Hold the (cell) phone

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O P I N I O N

THE SOAPBOX

Stand up. Speak up. It’s your turn.


On Wednesday, January 8th – the day before Kelly Ayotte was sworn in as Governor of New Hampshire – State Senate Republicans held a press conference to lay out their agenda for the coming year. With the GOP holding the legislative trifecta of the House, Senate, and governorship, when Republican leaders lay out their priorities, one should listen – because it will probably become law.

WMUR’s Adam Sexton was covering it, and he tweeted this out:

A screenshot of a social media post

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Most of it was pretty boilerplate Republicanism – lots of language about parental rights, sanctuary cities, a universal education voucher program, reducing government spending, and…banning cell phone use in classrooms? My response was immediate:

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Take from this GenX parent who, alongside my fellow GenX wife, saw iPhones come to dominate the attention of our daughters – and virtually all of their friends. Friends of mine who are educators talk about it; other parents talk about it; and the mountains of research on the stunning impact of smart phones on young people – particularly girls – are documented in Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation.

Look at the comments from Sexton’s tweet: Few are talking about parental rights, or lower taxes, or education freedom accounts, or immigration. The majority of the comments are about…the cell phone ban. There are clearly some center-left types who are praising the emphasis…and some libertarian-minded conservatives outraged that the NHGOP would step into a place where local schools and parents should make such a decision. The comments are messy, and not aligned by party.

The next day, during Governor Ayotte’s Inaugural Address, she brought it up again:

“Joe [her husband, who is a middle school teacher] and I talk all the time about what he sees in the classroom with his students. And he, and the thousands of teachers in our state – they’re on the front lines of our education system. Teachers know uniquely what’s working for our students, and we need to listen to them. That’s why today, I am announcing that we will be taking action to ban cell phones in our classrooms.”

What’s more interesting than Ayotte’s words is the crowd shot after she makes the statement. On one side of the room, legislative Republicans generally stand up – some reluctantly. On the other side, legislative Democrats are mixed – some are applauding, some are not, and many are talking to each other while the applause is ongoing. The applause – compared to virtually every other response to her speech – is messy, and unaligned by party.

Both the response to Sexton’s tweet and Ayotte’s remarks are exactly what I think we’ll be seeing over the next several months in New Hampshire on the cell phone ban bill:

This is politically messy. Let’s be honest: Democrats are not going to be eager to give Governor Ayotte and GOP legislators more political capital. (The GOP felt the same way when Democrats had the trifecta during some of the John Lynch Era.) But if you ask most rank-and-file Democrats how they generally feel about restricting cell phones in classrooms, they will instinctually be supportive. And virtually any non-political parent who has raised a child through the iPhone Age will be intrigued, as well.

But a lot of legislative Republicans – including the growing “Liberty Alliance” portion of the House caucus – will instinctually have a real problem with this. After all, New Hampshire is the only state that does not require adults to wear a seat belt in a vehicle, and one of three states that has no motorcycle helmet requirements. A statewide ban on cell phone use in classrooms – by any standard – is a state mandate.

This is probably going to be politically very popular. At the same time that some legislators will struggle to reconcile how they feel about this bill with the politics around it, it is likely to be very popular with everyday people. Governor Ayotte will likely not be spending political capital to get this through; she’ll be accruing political capital.

An underlying political trend over the past several election cycles – both nationally and in New Hampshire – is that GenX is having its moment in the political sun. GenX is the smallest generation in America history relative to the generations around it – the Boomers and the Millennials are enormous relative to GenX. There has never been a GenX president – in fact, it is at least as likely as not that in 2028, the two nominees for President will be…Millennials, completely skipping over GenX. Some of this is because we are small in number, but it is also because Boomers and even Silent Generation politicians are living longer, and have been sticking in office longer.

But this does not apply to the voting population. As Boomers begin to age out of the electorate, and Millennials are still young enough that their voting participation rates are not at their peak, GenX is currently the largest chunk of the electorate. And GenX was the first generation of parents that had to confront the role of smart phones in the hands of their children – in fact, we are the generation that experienced parenting both before and after the iPhone explosion. We uniquely know what it is like to parent in both environments – and the difference was jarring.

This may well come to dominate the limited public bandwidth for Planet Concord news in 2025. With a new Governor, a difficult state budget process, potentially controversial bills on education funding, and the return of President Trump to our daily lives, there is plenty to grab the attention of the shrinking media landscape here in New Hampshire. The dominant media platform in New Hampshire is WMUR-TV, the only network affiliate in the state. But even WMUR will typically only dedicate one State House-specific story per newscast.

Is there any doubt that this proposed cell phone ban may be the shiniest object to the general public to come out of Concord in 2025? WMUR’s analysis immediately following the Inaugural Address did a nice job of covering many bases in 2:21, but the headline? “Two new ideas stand out from Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s Inaugural Address.” Those two ideas? Her proposal for a DOGE-style government efficiency effort (called “COGE”) to identify government efficiencies, and…the cell phone ban.

For New Hampshire Democrats, this presents a challenge. Potential painful budget cuts that could impact the most vulnerable; controversial nominations for judicial or major statewide departments; and a well-organized effort to make New Hampshire’s education voucher law the most libertarian in the country all have the potential of taking a back seat in public awareness and interest to COGE and the cell phone ban.

Set aside the public policy ramifications – when Govs. Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom agree on something, it’s worth noting. (Florida is one of three states to have an outright statewide ban; California is one of five states to require districts to have a restrictive policy, which is much closer to what the proposed law in New Hampshire appears to resemble). The politics of the cell phone ban proposal promise to be one of the most consequential political decisions in 2025 in New Hampshire.


Beg to differ? Agree to disagree? Comment below. Got issues of your own? Send your submissions to publisher@inklink.news, subject line: The Soapbox.


Steve Marchand is the Principal of SRM Consulting, a  public affairs, political, and strategic communications firm. He is also the Chairman of Move The Goalposts, a NH political action committee which helps elect downballot Democrats in competitive districts though financial and data-centric strategic support. Marchand publishes his political newsletter, “Move The Goalposts with Steve Marchand,” and is debuting his podcast, “The Politics of New Hampshire” in early 2025. Both can be found at www.substack.com/@stevemarchand.


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