July 29, 2010

Liberty Alliance sees uptick
NH group rates legislators’ votes
By Jeff Mucciarone jmucciarone@hippopress.com

Liberty, as defined by the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, is doing well in New Hampshire this year.

“Yes, there is a blossoming liberty movement here in New Hampshire,” said Alliance Chairman Mark Warden. “It was sitting there just waiting to be awakened. People are really angered with what’s going on at the federal level.”

Warden is seeing more liberty-leaning candidates on both sides of the aisle and he expects issues of liberty to play a larger role in the coming elections than they have in years past.

“Some call it the larger tea party movement, but we like to think it’s the ‘live free or die’ spirit now coming to life,” Warden said.

The Alliance, which brands itself as a non-partisan coalition working to improve freedom in the Granite State, recently released its annual liberty ratings report card. Though no one garnered an A+, or an F for that matter, the Alliance did see more people in the B range. This time around the Alliance included more bills in its rating calculation. The top 10 percent of legislators in the rankings have been the same people for the past couple years — that shows consistency, Warden said.

The Alliance based its ratings on 52 roll-call votes in the House and 12 in the Senate. Votes were weighted according to their impact to freedom and legislators were graded A to D-. The Alliance also has a grade of “Constitutional Threat,” which no one garnered this year.

Legislators were graded on their votes on bills about deregulating home-schooling, enacting right-to-work rules and decriminalizing marijuana. Of New Hampshire’s 400 state representatives, eight received an A and four received a D-. Eight earned a B and none received a D.

“I think overall it’s good,” Warden said. “It’s showing a slight trend of improvement from past years.”

The Liberty Alliance and the state Republican party don’t agree on everything, but they do come together largely over issues of limited government, lower taxes and supporting 2nd Amendment rights, said Ryan Williams, state GOP spokesman. He said Republican candidates have taken notice of liberty-minded issues and are making sure to resonate with the Liberty Alliance.

“Certainly it’s an important group within the political spectrum that candidates have to speak to,” Williams said. “We share a lot of the same issues, but we’re separate organizations. It’s certainly a group Republican candidates need to engage if they want to win primaries.”

Williams said what he sees as big-government, big-spending Democratic rule in Concord and in Washington has helped energize traditional Republican and liberty-minded folks. He said big government interferes with personal liberties. Williams said the tea party is unique as it’s not an organization like the state Republican or Democratic party but is more of a movement “based on ideas and support for fiscally conservative policies. The tea party is an outlet for people who are frustrated with big government policies.”

Still, analysts wondered whether the tea party would have the same impact in New Hampshire as in other states. Political analyst Dean Spiliotes said the tea party’s impact in the Granite State could depend on how much it’s driven by libertarians versus social conservatives like Sarah Palin. Spiliotes said there are Republican candidates who could tap into the tea party but that the movement is likely to have a much bigger impact in a place like South Carolina.

The Alliance, which will be endorsing candidates, treats the liberty ratings report card as a guide for voters.

“We want them to use this and kick out the people that are hostile to liberty,” Warden said.

According to the Alliance, “pro-liberty votes protect individual freedom of choice and personal responsibility, recognize the superiority of freedom over coercion, respect the citizen’s right of self-ownership, promote government that is transparent, accountable, and adheres to the Constitution, and recognize the value of voluntary economic decisions.” And “anti-liberty votes attempt to replace self-governance with interventionist regulation, assume rules made by agencies backed by force are superior to voluntary choices backed by personal accountability, and assume a better economy can be managed by a central authority that compels people and businesses to pay for policies they may not willingly support.”

“We basically take the politics out of each issue and try to boil it down to a liberty angle,” Warden said.

State Rep. Carol McGuire, R-Epsom, was named the Alliance’s Legislator of the Year for her pro-liberty voting record in 2010. McGuire was one of eight representatives to earn an “A” rating on the Alliance’s annual Liberty Rating report card. Matt Simon, executive director of the New Hampshire Coalition for Common Sense Marijuana Policy, was named Activist of the Year for his efforts to decriminalize marijuana. Simon has been pushing to legalize medicinal marijuana in the legislature since 2007.

“For us, liberty means less government regulation, lower taxes ... and it’s based on the foundation of self-ownership,” Warden said.

Warden said there is a sense legislators have seen the Alliance — and particularly the ratings — grow in influence and have subsequently voted more with liberty in mind.

“I think it has slightly influenced voting behavior in a positive way,” Warden said.

While the group prides itself on being entirely nonpartisan, Republicans score better overall than Democrats. Still, Warden said there are plenty of Democrats voting in a pro-liberty fashion, including Rep. Joel Winters, D-Manchester, who is the organization’s political director. Warden, who is running for state representative this year as a Republican, said Winters keeps the Alliance in check.

“Republicans are usually the majority of the top 20 percent but not because of the way we choose bills,” Warden said. “We’re rabidly independent, nonpartisan.”

The Alliance looks for bills that have a “clear liberty angle,” Warden said. Some bills are complex and have many components, some good or some bad with regard to liberty. The Alliance isn’t going to weigh in on a bill like that.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to make a principled argument one way or another,” Warden said. “So we don’t include those.”

The Alliance is looking for single-issue legislation with a clear and demonstrable leaning toward or away from liberty.

The Alliance supports measures to legalize medicinal marijuana, for example, as it supports people having the right to make their own decisions. It also does not support throwing someone in jail for something in which there is no victim, Warden said, calling it a waste of taxpayer dollars.

It’s hard to know how much progress the Alliance is making in terms of spreading liberty.

“In general, it seems like for every step forward we take, there’s another step back,” Warden said. “That is the nature of politics. It lends itself to people who want more power and want to control others.”

The Alliance testifies regularly at committee hearings on various bills. It publishes the Gold Standard Liberty Watch list each week during legislative session and distributes it to legislators. Warden said it’s a cheat sheet for upcoming votes, highlighting pro- or anti-liberty aspects.

Warden said the Alliance directs people to the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy Studies for more information on economic issues and to the New Hampshire Center for Constitutional Studies for issues of constitutional scholarship. Visit www.nhliberty.org to view their video on the philosophy of liberty and the complete liberty ratings.. —Jeff Mucciarone