Welcome in everyone. We are so glad you are joining
us for today's deep dive. It's great to be here.
If you are sitting there right now, whether you
are prepping for a big meeting, commuting, or
maybe you are just insanely curious about the
hidden machinations of history. You were in exactly
the right place. Absolutely. Today, we are looking
at a piece of source material that, well, at
first glance, it might just look like a wall
of data. We are diving into a comprehensive Wikipedia
article simply titled List of United States Senators
from New Hampshire. Which sounds dry, I know.
Right. I know what you might be thinking. A giant
chronological table of politicians. A spreadsheet
of names, dates, and obscure political affiliations.
It sounds like a tremendously dry read. It really
does. But I promise you, by the end of this deep
dive, you are going to see this list for what
it truly is. It is definitely not just a table.
No. It is a secret decoder ring for understanding
the chaotic, messy, and totally fascinating evolution
of American democracy. Okay, let's unpack this.
Let's do it. So before we get ahead of ourselves,
let us lay down the absolute foundational facts
from the entry so you have the right structural
context. Right. The baseline. Exactly. So New
Hampshire was admitted to the Union on June 21st,
1788. And the way the United States Senate is
designed, each state elects two senators. But
they do not run in the same years. Right. The
list outlines that New Hampshire elects what
are called Class 2 and Class 3 senators. To bring
that right up to the present day, the Class 2
seat is on an electoral cycle that will be contested
next in 2026. Okay. And the Class 3 seat is on
a separate cycle, and its next election will
be in 2028. And there's a very specific reason
the framers built it that way, isn't there? They
didn't want everyone up. For reelection all at
once. Precisely. The staggering of the classes
ensures that the Senate is a continuous body.
You only ever turn over roughly one third of
the chamber in any given national election. Yeah,
it was designed to prevent total sweeping upheaval.
It guarantees a baseline of institutional memory,
even when the political winds are shifting wildly.
Because literally right out of the gate, the
very first entry on this chronological list throws
a massive wrench into how we usually think about
politicians seeking power. It really does. We
are looking at the year 1788. New Hampshire is
a brand new state in a brand new country. They
hold an election for their very first class two
senator. And a man named Josiah Bartlett wins
the election. He is the guy. And instead of packing
his bags for the Capitol, the record explicitly
notes that he declined the appointment. Just
turned it down. Why would someone turn down the
chance to be a foundational voice in the United
States Senate? Well, it is an incredible historical
detail and it highlights a major difference in
how government was viewed back then. I mean,
he didn't just say no thanks out of laziness.
Right. In 1788, the federal government was incredibly
weak. They were still shaking off the hangover
of the Articles of Confederation. Plus, travel
to the national capital was grueling. Very grueling,
expensive, time -consuming. More importantly,
state -level politics were often seen as much
more prestigious and impactful than this experimental
new national senate they had just dreamed up.
So for a prominent fish like Bartlett, staying
in New Hampshire just made... more practical
in political sense. I just want you to imagine
that for a second. Think about winning a massive,
highly sought after job offer today. The kind
of position people spend millions of dollars
on. Millions of dollars and decades of their
lives campaigning for. You win the prize and
you look at it and simply say, no thanks, my
commute would be terrible. It's wild to think
about. Because he declined, the state had to
scramble, and a man named Payne Wingate had to
step in and take the seat the following year
in 1789. What's fascinating here is how the earliest
political affiliations of these leaders are categorized.
Well, the party labels. Yeah. When you look at
those first few rows of the table for men like
Payne Wingate or the very first class three senator
John Langdon, their party affiliation is simply
listed as anti -admin or pro -admin. It's wild
to see the data strip away our modern party system
and boil early politics down to one single metric.
Are you with the president or against him? It
is a striking binary. Early American politics
were entirely defined by whether you supported
the current executive administration or whether
you opposed it. That was your entire political
identity on the national stage. Exactly. It was
only after these initial formative years that
you see the table evolve to include more ideological
labels like Federalist and Democratic Republican.
It is a totally binary way to run a government.
