Speaker of the NH House - Conducting an Orchestra of 400 Legislators

The New Hampshire State Legislature: How to conduct an orchestra with 400 legislators, 

This is a transcript of my conversation with Steve Shurtleff, the former Speaker of the New Hampshire State Legislature. 

Anita: I'm Anita Burroughs, and I want to welcome you to another edition of Digging In. I'm here with Steve Shurtleff, who has been in the New Hampshire State Legislature since 2004. And he's held all four senior positions in the House. He was House Minority Leader, Majority Leader, Speaker, and Speaker Emeritus.

I want to say that Steve is one of my favorite people in the New Hampshire State Legislature for several reasons. He was the speaker when I first took office. I admired the way you conducted yourself. I used to tell people that if you walked into the room and you didn't know if Steve was a Democrat or Republican, you really wouldn't be able to know by the way he conducts things in the house.

I always appreciated your self-deprecating humor. You never made fun of anyone else. You only made fun of yourself. I like to model that. I don't always succeed, but I try to focus on myself and not other people in the house.

I thought it would be interesting to talk about what we don't see in the New Hampshire State Legislature. We know we can talk a little about the role of the speaker on the house floor, but we don't know what goes on behind the scenes.

 What is that like to manage 400 people in the New Hampshire State Legislature?

Steve: It's a challenge at times. It's almost like a conductor of an orchestra. You've got to get everybody in sync and playing the same music. They may disagree with the tune we're playing, but they've got to all be in rhythm with each other. And, you know, it's surprising that I speak because I tend to be a bit shy.

And I gave this advice to my friend, Sherm Packard when he became the Speaker of the New Hampshire State Legislature.  When you first start as speaker, don't be yourself. Be yourself as an actor playing the role of the speaker because there are gonna be people in the house that will try to bait you to have you lose your temper, get mad.

 Don’t give in, just keep smiling. And people always say, gee, you're always smiling. Well, I think back to an old, Garfield  the Cat cartoon. Odie the dog says to Garfield, every time I see you smiling, I get nervous. And Garfield said, every time I see you get nervous, it makes me smile.

And I, I remember that. And so, you play this role for a while, then eventually just your own personality comes out and who you are. But it gives you just those rough spots.

Anita:  I only saw you lose your temper once and you probably don't remember what it was. It was when we had a vote to name a street for a fallen soldier. And it was a voice vote, and one lone voice yelled no. And you were rightfully furious. I remember that.

It turned out that the guy hadn't heard what was going on and he was being funny. And he did get up and apologize, I love apologies because everyone claps, and it's taken sincerely.

Steve:  Yeah, it heals a lot of wounds. That's for sure. And as a Vietnam veteran, that really upset me. And then to find out after, you know, when he apologized, it meant a lot to me that he did. But I think it was like two or three times I've ever really gotten mad in the house.

Anita: You yelled at me once, but we won't go there. I got out of my seat. Oh, we were in the voting process. I didn't realize that we were still in voting mode. And I got up to use the restroom, and you said, why does the member rise? And I'm like, oh my gosh, I ran back as quickly as I could. And sat down. I was like, I guess I'm not going out of the room right now. But I forgive you for that. It scared me.

Let’s talk a little bit about behind the scenes because even today, this is my third term, I don't really know what goes on behind the scenes with negotiations. I see our minority leader, Matt Wilhelm, working with both Sherm Packard, the speaker and Jason Osborne the majority leader.

Tell us a little bit about that., actually being the speaker.

Steve: On the floor is about 10% of what you do as a speaker. Every day you've got meetings with different people. And you're meeting with the minority, with the majority leader. You get people from nonprofits coming in to talk to you about legislation. Commissioners from various departments talking about legislation.

One day I had a call from security. They said two homeless people were down at the Park Street door, the back door, and they wanted to talk with you, but you want me just to send them on their way. And I said, no, bring them on up, I'll talk to them. And I spent about 40 minutes speaking with them. And it was good. They told me about the problems they were having. So, a lot of different things come up, and you can't really plan for it because you don't know what the day will always bring. You have a schedule and an agenda.

You have various meetings yourself, like rules and facilities and others, but every day is a little bit different.

Anita:  Could you tell us about the negotiating process, because it's something I'm certainly still learning in my committee. maybe you have a bill that you could use as point of reference … there's a bill that, that Dems really want to get passed.  Republicans. maybe are unsure about it or don't want to pass it and you really want to get it through.

So how does the negotiating process work?

