He ran for president as soon as, misplaced three main bids for New Hampshire governor and was defeated twice in gubernatorial normal elections. However, regardless of, Orford’s Meldrim Thomson Jr. was elected to be the Granite State’s chief govt 3 times, sufficient to turn out to be by far the state’s most colourful and controversial political determine in trendy instances.
It was precisely 50 years in the past this week that Thomson was sworn into workplace, launching a six-year tenure in Harmony marked by an almost steady string of actions that thrilled his military of devoted conservative supporters and enraged his foes within the Republican institution, Democrats and what grew to become a rising mass of unbiased voters.
A few of his initiatives concerned necessary state points, resembling going all-in for the Seabrook nuclear energy plant, which was beneath development, delayed and over price range and the goal of a decided opposition marketing campaign. On one event he helicoptered in to supervise the arrest of 1,400 anti-Seabrook demonstrators. One other foray was backing an oil refinery proposal floated by Greek billionaire Aristotle Onassis in Durham.
He at all times caught to his “Ax the Tax” mantra, constructed on a pledge to veto any gross sales or revenue tax, and it has been a part of the state’s political DNA ever since — absolutely essentially the most enduring piece of Thomson’s legacy.
However there have been different facets of his time in Harmony that introduced consternation and mock inside and with out New Hampshire. He ordered the flag atop the Statehouse lowered to half workers on Good Friday and he proposed arming the state Nationwide Guard items with nuclear weapons. Whereas using in his official limousine he ordered the trooper on the wheel to pursue speeders he noticed on the highway. He provoked a “lobster conflict” with Maine that finally required the U.S. Supreme Court docket to resolve.
Studying a compendium of his speeches delivered whereas in workplace will be puzzling. He usually comes off as a rational and caring politician; the hard-right rhetoric and the zany stunts don’t come by means of. Certainly, he was invariably courteous, even with these he knew hated his guts. Esquire journal as soon as rated him certainly one of America’s 10 best-dressed males, for he was at all times turned out in exquisitely tailor-made fits and good-looking silk ties when on official enterprise, though when the best-dressed information broke the Valley Information illustrated its story with a photograph of him splitting firewood whereas dressed like a lumberjack.
The Mel Thomson years in Harmony set the course markers for politicians looking for state workplace for the following 5 many years. No profitable candidate for governor has ever advocated a gross sales or revenue tax, and state budgets have at all times been bare-bones affairs. And with uncommon exceptions the Legislature hasn’t strayed removed from the Thomson precept of “low spending is the way in which to maintain taxes low.”
His run would finish in 1978 for a few causes. First was “Development Work in Progress” or CWIP, pronounced “quip” and it was tied to Seabrook. The nuclear plant’s builders wished electrical prospects, the ratepayers, to shoulder the price of the large quantity of borrowing wanted to maneuver the mission ahead, whereas opponents mentioned the buyers who owned it ought to cowl the payments. Hugh Gallen successfully turned Thomson’s assist for CWIP in opposition to him. Then there was normal weariness with Thomson’s over-publicized persona.
It may be argued that the 2 names which have dominated New Hampshire politics for the previous 4 many years incubated on Meldrim Thomson’s watch. John Sununu beat Gallen in 1982 and his sons have carried on with the Thomson anti-tax components. And Jeanne Shaheen began her political profession on Gallen’s workers and has ridden the no-broad-base-tax horse all through her profession.
Steve Taylor is a former New Hampshire agriculture commissioner, and a former editor of the Valley Information. He lives in Meriden.