Bill Gardner, who for decades as secretary of state has fiercely defended New Hampshire’s right to hold the country’s first presidential primaries, said on Monday that he would step down after 45 years.
Mr. Gardner, a Democrat first elected in 1976, had largely enjoyed bipartisan support, even as the job of secretary of state — each state’s top elections administrator — has become more political, a national trend accelerated by former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of widespread voting fraud.
Mr. Gardner, 73, said political reasons did not force his decision, nor was his health a factor, though he reflected during a news conference in the Statehouse in Concord on being the longest-serving secretary of state in the country — one of only four New Hampshirites to hold the job since 1929.
“The two previous secretaries of state died in office,’’ he said. “I thought about that. Was I going to be one like that?”…
Mr. Gardner escaped Mr. Trump’s campaign of personal insults and pressure in 2020, aimed at other election officials in battleground states that President Biden won, likely because the race in New Hampshire was not especially close.
However, after Mr. Trump made the baseless claim in 2016 that “millions” of illegal votes had been cast by noncitizens across the country, Mr. Gardner agreed to join a commission that Mr. Trump set up to investigate. His decision to join the commission, even after Mr. Trump falsely claimed that he had won New Hampshire, was sharply criticized by some of his fellow Democrats. The commission disbanded after numerous states refused to cooperate with what they considered to be intrusive requests for voters’ information.
Mr. Gardner defended the commission at the time, and his role on it, saying he had hoped the “facts would end up speaking for themselves” about the lack of fraud. On Monday, he reiterated his belief that the commission was meant to restore Americans’ eroding trust in election results.
But at the time, Democrats’ disappointment over his role led to the most serious challenge that he faced for re-election, in 2018, when another Democrat, Colin Van Ostern, nearly unseated Mr. Gardner.