Texas has always liked to remind the rest of us that it once was its own country. New Hampshire has always liked to remind us that nobody tells it what to do.
Lately, those two traditions have begun to sound oddly alike.
The Republican Party of Texas now says the state retains a right to secede and wants voters asked whether Texas should “reassert its status as an independent nation.”¹ In New Hampshire, we are nowhere near that point, but legislators have considered independence proposals in 2022, 2024 and again this year.
The first would have amended the state constitution to declare New Hampshire immediately independent. It lost 323–13.² Two years later came a proposal to trigger independence when the federal debt hit $40 trillion.³ This year, Republican Representative Glenn Bailey proposed something more sober-sounding: a commission to study what independence would actually mean for currency, citizenship, defense, Social Security, Medicare and foreign relations. That one died too, with the committee recommending against it 13–0.⁴
You might think repeated drubbings like that would settle the matter. They haven’t.
Carla Gericke, a longtime Free State Project leader, is now promoting NH Exit and asking legislative candidates to sign a “New Hampshire First” pledge. Her slogan is “Make America States Again.”⁵
This is where the Texas-New Hampshire comparison gets interesting,