Gov. Kelly Ayotte won election last year on a promise to keep New Hampshire on “the Sununu path,” a reference to the politics of her immediate predecessor in the corner office. Her actions of the past week — in vetoes of bills championed by conservatives, as well as her continued decision to stand down as other New England states sue the Trump administration — offer a fresh sense of what that path looks like to her.
Vetoes define Ayotte’s politics as governor
Backed by a GOP majority in the Legislature, Ayotte’s approach since taking office has featured plenty of partnering with fellow Republicans.
When Ayotte wanted to tighten the state’s bail policy, Republican lawmakers acted fast to do it. When she made clear she was serious about her pledge to not limit abortion rights beyond current law, Republicans pulled the plug on a bill that aimed to do so.
But not everything has been that straightforward this year. Ayotte repeatedly clashed with GOP leaders over the state budget, and ultimately threatened to veto her party's spending plan unless it included a pension boost for first responders and corrections workers.
Ayotte ended up mostly getting her way in that fight — after clearly staking out a position. Her vetoes last week of a series of bills championed by conservatives in Concord followed a different dynamic — and it deepened our understanding of Ayotte’s relationship to her party’s right-wing.
Ayotte vetoed bills that would create a process for parents to remove “obscene” curricular materials from schools; that would allow businesses and public institutions to separate people by biological sex; that would make it easier for parents to claim a religious exemptions for children's vaccine requirements; and that would require sex-ed courses to include images of developing fetuses. Each of those vetoes came without much — if any — public warning.
In her various veto messages, Ayotte offered differing rationales for her decision to reject each bill. She called the gender bill a “serious issue” but called its proposed remedy “overly broad.” On the bill to make it easier for parents to challenge curricular materials, Ayotte was more pointed: "I do not believe the State of New Hampshire needs to, nor should it, engage in the role of addressing questions of literary value and appropriateness.” And she categorically rejected the idea that sex-ed should require images of fetuses: “That is not an appropriate role for the State to be mandating such requirements,” Ayotte wrote.
Ayotte has not shied away from intra-party disagreement in Concord
Ayotte’s vetoes angered plenty of her fellow Republicans.
“My heart is broken over these vetoes,” Manchester Sen. Victoria Sullivan posted on X. “ I know that the trust of NH citizens who voted for Republicans who ran on these issues is also broken.”
In a Facebook post Sen. Keith Murphy, also of Manchester, promised to vote to override every one of Ayotte’s vetoes.
“Politicians often bend themselves into pretzels to avoid criticizing others in their own party, but these were important bills that should have been signed, or at least allowed to become law without a signature,” Murphy wrote. “Principle over party.”
Ayotte’s vetoes, and the manner in which she delivered them, also may be the clearest indication yet of how she is choosing to make good on her promise to govern in the vein of her immediate predecessor, former Gov. Chris Sununu, who was prone to keep fellow Republicans in the dark about where he stood on controversial bills until the last minute.
Yet Ayotte’s approach is also distinct. Her willingness to publicly fight leaders in her own party on behalf of unionized public safety workers is one example. So too, is the character of Ayotte’s veto messages, several of which cite concerns about possible litigation.
Seeing politics through the lens of the courtroom is something that comes naturally for Ayotte. She spent five years as New Hampshire’s attorney general where it was her job to defend state statutes — in one instance, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court..
Ayotte has shown less appetite for taking on Trump
But Ayotte’s appetite for fighting — in or out of a courtroom — is conspicuously absent when it comes to the Trump administration.
Given that both she and Trump are Republicans, the politics informing Ayotte’s hesitance to challenge Trump are understandable. But every other New England state — including Vermont, which is led by fellow GOP Gov. Phil Scott — has filed multiple lawsuits against the administration, as recently as last week, over lost federal funding. That suit, filed by 20 states in a Massachusetts federal court, was over the cancellation of a multibillion-dollar FEMA grant program to protect communities from natural disasters.
Earlier this month, 23 states sued the Trump administration over its decision to withhold billions of dollars in public education money. New Hampshire was the lone New England state to stand down.
The same dynamic applied in March, when New Hampshire declined to join a multistate suit fighting over the Trump administration's decision to rescind more than $11 billion in federal aid tied to the COVID pandemic. New Hampshire’s share of that lost money topped $80 million.
At the time, Ayotte’s office said New Hampshire would attempt to recoup the federal money via administrative appeal. The state Department of Justice said in April that New Hampshire still stood to benefit from the suit even if the state wasn’t party to it.
That view, however, was not reflected in the ruling issued that month that temporarily blocked the clawback. And it’s a legal posture rendered less tenable by a June U.S. Supreme Court decision that limited the reach of nationwide injunctions.
That ruling, which came in response to a lawsuit seeking to stop Trump from attempting to end birthright citizenship, indicated there may be other approaches for states and interest groups to block federal policies, but all involve litigation — an approach that Ayotte’s team freely acknowledges the governor sees as a last resort.
“Gov. Ayotte is fighting hard for New Hampshire and believes in pursuing all available remedies before engaging in litigation,” Ayotte spokesman John Corbett said in a statement to NHPR. “The governor continues to engage directly with the federal government when issues arise and will always pursue the course that yields the best results for New Hampshire.”
So far, there is little to indicate what, if any, result Ayotte’s chosen course is yielding for New Hampshire. But all governors these days share the challenge of how to best position their states amid the flood of policies coming from the White House.
Ayotte’s choice to defer direct confrontation with the Trump administration is both regionally conspicuous, and a contrast with the more assertive approach she’s sometimes chosen to deploy when dealing with top Republicans at the State House.
