Bill Gardner: I'll Protect NH Primary

CONCORD, NH -- New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, facing the toughest re-election bid of his 42-year career, told lawmakers on Tuesday he's the only person who can protect the state's first-in-the-nation primary. Gardner, 70, is the longest-serving secretary of state in the country. He's seeking a 22nd term in next week's election.

"You can never depend on someone else to protect this primary," Gardner told a gathering of new lawmakers in Concord Tuesday, according to media reports.

Gardner ran unopposed for many of his 21 terms -- but not this year. He's facing Colin Van Ostern, a 39-year-old former executive councilor who ran for governor. Van Ostern won a key endorsement last month when the new Democratic House majority backed him over Gardner in a straw poll, 179 to 23.

Gardner and Van Ostern are Democrats. Republicans are rallying behind Gardner.

"This will be the only time that you’ll ever hear me endorsing a Democrat," said Steve Stepanek, a Republican running for state GOP chair, according to New Hampshire Public Radio. "Bill Gardner is the guardian of the New Hampshire first-in-the-nation primary."

Gardner oversees elections and has frequently defended the state's first-in-the-nation primary status, sometimes by moving up the voting date or threatening to do so -- earning him the nickname "King Bill."

Some new lawmakers think the king's reign has stretched too long.

"We have an outdated office," Nicole Klein, a Manchester Democrat, told WMUR. "There needs to be some fresh involvement."

Van Ostern said if elected, he will conduct an audit of the secretary of state's office, modernize its website and hire a nonpartisan elections director.

"I know some pundits will say that this can't be done -- that it's impossible to take on the nation's longest-serving secretary of state, a member of my own political party who has been in office since three years before I was born," Van Ostern said in a statement to WMUR when he launched his bid. "But I believe competition is good for our democracy, especially for this role."

Gardner attracted some criticism from Democrats when he served on President Trump's "voter fraud" panel on the 2016 presidential election. Trump lost New Hampshire to Hillary Clinton and claimed it was because of "thousands" of illegal voters who were bussed in from Massachusetts. The panel was disbanded and a former member said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Separate investigations by the New Hampshire Attorney General's office claimed that a University of New Hampshire student and Hampton couple illegally voted in the 2016 election.

The secretary of state election is Dec. 5. All 400 state representatives and 24 state senators will vote; the candidate with the most votes wins.

Photo: New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner (center) shows the Republican and Democratic primary ballot for the 2016 NH primary. (Credit: Jim Cole/Associated Press)