Steve: At one time I was the chair of the Health Criminal Justice Committee, and we had a bill called Senate Bill 500. And it said no longer could prisoners max out their full sentence and leave the New Hampshire State Prison without any parole or any guidance that just offered at the sunset.

And as a US former US marshal, I had a president tell me they'd rather do time in jail than do time on paper with a parole officer. so, what this bill said, no more maxing out. every inmate must get out 90 days before and they'll have intense supervision while they're out. So, they don't commit another crime and come back to the prison.

Republicans were opposed to it. You know, we're letting these. criminals out in the street early. I talked to them, and I said, we're spending $33,000 a year to warehouse prisoners at the New Hampshire State Prison. Isn't it better to have them out early back, providing for the families, getting jobs, instead of the families having to get some form of public assistance and getting reacclimated to civilian life instead of us subsidizing everything?

And they said, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Why should we be spending that money? So they supported the bill. And of course, Democrats saw the positive part of the bill to get people out and make sure they didn't go back on drugs and make sure that they were taking care of their families, that they got jobs, that they got training they may need. it was a social program in some extent, to some extent. So, it was a win-win for both sides.

They could both see a benefit. to their philosophy and we had a unanimous vote out of the committee, and it passed on the floor.

Anita: I think you alluded to what I think about going into commerce committee where I serve or when you're speaking on the floor in favor or against a bill is I always try to put on a Republican hat and say what matters to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and speak to that, rather than speaking as a Democrat. And I think that's really helpful.

Steve: it's always helpful to figure out what our colleagues are thinking and why they feel that way about a bill.

That's the way to do it Anita, because every bill you can always find something that the other side is gonna like about it. And when you go to the floor, you know your caucus will be with you. It's the other caucus you've got to bring along. And when you can pass bipartisan legislation, that's really- a plus for everybody.

Anita: I agree with you. We talked about negotiations. What was your greatest challenge as a House Speaker? And was there a day that you particularly remember as being challenging?

And I think I know what you're going to say.

Anita:  Well, there are two challenging parts. One was the 19-hour session where we started at 9 o'clock one morning and went to 4 AM the next morning. And what had happened, that deadline for acting on bills that Thursday. I asked the Republican, the late speaker Dick Hinch, if they would extend the deadline to the following Tuesday.

Because of COVID, we were getting backed up. We weren't having sessions as often as we normally would. And he wanted three things from me. One was for people that were reprimanded, and reprimands be dismissed. He wanted my promise that I'd support a tax decrease for businesses. And there was a third thing I can't remember.

And I said, Mr. Speaker, some things I can't do and some things I won't do, I can't guarantee, I can't do that. Well, then we'll be here as long as it takes. I won't agree to extend the deadline. And so we went through that long night

I had one member of our caucus tell me, I can't stay, I'm so afraid of COVID, I've got lung problems, I'm not gonna be here for the whole session, I can't do it. And I said, I understand, you take care of yourself, it's understandable. And all day and all night long, I'd look over, and that person was still there. And, to think about it now, it kind of brings tears to my eyes. They stayed to the very end until 4 a.m. And I asked them, I said, I'm so appreciative of your staying, and so I couldn't leave. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it to my constituents. I couldn't do it to you.

And all night long, Hinch would walk up and say, Mr. Speaker, look how tired your caucus is getting. Give me what I want. Give me what our caucus wants. We can all go home now. We'll come back on Tuesday. I said, Dick, I can't do it. I just can't do it.

Our caucus stayed strong at the house and Republican members stayed and they, you know, they could have left some of them, but they stayed. Yeah. I remember that so well.

Anita: I remember you came into the caucus to ask us How do you all feel about staying till 4 a.m.? I remember everyone cheered. it was like, no, this is the right thing, we're gonna stay. And I thought, oh my God, how am I gonna stay up to 4 a.m?

A Some of us had a 9 a.m. meeting, a county meeting the next day. So we got like three hours sleep. But I felt proud to be there. And I was proud that we all stayed. I was so proud of our caucus.

Steve: Like I said, we had a lot of people that are older, even older than me, believe it or not. But they stayed right to the end. I could see some of them were sleeping. They were so exhausted, but they stayed. And that one member that said, I can't stay because I'm so afraid of COVID. And they stayed.

I was so proud of them. I was so proud of our caucus. And I was proud of the Republicans who stayed as well.

Anita: Yeah. and I've never eaten so much pizza in my life.

Steve: Oh my goodness, I know.

 Anita: They had food out so that we could stay awake.

