Longtime New Hampshire secretary of state retiring

Invoice Gardner, the longtime New Hampshire secretary of state who has served as his state’s chief elections official since 1976, introduced Monday that he could be stepping down within the coming days.

Gardner, a Democrat, has been a staunch defender of New Hampshire’s place on the prime of the presidential nominating calendar as the primary state to carry its major. Maybe most famously, he threatened to maneuver the state’s 2012 presidential major to December of 2011 when Nevada tried to encroach on New Hampshire’s spot on the prime of the calendar that yr.

“The 2 earlier secretaries of state have died in workplace, and I considered that,” Gardner joked at a Monday press convention. “It wasn’t truly [something] I aspired to be.”