But as we guide you further down this list and
move fully into the 19th century, the supposedly
orderly system time and time again simply stops
working. The systemic breakdowns? Yeah, I was
looking through the mid -1800s and there's this
mind -boggling phrase that just pops up randomly
in the middle of these timelines. Legislature
failed to elect. Yes. You were reading along
expecting the next name and instead it just says
legislature failed to elect. How does a state
just forget to send a senator to Washington?
Well, they didn't forget. They were just completely
deadlocked. We have to contextualize the mechanics
of how this worked prior to the 17th Amendment
in the early 20th century. Before the popular
vote. Right. Back then, United States senators
were not elected by a popular vote of the citizens.
They were chosen directly by the state legislatures.
Ah, okay. So when the record says legislature
failed to elect, it literally means the politicians
back in Concord could not reach a consensus.
The local factions were so bitterly divided.
Exactly. They simply couldn't get a majority
to agree on a single candidate to send to Washington.
So the seat just sat empty. It did. And it happened
multiple times. For the class two seat, you see
legislative failures to elect in 1813, again
in 1885, and again in 1889. And for the class
three seat. It happens in 1855. These resulted
in long, frustrating vacancies. It is a phenomenal
reminder that political gridlock is not a modern
invention. It was baked right into the state's
historical DNA. But wait, did the 17th Amendment
just trade legislative gridlock for the modern
campaign gridlock we see today? How do you mean?
I mean, we solved the empty seat problem by putting
it to a popular vote, but now we just have endless
billion -dollar electoral standoffs instead.
That is a very fair critique. The 17th Amendment
democratized the process absolutely, ensuring
those seats wouldn't just sit empty because of
backroom stalemates in state capitals. But it
just shifted the battlefield. You are right.
Instead of a handful of state legislators arguing
in a chamber, you now have massive statewide
partisan campaigns fighting it out in the media.
The friction didn't disappear. It just changed
venues. Speaking of friction. I noticed a bunch
of early resignations in this era, too. Were
these guys just getting pushed out of office
or losing snap elections? Because this list is
full of career hoppers. Not at all. Again, we
have to drop our modern assumptions. Today, we
think of the United States Senate as the ultimate
political destination. You get there and you
stay there for decades. But back in the 1800s,
the Senate was often treated as a stepping stone.
Or even just a holding pattern for other ambitions,
which explains some of the bizarre pivots I was
reading about. Like Isaac Hill. Yes. Take Isaac
Hill, a class three senator. In 1836, he resigns
from the United States Senate and he doesn't
resign in disgrace. He resigns specifically to
become the governor of New Hampshire. Yeah. Today,
senators rarely leave Washington to go take a
governor's mansion. But. In the 1830s, being
the chief executive of your home state allowed
you to wield far more direct, tangible power
over your constituents' daily lives than being
one of many voices in a distant federal legislature.
That makes perfect sense. Then you have Levi
Woodbury. He serves multiple different stints
in the Senate, bounce it around. But in 1845,
he resigns from his class two seat to become
a justice of the U .S. Supreme Court. Well, a
lifetime appointment to the highest court in
the land is a rather understandable career move.
Oh, for sure. I think anyone takes that deal.
But then you look at John P. Hale in 1853. A
huge gamble. He actually retires from his Senate
seat specifically so he can run for president
of the United States. He gives up a safe seat
entirely to take a massive gamble on the White
House. Hale's ambition is a perfect segue into
the ideological turmoil of the mid -19th century.
The party list gets crazy here. It really does.
If you look at the party column in this list
during the decades leading up to the Civil War,
it becomes an absolute kaleidoscope. It is no
longer just Democrats in wigs. No. You start
seeing these incredibly specific, flash -in -the
-pan political movements taking hold in New Hampshire.
It is like a political Wild West. Every few years,
a totally new party is suddenly sending a senator
to Washington. I'm seeing someone listed as Jacksonian.
Yep. There is a senator elected under the Liberty
Party. You have an independent Democratic senator
and a free soil senator. What was driving all
of that fracturing? Well, to remain completely
impartial and view this strictly as historians
analyzing the data, this explosion of third parties
perfectly illustrates a deeply divided nation
desperately searching for a political identity.
