Gov. Hugh Gallen rose from a Civilian Conservation Corps worker in the 1940s to the state’s highest job.. (Portrait from the NH State House.)

Hugh Gallen was a teen struggling to land his first paycheck when he arrived in the North Country in the early 1940s to take a Civilian Conservation Corps job building roads and campsites around Mount Kearsarge.

Three decades later, Gallen had built one of New Hampshire’s top auto dealerships and arrived in Concord, first as a state representative from Littleton and then as governor.

While Gallen’s rags-to-riches rise is one of state politics’ more improbable success stories, it is also a fitting reminder of how the Granite State governorship is among the nation’s most attainable – and among its most unique.

With this month’s inauguration of Governor Lynch to a third consecutive two-year term, Concord’s corner office will have hosted 90 occupants over its 232-year history – the most of any state.

Much of this is owed to the shortness of the term. New Hampshire and Vermont are the only two states with two-year tenures for their executives, versus the usual four years. Prior to 1879, New Hampshire governors served just one-year terms, a quirk which often made serving more a sacrifice than a career, but also kept politicians in greater touch – and check – with their constituents. Mandatory campaign finance limits, enforced to prevent the “time-honored” 19th century tradition of vote-buying, had a similar effect.

“Elections are supposed to be an educational process for both the voters and the candidates,” says NH Secretary of State William Gardner. “You have to open yourself up much more here than in any other place in the country.”

Dr. Josiah Bartlett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was NH’s last ‘President’ and its first Governor. (Portrait from the NH State House.)

The result has been a list of top executives like few others in the nation. NH governors have included doctors (Josiah Barlett, founder of the NH Medical Society and signer of the Declaration of Independence; David Morrill, Noah Martin, and Robert Blood, who continued to deliver babies while in office), judges (Bartlett, Jeremiah Smith, Levi Woodbury and John King), farmers, businessmen, and a former major league baseball player (Boston Braves catcher Fred Brown).

John Langdon went on to be the first presiding officer of the U.S. Senate and hold the bible upon which George Washington was sworn into office as the nation’s first President. He also oversaw the building of the U.S. Navy’s first ship, the Raleigh, in Portsmouth harbor in 1776 – the ship featured on the state flag. John Winant, meanwhile, went on to become U.S. Ambassador to Britain and the nation’s first Social Security administrator, which is the reason folks born in NH still have the lowest Social Security numbers (beginning in 001, 002, or 003).

Frank Rollins established “Old Home Day” in 1899 as a means of bringing former NH residents who’d fled south for better job prospects back to their old communities, while Francis Murphy established the state’s first broadcast television station, WMUR. Benjamin Pierce’s son, Franklin, meanwhile, went on to become New Hampshire’s only U.S. President.

Gov. John Winant went on to become Ambassador to Britain and the nation’s first Social Security Administrator. (Photo from the book, “NH Notables”)

So much of the history and character of the NH governor’s office can be defined by the Granite State’s fierce sense of independence. Call it libertarianism or healthy skepticism, there is an almost ingrained distrust of power built into New Hampshire’s institutions and populace.

New Hampshire, after all, was the first colony to formally declare its independence from the Crown in 1776, and its three delegates in Philadelphia (Bartlett, Matthew Thornton and William Whipple) the first to sign the Declaration of Independence. This, after the state decided to oust its ‘Royal Governor’ (King George’s veto of this act can be found in the state archives) and eventually elect its own ‘President’ – a title formally changed to governor in 1791 out of deference to Washington’s election.

More than 200 years later, New Hampshire’s independent streak still keeps politicians guessing. It is a place where political fortunes, both local and national, can rise and fall within the span of one long month; where voters from Pelham to Pittsburg demand face time like no other with their leaders, and there is no such thing as fly-over country; and where, because of the government’s limited purse strings, public service trumps patronage.

While NH governors are not term-limited, and most have been elected to multiple one- or two-year terms, it is among the nation’s weakest top offices, constitutionally speaking. With no state income or sales tax, much of the governor’s and the legislature’s financial power is ceded to towns and municipalities across the state and their property taxes. New Hampshire is one of just a few states where the governor must pay for his or her own portrait in the State House.

While most states, meanwhile, have a legislature to keep the governor’s power in check, New Hampshire’s governor faces two sizable checks in both the 424-member NH General Court – the fourth largest legislature in the English-speaking world – and the NH Executive Council.

New Hampshire is one of a handful of states that have an Executive Council, but the only state where the Council not only advises the Governor but can veto almost all of his or her decisions. A mainstay from Colonial times, the five-member Executive Council was initially installed in the 17th century to ensure that then-Royal Governors not veer far from the dictates of the Crown and to report any irregularities back to the King. The institution was upheld in the state’s 1784 constitution, and in the centuries since has served as both a validation and a burr in the saddle of chief executives.

Gov. Hugh Gregg in the 1950s established the “Whopper” awards for folks who brought positive attention to NH. (Photo courtesy of the NH Political Library).

The result has been a system of government at once criticized for its perceived obstacles and celebrated as the most accountable and democratically-elected in the country. It has also remained incredibly popular with voters. Only once in 13 Constitutional conventions since 1784 have delegates questioned the Council’s value, and put it up to a public vote – a motion introduced by Franklin Pierce in 1850 that failed 27,910 to 11,299.

Checks and balances aside, the New Hampshire governor remains the state’s top executive, its chief diplomat and agenda-setter, and its cultural figurehead, from Rollins’ introduction of Old Home Day in 1899 to Hugh Gregg’s “Whooper” awards in the 1950s for folks who called “the attention of outsiders to the joy of living, working and playing in this, the best of all states.”

The governor alone also still holds perhaps the most sacred and important authority a chief executive can wield – as commander in chief of the state’s National Guard, having sent men and women into conflict from the time of the French and Indian War to the War on Terror.

As for Hugh Gallen, whose rags-to-riches rise would take him from building roads up in Mt. Kearsarge to signing legislation building roads statewide, his governorship would have its ups and downs, having come during the time of the oil and economic crises of the late 1970s.

Weeks after losing a reelection battle to John Sununu in 1982, Gallen contracted a rare blood disease and passed away suddenly.   He was succeeded in that final month before Sununu’s inauguration by State Senate President Vesta Roy, who became New Hampshire’s first (unelected) female governor.

Gov. John Sununu was the first to have his state portrait include a computer. (Portrait from the NH State House.)

Just as Gallen’s story is laced with tragedy, it also remains an example of what is possible in New Hampshire, and how its governorship is neither a right of blood nor birth, but of hard work, personality and the peerless scrutiny of Granite State voters.

“New Hampshire has always had an independent streak,” Gardner says. “The unique political culture that exists here is reflected in the structure and culture of our state government. A lot of people have tried to change it, but it continues to this day.”

If voters have any say about it, it is a tradition likely to remain for a long time to come.

Special thanks to NH Secretary of State William Gardner, NH State Librarian Michael York, and NH State Archivist Frank Mevers for their assistance and generosity with this story.