Our advocates worked with national and state GOP leaders to defeat the repeal of same-sex marriage in NH

From Towleroad:

"Freedom to Marry, which led the campaign against the repeal bill, credits its success in part to inroads it has made nationally with Republicans. Freedom to Marry’s founder, Evan Wolfson, credits conservatives like Ted Olson — who led the challenge to Proposition 8 in California — and former Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman with accelerating that trend. Mehlman, newly out a year or two ago, was “very effective,” Wolfson says, in guiding them in New Hampshire. And polling showing an overwhelming opposition to the bill in New Hampshire certainly did not hurt."

Marc Solomon, the national campaign director for Freedom to Marry, writes in the Advocate how they accomplished this:

Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize. Our all-out focus was on how to surpass 133 votes in the House – the number we would need to sustain the governor’s veto. We determined we had nearly all the Democrats, so that meant focusing our entire effort on making the case to Republicans. We had to convince business-oriented and libertarian-minded Republicans to break away from antigay and social-agenda politics to vote down repeal.

Enlisting Right-of-Center Civic and Business Leaders. One element of our strategy was to enlist a who’s who of business and civic leaders, with a focus on right-of-center Granite Staters. Lew Feldstein, the just-retired president of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, took on the chairmanship of Standing Up for New Hampshire Families, the campaign that we built along with state partners and the Human Rights Campaign. Lew worked his Rolodex and made the case to dozens of VIPs about joining the campaign. By the time of the vote, we had a nearly 300 person who’s who of New Hampshire, with a strong right-of-center bent: the former chief justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court, the former chair of the Business & Industry Association, the owners of several of New Hampshire’s best-known businesses, a former GOP House majority leader, Senator Judd Gregg’s former chief of staff, and on and on. Skillfully deploying these local voices to make the case throughout the campaign, our Standing Up campaign won the earned-media battle.

Improvising. Because we couldn’t enlist a traditional Republican lobbyist to work on preserving the marriage law, Freedom to Marry turned over every stone to put together a GOP team. We found a young and openly gay conservative, the secretary of the New Hampshire Young Republicans, who had moved with his partner to the Granite State in 2009 and was now ready to do battle. We paired him up with the operative who had executed our winning Republican strategy in New York. Standing Up for New Hampshire Families also brought onboard the former communications director for the New Hampshire Republican Party. Together, they crafted a GOP-focused lobbying, vote-counting, and media strategy, and they executed it superbly. Later in the campaign, we secured New Hampshire’s best-respected GOP lobbyist, former Senate President Ed Dupont, who helped our team seal the deal.

Good Old Fashioned Field Work. Quite simply, we outworked our opponents. Our Standing Up for NH Families field team ran phone banks and organized meetings between same-sex couples and a targeted list of lawmakers. We built a powerful new media presence. In the end, we generated more than 30,000 constituent contacts to a targeted list of lawmakers, who consistently said they heard more from our side than our opponents’.

National Republican Leader Engagement. Coming off the New York victory, in which we passed the freedom to marry bill through a GOP-led state senate, some of our strong national GOP supporters shared our commitment to ensuring that the right-of-center momentum on our side wasn’t reversed in New Hampshire. Former chairman of the Republican National Committee Ken Mehlman worked relentlessly to make the case to GOP lawmakers, trekking up to Concord, reaching out via email and phone calls, offering strategy guidance, writing a powerful op-ed piece in the Manchester Union-Leader, and always offering to do more. Paul Singer, the hedge fund entrepreneur who was a lead contributor and fundraiser for the New York marriage effort, once again came through with a crucial contribution that enabled Freedom to Marry to powerfully make the case. We enlisted Jan Van Lohuizen, pollster for George W. Bush, to do polling and share with GOP lawmakers his findings that for the vast majority a vote for repeal would be unwise politically.

Building Electoral Power. Given NOM’s involvement in the 2010 elections and their m.o. of threats to bully and bluff Republican lawmakers, we knew our side needed to muscle up. As a result, top local Republican campaign expert Sean Owen created a PAC called New Hampshire Republicans for Freedom and Equality, and committed to raising and spending at least $100,000 to support Republican lawmakers who stood for equality.

Making Our Case, New Hampshire Style. Undergirding every aspect of our campaign was the fact that — thanks to years of investment in local organizing and public education as well as powerful national momentum — New Hampshire residents support the freedom to marry and overwhelmingly oppose repealing the law. “Live Free or Die” is the state slogan for a reason: liberty and freedom are core values in the Granite State. As we made our case on television, the radio, in the press, and in direct mail, we never let New Hampshire lawmakers, or voters, forget that — in the words of Dick Cheney (whom we actually quoted frequently to GOP lawmakers) — “freedom means freedom for everyone.” The campaign introduced Granite Staters to a personification of that value, Craig Stowell, a former Marine and conservative Republican who wanted nothing more than to be the best man in his gay brother’s wedding, just as his brother had been for him. We enlisted Craig as GOP co-chair of Standing Up, and he wowed them.