 Another thing I wanna talk to you about is that the session in 2020 to 2022 was a very discouraging time for a lot of us. In fact, on my, on commerce committee, I think people were so down on the breakdown of bipartisanship that most of the Democratic people in my committee left. They said, I'm not doing this anymore. And it kind of paralleled what's happening in the US House of Representatives right now.

It's this extremist part of our house in both Washington and here, I felt was very disruptive. I saw a real breakdown in the bipartisanship, and I'm wondering what your thoughts are about that.

Steve: Well, I think we had two problems. You know, Renny Cushing was our leader, and I loved Renny. When I was speaker, I named him chair of the Criminal Justice Committee. And on my wall, we got the flag to flow over the state house. The day I was elected speaker, that Renny got for me. So, but Renny got more sick with his cancer, and he eventually wasn't able to attend.

 David Cody was a deputy, and David had serious health issues, and he couldn't come in. So, I think there was somewhat of a vacuum in our house democratic leadership and it showed,

I tried to help whenever I could. But I think that was a problem. We were meeting a lot of the time in Bedford and Republicans here was so disruptive and so disrespectful to Speaker Packard down there, you know, kicking around a soccer ball and beer.

 First, that was probably the biggest challenge I had as speaker when COVID came in March of 2019, trying to find a place where we could meet for our sessions and University of New Hampshire was so good in letting us use the Whittamore Center, but we had problems there.

I found out some of our members of the house were drinking beer, sneaking it in and drinking it. We found trash cans full of beer cans. And then I got a call one night from the president at UNH and said, Mr. Speaker, I got some bad news for you. And I said, what is it? Because the Student Senate is meeting the day after tomorrow, and there's gonna be a vote to ban the New Hampshire House from coming to the Whittemore Center anymore because of the behavior of the members at Whittemore. but we've had a problem with members smoking on school property, which is not allowed

One professor told a group of House members, you're not allowed to smoke on the campus. And they were very rude, very disruptive. So, I said to the president, could I go and speak to the Senate? And he goes, yeah, if you want to. And so, I did and I explained, 90%, 95% of our House members are very decent people and they're trying to do the right thing. but every group is always at three, four, or 5%. The rules don't mean a thing to them. I said, you know, we have to deal with what the people send us and most of the time they're excellent representatives, but there's that few.

We have really no place right now to go but here. We have that obligation to the people we serve to get these laws passed. We've got deadlines. the university been so good to us providing meals, ambulance service, everything. Please, I know you've got a motion that's going to come up, I would ask you to vote it down and let us finish this session. And we'll continue to do whatever we can to police that very few that are causing so much disruption and happily they voted the motion down and we finished off the session there. But that was a challenge.

Anita: The other day, that was when Speaker Packard started. We had what I call karaoke legislation where we sat in our cars and voted all day. I was in my car car for 11 hours. And a lot of us didn't wanna use the Porto Potties because of COVID. I mean, that was a wild ride. And I remember getting there, and some, I won't say what party they were from, were mocking us wearing masks. One member had a brown paper bag over his head. It was like, really? So, that was a problem at the arena, too. We had Democrats, we had Republicans, and then we had those Republicans who refused to wear a mask. They had to be seated away from the rest of the group.

That was quite a time, but that time was like going to the drive-in and having the movie never end. I won't go into detail, but I will just say that there was a run on depends that day.

Steve: I can imagine. Yeah, people didn't want to use the porto potties.

Anita: So, I'm looking at the... session from last year, and now we're going into 2024. And many of us feel like it's much different. There's much more bipartisanship. It's much more respectful. What's your thought about that?

Steve: I totally agree. Cause both parties have to come together. And I think Speaker Packard has done a great job of reaching out to Matt, our Democratic leader. And I think Matt has done a great job talking and communicating with Sherm Packard. And as Sherm told me just a little while ago, I've really gotten to like Matt. we get along very well. And communication is so critical. And I think there is some maybe a little bit on both sides that would like to see us always fighting and more like Congress that we saw just a couple days ago in Washington and the dysfunctionality.

Anita:  But right now, things are going good, and it's going to be interesting to see how all this plays out. Democrats picked up a seat in Northwood that the Republicans really thought would go to them. And there's two more elections coming up. And to see what happens as we move forward, if we end up with a tie in the House, what would happen?

Steve: So that's going to be interesting.

Anita: What do you think about two, at least, I don't know if it's two or three now, Democrats who have stated they're now independents. Do you have any thoughts on that? I know we had one of our members from Milford the other day say that she is now going to be independent.

