This story was originally produced by the Concord Monitor. NHPR is republishing it in partnership with the Granite State News Collaborative.
In the first interview of his U.S. Senate campaign four years ago, Kevin Smith remembers mentioning compromise. The Republican from Londonderry, a former town manager and state representative, posited that voters would want to see lawmakers find common ground on the issues that matter most.
A consultant immediately pulled him aside and told him never to use the word “compromise” again — that it wasn’t what people wanted to hear.
“I thought, ‘Man, this is what is wrong in our politics today,'” Smith said. “The system is incredibly broken when that is, in fact, the case.”
The lesson he took away from that exchange is the reason he jumped aboard the New Hampshire Forum, a “civic infrastructure” project that seeks to bring people together from across the state and political spectrum to participate in the legislative process and discuss issues that matter to them in a safe, constructive environment.
Smith will co-chair the effort alongside a Democratic counterpart, former state Sen. Donna Soucy of Manchester. New Hampshire is one of three states to launch the Forum, spearheaded by Andrew Shue, actor of 1990s hit “Melrose Place” fame and a Dartmouth College alumnus.
“The reality is most people, like myself, they are exhausted with the polarization. They are exhausted with the performative politics. They’re exhausted with the divisiveness. The extreme voices on both sides, they may be the loudest, but they’re not the majority."Kevin Smith
Granite Staters are known for their spirit of civic engagement. It’s on full display at town meeting each year and cultivates a testing ground for presidential hopefuls.
But New Hampshire is not immune to political polarization. State legislators increasingly vote with their own party, and when they don’t, there are costly consequences. National politics and online vitriol gum up the gears of the State House, and several lawmakers have expressed distaste for the Legislature’s dysfunction.
“The partisans, they are stuck. They are here today because they know that they’re stuck,” said Shue. “They’re in a box … The people are going to have to decide these big questions.”
Shue’s non-partisan nonprofit seeks to generate policy solutions from a wide swath of Granite Staters. The first step is a short online survey, which leaders said strips barriers to participation that exist in other public arenas, like traveling to Concord to testify on a bill during a workday.
The survey has already received 500 submissions toward its goal of 25,000. It’ll then select the ideas that receive more than 70% support for discussion at regional, in-person events.
The series will culminate in a “civic assembly” in Concord this fall, where Granite Staters will deliberate about and finalize a list of policy recommendations, which a group of lawmakers has committed to submit as bills in the 2027 legislative session.
The New Hampshire Forum is not the first to try and bridge political divides. Other organizations, like Braver Angels, also look to foster respectful dialogue and common ground.
Shue pitched his nonprofit as not just an effort to build trust but an attempt at building infrastructure, saying it’ll help people get involved in the legislative process. He led a similar project, New Hampshire Together, in 2024. The legislation it produced, which sought to create a single presidential primary ballot, died in committee last year.
Sen. Tara Reardon, a Democrat representing Concord, Bow and Hopkinton, will serve on the group’s advisory board. There are many issues New Hampshire can agree on, she said — housing, for example — but performative politics keeps real solutions out of reach.
If the Forum can build consensus around a given idea, Reardon said, it sends a message to lawmakers and allows proponents of a bill to carry it forward with “the full weight of public support.”
“As a Legislature, I’ve seen how individual voices can be easy to dismiss, but when we stand together, it’s impossible to ignore them,” Reardon said.
With the New Hampshire Forum, Shue said he’s taking a two-by-two “Noah’s Ark” approach to ensure it remains balanced and devoid of a partisan agenda. Like its two co-chairs, for example, it has engaged two marketing firms to conduct outreach: one with a conservative background, the other with a more liberal slant.
The project is also underway in two other early presidential primary states, Nevada and South Carolina, and is funded by a “mostly centrist” group of individual donors, Shue included. He aims to provide the seed money for all three states and later open it up to local dollars.
“This, in order to be real civic infrastructure in each state, needs to be funded locally,” Shue said.
Although the end goal is one of tangible policy change, in the meantime, leaders at the New Hampshire Forum hope their partnership will show politicians that there is less that divides their constituents than brings them together.
“We want you to work on these issues together, and we want you to find solutions to these issues where we know that there is broad consensus,” Smith said. “Guess what? It’s not a dirty thing for the two parties and independents to be working with one another.”
