A key Republican state lawmaker in New Hampshire came out against a mid-decade redistricting proposal Wednesday, all but guaranteeing an end to the push to redraw the state’s congressional maps ahead of the 2026 election.
Representative Ross Berry, who chairs the New Hampshire House Election Law Committee, had previously expressed willingness to reopen the redistricting process, since lawmakers didn’t get the last word after the 2020 Census.
The state’s current maps were finalized in 2022 by the New Hampshire Supreme Court after then-Governor Chris Sununu, a Republican, vetoed the version that had been approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature.
Berry said the boundary line that divides the state’s two congressional districts is outdated, but the pending proposal (House Bill 1300) clearly won’t secure final approval this year. He’s pushing to rewrite the bill with another topic entirely.
“I am deeply disappointed that New Hampshire will likely continue to operate under congressional maps originally drawn in the 1860s,” he said in a statement. “Those lines no longer reflect the state we live in today, but the reality is that the political will does not exist in Concord to fix them right now.”
To continue the redistricting effort at this point would be “a symbolic fight that goes nowhere,” he added.
This redistricting proposal would likely have given Republicans a better shot at winning the seat in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, while making the 2nd Congressional District lean even more Democratic. (Even with the current maps, the 1st Congressional District is seen as fairly competitive.)
President Trump has been advocating for redistricting efforts in GOP-controlled states. Such efforts succeeded in some states, including Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina, while they faltered in others, including Indiana. Meanwhile, a comparable redistricting effort by Democrats succeeded in California.
The White House reportedly sought to pressure Republican New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte — she’s up for re-election this year — to fall in line with the remapping agenda, to help Trump’s party hang onto the US House majority for the second half of his term. But she flatly rejected the idea.
A state senator who had been rallying support for redistricting in New Hampshire relented. So the proposal was practically dead before the 2026 legislative session even began. That said, the bill’s prime sponsor, independent Representative Aidan Ankarberg, kept pushing.
Ankarberg, who was elected in 2024 as a Republican, has long had a touch-and-go relationship with GOP leaders, which led to his switch to independent after the election. He acknowledged Wednesday the redistricting proposal is effectively dead, but he’s still spoiling for a fight with Republican leaders of the New Hampshire House.
Berry said he plans to convert New Hampshire’s redistricting bill into a vehicle to mitigate “the crushing burden of property taxes.”
Berry said his amendment will offer a “framework” that hasn’t been finalized. He said negotiations are ongoing, particularly with Republicans who had reservations about a recently defeated proposal (House Bill 675) that would have imposed an inflation-based spending cap on every local school district.
Berry said the framework that’s under discussion now would result in voters all across the state deciding during the November general election whether to adopt a property tax cap for their local community.
“Balancing the principles of local control with the need to protect property taxpayers is not easy, but it is necessary,” he said, “and this framework reflects a serious effort to do both.”
Representative Alexis Simpson, the Democratic minority leader in the New Hampshire House, said Ankarberg’s original bill and Berry’s forthcoming amendment are both unnecessary distractions.
“No one asked for this,” she said. “Neither mid-decade redistricting nor hampering local control does anything to lower costs for Granite Staters. That needs to be our focus this session.”
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