Jun. 17—CONCORD — The leaders of both political parties have a frantic few days to recruit candidates that can fill vacancies on the general election ballot for the New Hampshire Legislature and county offices.
Since the candidate filing period ended Friday, Democratic Chairman Raymond Buckley of Manchester and Republican Chairman Chris Ager of Amherst have been tasked with finding hopefuls that under state law they can designate as candidates to appear on the Sept. 10 primary ballots.
They have until Wednesday at 5 p.m. to fill those vacancies.
The two parties are nearly tied in how many vacancies they have for the 400 member seats in the House of Representatives, according to records reported by Secretary of State David Scanlan‘s office along with city and town clerks that supplied unofficial records from Friday, the last day of candidate filings.
Republicans had 85 openings while Democrats had 87 vacancies.
The challenge to fill the ones left open could be harder than usual since it comes right after a legislative session that often was marked by partisan fights in a House of Representatives that was the most closely divided among the two parties in more than 150 years.
House Democratic Leader Matt Wilhelm said he was confident that his forces will field enough candidates to flip the House to Democratic for the first time since 2018.
“We have a fantastic slate of candidates running in competitive, flippable districts that will decide the majority and they are energized to help us win the State House in November,” Wilhelm said.
Republican Chairman Ager said GOP hopefuls have already filed for the most winnable House seats.
“Our recruitment has been very good this term. The seats we will fill this week are predominantly in heavily Democrat districts,” Ager said.
“I’m optimistic for November, especially in light of the overall quality of our candidates in swing districts.”
In the state Senate, Democratic Leader Donna Soucy of Manchester and Buckley need to find hopefuls to oppose the reelections of GOP Sens. Keith Murphy of Manchester, Regina Birdsell of Hampstead and Bill Gannon of Sandown.
A three-term senator, Gannon is the only incumbent Republican senator who faces a primary challenge as he will face one-term state Rep. Emily Phillips, R-Fremont.
Senate Majority Leader Sharon Carson, R-Londonderry, said last week she was encouraged that the only seat that Ager needs to fill if he can is District 21 to run against two-term, Portsmouth Democrat Rebecca Perkins Kwoka.
In the House, Democrats had more vacancies than Republicans did in five counties (Belknap, Coos, Hillsborough, Rockingham and Sullivan Counties), Republicans had more openings in four counties Cheshire, Grafton, Merrimack and Strafford) and the two parties had the same number of vacancies (four each) in Carroll County.
Democratic leaders have the most openings in suburbs and rural areas, including Salem (eight of nine vacant), Hudson (five of six vacant), Derry (seven of 10 vacant ) while it only has 11 vacancies in city seats.
Conversely, the lion’s share of vacancies they are chasing lie in the cities with 48 vacancies there including Nashua (14 open seats), Manchester (nine), Dover (seven) and Keene (five).
After the parties post their slates late Wednesday, Scanlan will conduct a random drawing that will determine the order of candidates that appear on the ballot.
Studies have shown that getting the first ballot position in a multi-candidate race can provide as much as a 5% advantage at the polls.
The state rotates the names of all candidates running for the same office so that all candidates have an equal number of ballots on which they are first in order.
“It always draws a lot of attention from the party leadership because each party has their favorite districts where they most want to be first in line,” Scanlan said.
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