The country was tearing itself apart. Exactly,
over massive national issues, most notably the
expansion of slavery. Right, with the Free Soil
Party. Right, the Free Soil Party, for instance,
was largely organized around opposing the expansion
of slavery into the Western territories. The
established parties were buckling under the weight
of these moral and economic... So all of these
different labels represent a society frantically
trying to find a consensus that simply did not
exist at the time. Precisely. It really paints
a picture of a country on the brink. But if we
follow the timeline through the Civil War and
Reconstruction, things do eventually stabilize.
The list stops jumping between five different
third parties and settles firmly into the Republican
and Democratic labels we recognize today. Yes,
the post -war era brings a significant calming
effect to the party affiliations, even if the
politics themselves remained intense. Here's
where it gets really interesting. Oh, boy. The
modern era. Because just when you think the system
is running smoothly, we hit the 20th century.
If you look at a turn of the century, you hit
a brick wall of stability with a guy named Jacob
Harold Gallinger, the record holder. He holds
the record as New Hampshire's longest serving
senator, representing the state from 1891 all
the way to 1918. Over two and a half decades
of rock solid consistency. But I only bring him
up to set the baseline for the absolute madness
that hits the mid 20th century. I want to talk
about the 1974 contested election for the class
three seat. Ah, yes. The 1974 election. If you
thought the legislature failing to elect in the
1800s was chaotic, this is a masterclass in pure
electoral dysfunction. I was reading this timeline
and it gave me whiplash. Walk us through exactly
what happened here, because the gaps in this
list are wild. It starts with the retirement
of Senator Norris Cotton, a Republican who had
been holding the seat comfortably since 1954.
Okay, so he decides to step down. Right. The
election to replace him takes place in November
1974 between Republican Louie Wyman and Democrat
John Durkin. The results were razor thin. How
close? We are talking about margins of a couple
of votes out of hundreds of thousands, Cass.
So close that nobody actually knows who won.
Exactly. The State Board of Ballot Laws declared
Wyman the winner by a tiny margin. So on December
31st, 1974, which was New Year's Eve, Norris
Cotton resigns a few days early. Okay. And Louie
Wyman is appointed to finish out the very end
of Cotton's term, theoretically giving him a
seniority advantage going into his full term.
So Wyman gets sworn in. He's the senator. For
about three days. Three days. Because Durkin
appealed the incredibly close results to the
United States Senate itself, which has the constitutional
authority to judge its own elections. Right.
On January 3rd, 1975, the start of the new Congress,
the Senate effectively deadlocks on what to do
and Wyman's term is abruptly annulled. So the
seat just becomes totally vacant. Completely
vacant. From January 1975 all the way to August
1975. Wow. For over seven months, this Class
3 Senate seat simply sits empty while the state
and the federal government fight over recounts,
challenges, and endless legal maneuvering. Neither
side would yield. Which brings us to August 8,
1975, when the state apparently throws its hands
up in desperation. They did. To break the total
lack of representation, the state appointed Norris
Cotton, the guy who had just retired back into
his old seat, simply to hold it down while they
finally organized a special election to settle
the matter once and for all. They literally pulled
a retired senator off the golf course to babysit
his own former position. It was a highly unusual
maneuver. And he stays there for a little over
a month until September 18th, 1975, when John
Durkin officially wins the special rerun election.
And then? At that point, Norris Cotton resigns
early for a second time and Durkin finally takes
over. If we synthesize that, it is. Mind -blowing.
If we connect this to the bigger picture, it
is an astonishing sequence of events to see documented
in a modern historical record. Really? In a span
of less than a single calendar year, you have
an initial appointment, an annulment, a seven
-month vacancy, a bizarre temporary reappointment
of a retiree, and finally, a special election
resulting in an early resignation. Four totally
different statuses applied to a single Senate
seat in months. We place such a high value on
the peaceful, orderly transfer of power. in a
democracy. We expect it to be a smooth, dignified
passing of the baton. But data like this shows
us that sometimes maintaining the system has
required some incredibly messy duct tape solutions.