Steve: And that's an individual's choice. And in my now almost 20 years in the House, I've seen where that's happened before where people have said, no, I don't want to belong to either party. But I think those that left our caucus on important votes in the House will still be with us. And that's a decision they had to make. It's going to make it difficult for bills they want to pass because they won't have one in the caucus supporting what they're doing. But if that is a decision, I guess it's for them to decide. And it's for the people in their district that decide when they come up for reelection. If they, I elected you as a Democrat or I elected you as a Republican because I felt you shared my values. Now maybe you don't. And yeah, but it's a question of choice.

Anita: And it's also very difficult, or I should say, more difficult to win as an independent because you don't have the support. of your party, you don't get the information that we get, you don't get the access to constituents and voters that those of us in a party get. So, it does make it much more difficult to win.

Steve: We had a very good member from the House from Pittsfield last session. He was a committee chair, did a wonderful job. He was a center-right Republican, part of the old guy, Nelson Rockefeller, Walter Peterson branch of the Republican party. And he couldn't run again as a Republican because of what he felt the flaws in his own caucus. And he ran as an independent and he got just walloped. It was so bad to see him go. But you're right. People in New Hampshire don't want to vote for a third party candidate in any election. And they want to see that party label.

Anita: There was an effort related to what we're talking about now, which I'm sure you're familiar with, the citizens for Belknap County, who got together after Gunstock. for people who don't know what happened. There were some legislators who were thought of as extremists who wanted to take Gunstock away from the state and privatize it. And Gunstock almost went down at one point.

Governor Sununu criticized them and said, these are not Republicans; these are extremists. So, these citizens banded together and formed a bipartisan group, a large bipartisan group. They said, we're going to support Democrats, we'll support Republicans, we'll support independents of either side of the party, but we will not support extremists. And they were very successful. They were able to eliminate six extremists from the legislature. Which I saw as a very positive thing.

What do you think about that?

Steve: Well, you know, especially we look at Belknap County and I don't know, I feel, how big their delegation is for the number of seats from their county, but it can't be more than maybe 20, 24, 25. And for them to take out six. And of course, the members did it to themselves. I mean, they had closed down Belknap. They weren't even sure they could open for the ski season. It was just, it was their own vendetta. against Gunstock And the people said, okay, we'll tolerate some stuff. Enough is enough. And now it's affecting the money being raised by the county through gun stock.

Steve: It's affecting people that come to our area to ski there. Now you're just being stupid. And we're not going to tolerate it anymore. And they put out the flyers and endorse certain candidates running in the next election. And you're right. And those are people that are entrenched and strong. Republican districts like Belmont. And they said, no, enough is enough. And you see that at times in the House. You'll see somebody that'll go too far. And the voters, you think, do people even pay attention to House races? They do. And they, you know, and they see the foolishness in Washington, and they say, we don't wanna see that in New Hampshire.

Steve: You know, we have pride in the New Hampshire State Legislature. We have pride in what you do. When you start going too far, extreme, we don't want that. And I feel myself, Manchester is center left on social issues, maybe center right on fiscal issues, but they're somewhere in the middle. The pendulum doesn't go far, either left or right stays in the middle. And that's where Manchester wants us to be.

Anita: I'm hopeful for that. I live in a county that has a number of extremists in power. I won't name them, but it's been very difficult, particularly as a delegation member to the county. And I will say that on commerce, one of the reasons it was so difficult, the last session is some of these extremists I felt were disruptive on our committee. some people left our committee who were voted out. And it's made a huge difference.

We're very civil to each other. Paul Terry was somebody who I was very cautious about, shall we say. I sit next to him now. I love him. I disagree with him on everything, but we get along, we laugh, and that's a good thing. It's the way it should be.

Steve: Absolutely. I broke a gavel one time. I cracked the handle. One of the members, a former member who's no longer in the house from Goffstown got up and said stuff on the floor. It was so outrageous. And it was derogatory to a group of people. And when I called them out of order, I banged the gavel and I hit it till I cracked the whole handle. we had people like that, and we don't see it this much, this session. I think people realize we're so close. We gotta be careful what we say and walk that path together to get through the session.

Steve: You had mentioned that the former speaker, Bill O'Brien, made some threats if you supported Sean Jasper for speaker, which you did that, he would follow through on some threats. So, you want to talk about that?

