The Next Generation’s Fight Over New Hampshire’s Libertarian Project

Twenty-five years after libertarians began migrating to New Hampshire to consolidate power, young politicians are deciding whether to embrace their vision—or resist it.

The young New Hampshire representatives, Alice Wade (L) and Sam Farrington (R), are on different sides of the Free State debate.

(Alice Wade and Sam Farrington)

In the summer of 2022, 13-year-old Anthony Henry often pedaled 25 minutes on his bike through the leafy streets of Derry, New Hampshire. It was a tiring effort for an unlikely destination: his local school board meetings. There, he was determined to rail against mask mandates at his middle school.

At the time, he was three years away from getting his driver’s license and five from launching his first political campaign. “It was really just an exciting time to be involved, to be able to fight for something you believe in,” Henry said. “It kind of taught me that if people can take a middle schooler’s voice seriously, then that’s pretty cool, and that’s kind of why I stuck around.”

Henry is now 18 years old and a Republican candidate for the New Hampshire State House. And he’s not the only teenager vying for political office. There are a handful of college-aged politicians campaigning for the state House this fall, battling with the Republican trifecta currently holding the state—either to uphold it or break it down.

With 400 seats, the New Hampshire House of Representatives is the second-largest lower house in the country, behind only the US House in DC, despite being the 41st most populous state. Each member of New Hampshire’s House represents just 3,304 residents. If the US Congress had that proportion of representation, its House of Representatives would have 99,000 members.

That abundance of seats makes it easier for a wide range of candidates who might struggle elsewhere to win office, from teenagers like Henry to succession-minded libertarian activists descending on New Hampshire from coast to coast. And that ease of access is what drew in a new wave of political actors across the past few decades—a movement that has defined New Hampshire politics since.

In 2001, then–Yale grad student Jason Sorens wrote a letter that sparked a migration. Frustrated by the lack of political power libertarians were able to attain while dispersed coast to coast, he reasoned that if enough of them relocated to the right place, they might have a chance at consolidating power. From there, the plan was simple. Migrate. Run for state and local office. Secede from the United States. Since Sorens launched the “Free State Project,” an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 people have migrated to New Hampshire under its mantle.

Current Issue

There are no official metrics tracking how many of these so-called Free Staters hold elected office. However, the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, a libertarian advocacy organization, grades lawmakers based on how closely they align with libertarian principles, offering a close estimation of who shares their ideology. According to its rankings, 166 of the state’s 400 representatives receive grades of 85 percent or higher. Jason Osborne, the House majority leader in New Hampshire, is closely linked to the movement, having moved to the Granite State from Ohio in 2010 and has earned a 94.7 score according to the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance.

In the state House, they’ve championed everything from gun rights to school choice to expanding access to investing state coffers in precious metals and cryptocurrency.

One reason why Free Staters are tough to spot is that many people reject the label publicly, simply running as Republicans and attracting partisan votes on the basis of party affiliation. That’s part of their strategy.

“If you believe in libertarian ideas, then the Republican Party is the most effective vehicle to be able to win elections and to be able to actually put those things into practice,” Free State Project executive director Eric Brakey said.

That tactic works, according to Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire (UNH). “The Free State Project has tended to bat above their weight when it comes to the legislature,” Scala said. “They’ve made inroads into the Republican party at the state legislative level that is greater, I think, than their impact on the state’s population as a whole.”

But the marriage of traditional Republicans with libertarian politics leads to influence that cuts both ways—the New Hampshire Republican Party advances some libertarian interests, like the aggressive push for cryptocurrency access. In the same way, libertarians join their Republican colleagues on culture-war issues like banning transgender people from using bathrooms that correspond with their gender.

“The right to privacy and safety for those who present as their biological sex outweighs the interest of others who present differently from their biological sex to access the shared public spaces of their preference,” The New Hampshire Liberty Alli…