They were quite literally making it up as they
went along just to keep the machinery functioning.
Which makes the transition to the most recent
entries on this list feel incredibly stark. We
pull out of the chaos of the 1970s, and as we
bring you into the 2000s and up to the present
day, The narrative shifts. From systemic breakdowns
to some genuinely impressive historical milestones.
What does the current delegation look like? The
state's current representation in the Senate
consists of two Democrats, and they represent
a significant demographic shift from the early
days of the republic. We have Jean Shaheen. Yes.
Jeanne Shaheen holding the class two seat. She
is currently serving her third term, having first
been elected in 2008 and taking office in 2009.
And Maggie Hassan. Right. Maggie Hassan holding
the class three seat. She is in her second term,
having taken office in 2017. And there is a major
milestone embedded in those two names that really
stands out against the rest of this 200 -year
timeline. There is. New Hampshire is currently
one of only four states in the entire country
to have two female U .S. senators serving simultaneously.
Just four out of 50 states have an all -female
delegation right now. That is correct. And just
for your trivia knowledge, the other three states
currently holding that distinction alongside
New Hampshire are Minnesota, Nevada and Washington.
Minnesota, Nevada and Washington. That's a great
piece of trivia. When you step back and reflect
on the complete journey of this chronological
table, the contrast is staggering. It really
is. We started this deep dive in 1788. A time
when early American men like Josiah Bartlett
were turning down the job and the Senate was
an exclusive experimental club of anti -admin
and pro -admin figures. To travel from that precarious
beginning through the centuries of legislative
deadlocks. Through the ideological fracturing
of the Free Soil Party. Through the absolute
circus of the 1974 contested election. To arrive
today at a historic all -female delegation, it
shows a massive, undeniable shift in representation.
So what does this all mean? We started out by
acknowledging that a Wikipedia list of politicians
could easily be dismissed as a dry, boring read.
Right. But by pulling out these specific threads
and looking at the context behind the dates,
I hope you can see what we see. This simple chronological
table is actually a mirror. It reflects every
single one of the nation's growing pains. You
see the infancy of the country in the vague early
party labels. You see the pre -Civil War fractures
trying to address slavery and the chaotic third
party movements. You see the sheer fragility
of the system in the musical chairs of career
politicians. And you see the arc of progress
culminating in a modern historic delegation.
It is all right there in the rows and columns
hiding in plain sight. It is a remarkable story
of endurance. And before we wrap up today, I
want to leave you with one final thought to mull
over, looking at this from a slightly different
angle. Okay, lay it on us. We spent a good amount
of time talking about the politicians, the men
who hopped between governorships and the Supreme
Court, the state legislators who deadlocked in
the 1800s, and the candidates who fought over
recounts in 1974. But think about the citizens
of New Hampshire during those times. Right. The
people actually voting. For seven months in 1975,
and for long stretches in the 19th century when
the legislature failed to elect, the people of
New Hampshire were shortchanged on their representation
in Washington. Because the seat was empty. Exactly.
The United States Senate is built on the fundamental
concept of equal state power. Every state gets
two voices, regardless of population. So what
happens to the power of a state's voters when
the political machinery prioritizes partisan
bickering over filling an empty chair? When those
seats sit vacant, it is the citizens who are
effectively stripped of their equal say in the
national conversation. Imagine the absolute uproar
if a state today simply shrugged and left a Senate
seat empty for months because they couldn't agree.
It invites you to consider whether our modern
political gridlock is truly unprecedented or
if we've actually become less tolerant of the
system's built in delays than our 19th century
counterparts. It is a powerful reminder that
political gridlock doesn't just frustrate politicians.
It fundamentally disenfranchises the people they
are supposed to represent. That is such a fascinating
perspective to take away from this. It really
forces you to think about who actually pays the
price when the system breaks down. It really
does. Thank you so much for joining us on this
deep dive. We loved unpacking this with you.
Keep staying curious and always remember to look
for the hidden human stories buried inside the
data. We will catch you next time.