Yeah. in 2012, we lost the house again. The Republicans took the majority and Bill O'Brien, the former speaker was running again for speaker. About four days before our session to elect the speaker, Sean Jasper came in to see me. And he said, Steve, I'm thinking about challenging Bill O'Brien for the speakership. Would you tell your caucus to vote for me?

And I said, well, I never tell my caucus how to vote. I'll tell them who I'm voting for and why, and I will vote for you, but it's up to them. But I said you've got my support. So, it got back to me two days later from a Democrat who did a TV show in Nashville with Bill O'Brien. And after that public access and after the show, he said to this Democrat, he said, you tell

Shurtleff I'm going to get elected speaker. I got the votes. I hear he's helping Shawn Jasper beat me. Secondly, he will have no parking space on any state property. He'll have to find his own parking place. And there was something else about a committee assignment.

And he said let him know that he better knock off what he's doing because there will be retribution. and Sean came in third.

 And then the next vote, I dropped it out and I asked the House to please vote that was supporting Sean. And they had a caucus and I saw Sean sitting on a bench. after the Republican caucus and he looked so dejected. He said, Steve, I'm not going to win this. He says, I think we're both in hot water.

And he was, cause he really got beat up in his own caucus by O'Brien calling him a traitor and all this stuff. And we had two more votes and then Sean won by four votes. And, and I still remember Bill O'Brien going off the back door of the house and I had some Democrats and party leadership said you made a mistake supporting him. You should let O'Brien win. And then two years later, we were taking the house. And I said, you know, we're not there for the politics. It's the things we get done. And I only asked one thing, Sean, I said, I'm only going to ask you for one favor. If you, when you get elected, speaking, what is it? I said, we got Obama care coming up. The health affordable health act.

Will you give me your word? If we shake hands that you won't do it, you jeopardize that bill. And he put his hand out and he goes, Steve, you got my word. I won't do anything to kill that. It'll rise and fall on its own merits. And that six months later, that bill came up on the floor and we had the vote to pass it and with course Democrats, we supported, but we're in the minority. It was a tie vote and everyone's looking at Sean Jasper. And without waiting us two seconds, he said in the speaker votes, I and bangs the gavel and it passed by that one vote. And for that vote alone, it was worth what we did.

But the fact that Sean, he's a Republican, he's conservative, but he cares about the House, he cares about the people we represent, he cares about the traditions of the House. And we couldn't, we couldn't survive two more years of Bill of Brian, New Hampshire couldn't, and the people that would suffer under his leadership. So, it just I'm seeing so many parallels to what's going on in the house. Right. I mean, at that time in the house with McCarthy being perceived as a weak leader. And when the person who's serving as interim. The first thing he did was take Nancy Pelosi out of her office. I mean, that's case. McKay McHenry, I think is the OK. But that's just yeah, it's real petty and sunny. former deputy speaker and head of the small office. He took his office and changed the locks before a speaker Pelosi could get back from the funeral in California to get her stuff out of the office. They changed the locks on her. I mean, so petty, so petty. That is a disgrace.

Anita:  I'm gonna ask you two more questions. And one of them, we're gonna go to the lighter side. Can you remember one or two of the more comical things that happened while you were serving as speaker?

Yeah, I can think of one thing, especially, I didn't think it was so comical at the time is when we were in joint session, I had just got elected speaker and I had only been at one session when we elected the secretary of state and the treasurer and other business of the house. And so, I was a little nervous being speaker and Governor Sununu was being sworn in for a second term. And I was told they'll go point to me when Channel 9 went live so I could start because it would be in broadcast live. And so, they went to me and I said, ladies and gentlemen, His Excellency, the Governor of New Hampshire, John Sununu. And the governor walked up and he goes, my name is Chris. And of course, I'm looking at his dad who's sitting in front of me.

And for about six months after every time, and I used to meet with the governor once a week, a speaker, and he'd say, you know, my name is Chris. I said, I know, governor, I know, I know, yeah, I know.

Anita: Did he do it in a lighthearted way or not really?

Steve: Yeah, somewhat. He always had a smile on his face. I assume he meant it to be lighthearted, but everybody laughed. And when I think back, I guess it was.

And the other thing is our first joint session, we elected the secretary of state. And that was a very closely fought election before Bill Gardner and Colin Van Ost. And we had our rules. It was one person to nominate each one and then two people to second. And that went fine. And then my senator. Dan Feltus got up and said, I move that we allow the two candidates to now come to the floor. And I said, well, your motions out of order are rules. I practiced in precedent and the rules agreed to are just those three people to speak, not the candidates themselves. And he says, I challenge the ruling of the chair. And to be challenged as a new speaker by your own Democratic Senator from Cork. People laugh, they couldn't believe that my own Senator was challenging my rule, but it was helped by the party.

