Hugh Gallen

Born in Portland, Oregon, his family moved to Medford, Massachusetts when he was six. As a young man, Gallen relocated to Littleton, New Hampshire and joined the Civilian Conservation Corps. He worked as a truck driver, carpenter, and laborer in a paper mill before entering the auto sales industry, buying a General Motors dealership in Littleton. In 1948, he married Irene Carbonneau, a native of Littleton, and together would have three children.[1][2][3]

Gallen entered politics as a member of Littleton Planning Board, serving from 1962 to 1965. From 1967, he sat on the Small Business Administration's New Hampshire Advisory Council and was director and chairman of the New Hampshire-Vermont Development Council from 1969 to 1972. As chairman of the state Democratic State Committee, he was a key supporter of Edmund Muskie's presidential campaign in 1972. The same year, he was elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, the first Democrat elected to the legislature from Littleton in four decades. He ran in the 1974 and 1976 gubernatorial elections, but came third in the Democratic primary on both occasions.[4][5]

Gallen entered the 1978 New Hampshire gubernatorial election, easily winning the Democratic nomination.[6] In the general election, he defeated the incumbent, three-term Republican Governor Meldrim Thomson Jr., aided by the presence of former Governor Wesley Powell on the ballot. Powell, a moderate Republican, syphoned enough votes away from the stalwart conservative Thomson to allow Gallen to win with a narrow plurality of 49% of the vote to Thomson's 45%.[7] In a rematch two years later, Gallen won a more decisive victory of 59% to Thomson's 41%, even as Ronald Reagan handedly won New Hampshire in the conquering 1980 presidential election.[8]

In his first term, Gallen pushed through legislation preventing the Public Service Company of New Hampshire from increasing rates to fund construction of the Seabrook Station Nuclear Power Plant.[2] His second term in particular was marked by struggles with the Republican-led legislature. In 1981, he became the first New Hampshire Governor to veto a state budget, calling for more funding for social services. During this time, the state faced a $30 million budget deficit and lost it's triple-A bond rating.[1]

As another election season approached in 1982, Gallen would not take The Pledge, a promise to veto a state sales or income tax if one came to his desk, as he had in his previous two campaigns and called the state's tax system "obsolete."[1] He faced former state Representative and Tufts University professor John H. Sununu in the general election. In spite of nationwide gains for Democrats in the midterm elections, Sununu bested Gallen 51% to 47%.[9] He was the only Democratic governor to lose reelection in 1982 and, along with California, New Hampshire was one of only two governorships picked up by the Republicans that year.

Soon after his defeat, Gallen was hospitalized with a blood infection while on vacation in Saint Croix and was airlifted to Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. The infection impaired his liver and kidneys and he required dialysis. Out of state and unable to carry out the responsibilities of the governorship, power was transferred over to the state senate president, at the time Robert B. Monier, then Vesta M. Roy when the new legislature was seated in December.[10]

Gallen's condition did not improve and he died of organ failure in Boston on December 29, 1982.[1][11] Roy, who became the first woman to wield the powers of New Hampshire Governor, would serve as acting Governor for the final days of Gallen's term until Sununu was sworn in to office on January 6, 1983.

Gallen was buried at Saint Rose of Lima New Catholic Cemetery in Littleton.

• Hugh Gallen at Find a Grave