratic Rep. Jerry Knirk, of Freedom, cites Bradley’s extensive work on health care issues, including his role in helping to broker New Hampshire’s approach to Medicaid expansion a decade ago. Knirk said he’s witnessed Bradley break impasses multiple times with a basic strategy.
“He just looked at the two sides and said, ‘Ok, you two go out and figure out something you can agree on and come back to me with it,’ ” Knirk said. “Which I thought was always rather good because it made the two disagreeing sides come together and come up with something they could both swallow.”
But Bradley’s instinct towards consensus can also leave his sometimes allies – on both sides of the aisle – with sour tastes in their mouths. Rep. J.R. Hoell of Dunbarton, who leads the conservative House Republican Alliance, considers Medicaid Expansion, one of Bradley’s bigger accomplishments, a bridge too far.
“I have real concerns about how effective the policy of expanded Medicaid is and whether we are being good stewards of our taxpayer dollars,” Hoell said.
Democrats, meanwhile, are quick to note Bradley’s role as Senate majority leader in pushing through the last state budget, including its conservative social policies – like a ban on abortion after 24 weeks and limits on certain teachings around race and sex.
“They don’t happen without the Senate majority leader, without his permission,” Knirk said.
The fact that the evenly divided Legislature means even a handful of lawmakers – in either party – may have the power to scuttle bills is something plenty at the State House recognize. That could stymie the sort of coalition-building Bradley predicts, or it could just require his deftest touch to pull off.
On that front, a distant item on Bradley’s resume – a stint as a European street magician in the 1970s – may prove illustrative.
“I used to make a lighted cigarette disappear and pull it out of somebody’s ear,” Bradley recalled. “I can’t do it now because I don’t have any cigarettes.”
A little familiarity with sleight of hand may not be a bad thing this year in Concord.