I thought after that, that was kind of funny to have, who would have thought my Senator, my Democratic Senator would challenge me, but it worked out well.

Anita: thinking about that, I want to shout out to Paul Smith, our clerk, the House clerk, because he's an amazing parliamentarian, he's considered one of the top in the country.

Absolutely. He trains other people how to do this and he does a good job. When he was up for election, when I was speaker, there was talk amongst some Democrats of getting some to challenge him, to knock him off. And I said, Paul, if the Democrats bring up someone, they wanna nominate for your job, I'll put your name in nomination. I said, you've been fair to me, you've done a good job, you're right down the road, that's all I've asked of you, and you've done that maybe a little bit more. And I said, I've got complete respect for you and. We don't want to make this a partisan thing on the, on the court's job. Yeah. I think he gets support on both sides of the aisle. Now he's so well-liked on both sides that he's been nothing would get him out. Right. So, my last question: President Biden recently said that we're seeing a battle between democracy and extremism. Do you see any parallels in New Hampshire to that statement?

Yeah. And I think, I think we see parallels in history, you know, in the 1840s and 50s, we had the know nothings, they were anti Catholic and anti-immigrant. We had a know nothing governor in New Hampshire. And we've seen it with other groups throughout the years, but never to this intensity. The respect for institutions seems to be fading away. You know, I saw myself and Sherman Packard and Sean Jasper. I guess we're part of the old guard, but we have a true love for the house and the body. And we have people coming in now that is so far in the extreme.

 And it's about their agenda, what's not good for the people we serve. And you know, this politics is fine, but politics is what gets us into the house. But what the people want to see is policy once you get there. They don't want to hear your rants and your raves and your attacks on others. And it's like my dad used to say, there are some people that can only beat, bring themselves up by tearing other people down. And I think we see a lot of that. And we're seeing that in the house. And it troubles me.

Anita:  I know it troubles people on both sides of the aisle to see that extremism creeping in. You know, I would think we have a president, a candidate for president who's got 91 indictments. He's got a civil suit now going on. We're going to end up with a $150 million fine. And he's leading in the polls in several states, including New Hampshire. It's mind-boggling. And he's thumbing his nose at the judges, you know, with outrageous statements that put the staff in danger. And this is the leading candidate. It's kind of bizarre, not kind of, it's crazy. It really is. And it's all mostly fundraising. It's all about boosting themselves to that element of the party that just seemed to thrive, you know, the They love this victimhood that he's presented to them.

 And I'm surprised some of these judges haven't held him in contempt. Maybe not incarceration, but at least a fine. Steve: They've tolerated so much for him. And he knows that he could go a little bit further than the average citizen because of the position he held. But it's a sad example and it inspires others to try to mimic what he's doing.

Anita: So are you optimistic about the future for? do you think it's gonna be a good year after the election in 24?

Steve: It's gonna be a busy year. I was talking to the speaker the other day, we've got something like 720 bills, which is a lot for the second half. We've got 200 plus retained bills, plus we'll probably get about 250 bills from the Senate. And so it could be for some long sessions to get that work done. And a lot, a lot of frivolous bills. There's one to allow people that kangaroos as pets.

Steve: Are you serious?

Anita: Yeah, no, really. Another bill, the correct pronunciation of the name of the city of Concord in the state of New Hampshire is a bill. And it's like, please, you know. I did not hear about kangaroos. I saw that there are two bills relative to circumcision. And I thought to myself, so now we're going to be legislators. We're going to be physicians and we're going to be spiritual leaders. I can't do all that. I don't know about you.

Steve:  No, please. I have limitations. I realize that and that's beyond my scope. But I think it'll be a good session. we just got to stay focused, not try to score on each other and just kind of work together and work in harmony. I ran for speaker again, somebody told me, Democrat, I can't vote for you because you're too nice to Republicans. And I said, well, it's the way I am, but we gotta be nice to each other. It's the only way anything's gonna get accomplished. And that's the bottom line, what we do for the people in New Hampshire.

Anita: Well, Steve, in closing, I'll just say, you are always a class act. I always enjoy seeing you. I want to thank you so much for being here today. I think this was a really good conversation about the New Hampshire State Legislature. 

Steve:  well, thank you for inviting me. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks, Stephen. I will see you in Concord very soon. Sounds good. Thanks a lot, Anita.