When it was time to quiet the room before a recent Executive Council meeting at Mount Sunapee State Park, Gov. Kelly Ayotte did what she could to bring the crowd to heel. But after she asked the crowd to quiet down several times, to little effect, Councilor Karen Liot Hill stepped in.
“Good morning! We are going to get this meeting started, thank you so much,” Liot Hill said.
The room quieted almost instantly.
“Well, I’m glad to hear you have a much more dominating voice,” Ayotte said. “I love it.”
Love it or not, Liot Hill’s voice is increasingly prominent in New Hampshire politics these days. As the lone Democrat on the Executive Council, Liot Hill is now her party’s ranking member in Concord. It’s a profile Liot Hill, who spent two decades in local politics before winning election to the council last year, seems to relish. It’s also made her a big target for Republicans, who argue that her approach to the job, which she says honors the state’s volunteer spirit, has crossed ethical lines.
Part of her new prominence is due to Liot Hill’s habit of wading into debates away from the council table. She offered lengthy testimony on the state budget earlier this year, and has repeatedly spoken up in support of transgender rights.
This style of advocacy by a councilor isn’t typical. The Executive Council’s primary purview is more administrative: approving state contracts and appointments to key government jobs.
But Liot Hill isn’t exactly a typical councilor.
With a resume that includes work as a piano teacher and DJ, Liot Hill is at ease behind a microphone. She kicked off that meeting at Mount Sunapee by performing on keyboard and singing. Her musical tastes skew retro: “The 90s are my jam,” she once told me. And while the 46-year-old graduated from Dartmouth and grew up in the tony New York hamlet of Sag Harbor, her bio also shows she’s known struggle.
Liot Hill’s family relied on Social Security to make ends meet when her mother died young from cancer. Medicaid paid for her daughter’s care after a premature delivery when Liot Hill was still a college student. Liot Hill has said she grew up Republican but was a Democrat by the time she first won municipal office two decades ago, inspired by Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential run.
Liot Hill, who's from Lebanon, has never lost an election, but she has suffered other reversals, including DUI arrests and problems with creditors. She says becoming an executive councilor may have expanded her political purview, but what she sees as her basic calling remains the same.
“I do feel that my whole purpose on this planet is to try and make the world a better place, and I’ve chosen public service as my way to do that, and I really am so excited that I now have a bigger opportunity to make life better for even more people,” Liot Hill told me recently. “You know, I guess it’s kind of cheesy, but it’s just the truth.”
'My job does not end'
Democratic State Sen. Sue Prentiss served 12 years alongside Liot Hill on Lebanon’s city council. She also relied on Liot Hill to manage her first Senate campaign. Prentiss credits her for taking a “boots on the ground” approach to politics.
“Being present even when it’s really hard — she’s never shied away from that,” Prentiss said “It didn’t matter what it was, she was there, and she would say to me, ‘You’ve got to be in all these places, that’s what people expect.’ ”
Liot Hill will tell you that remains her approach to politics.
“I am on the road seven days a week,” Liot Hill said. “My job does not end.”
Any councilor will tell you their duties entail far more than the votes they take on state contracts. But in treating her council job as an around-the-clock endeavor, Liot Hill has also provided fodder for GOP critics.
They point to her use of campaign funds to pay for personal car repairs, food and travel, and accuse her of corruption. Similar allegations have dogged other councilors in the past, but in an era of heightened political transparency and partisanship, it’s put a target on Liot Hill’s back.
“It’s shameful that she is still in her position: Granite Staters deserve better,” said state Republican Party Chairman Jim MacEachern.
'She can't have it both ways'
Liot Hill’s use of her government email to help a national Democratic law firm find plaintiffs for a legal challenge to a GOP-backed state voter registration law recently opened her up to a new line of attack — one that’s spurred some Republicans to call for her to resign or face impeachment.
“She can’t have it both ways: She can either be an activist that wants to sue the state, or she can be one of our executive councilors, making sure New Hampshire is on the right path,” said Deputy House Majority Leader Joe Sweeney, who plans to introduce a bill of impeachment against Liot Hill.
Liot Hill dismisses such critiques as partisan politics. She argues her approach to being a councilor embodies a volunteer ethic.
“New Hampshire would not be what it is without volunteers,” she said. ”Even my job — I’m compensated, but not in a full-time way, and I’m following in the footsteps of really great people like Ray Burton, who did this job for almost four decades.”
Burton, a Republican who died in 2013, is a telling role model for Liot Hill. He served 34 years on the council, and was a champion of the state’s North Country. Known for his dedication to communities north of Concord — and for winning election after election with ease — Burton built a bond with voters that transcended party politics and effectively insulated him from political challenge, which at one point included calls for his resignation.
“One of the things I always do when I meet with people, is I ask them, ‘What made Ray Burton so great, and how can I follow in his footsteps?’,” Liot Hill said.
It’s premature to imagine that Liot Hill — or anyone else — could be expected to pull that off, but Liot Hill appears to be trying.
