Beat the clock: The politics of daylight saving time in New Hampshire

The perennial debate over daylight saving time in the U.S. is coming around again, but for one New Hampshire state representative, it’s never gone away. 

In fact, the matter has haunted Rep. Timothy Horrigan, a Durham Democrat, since the moment of his birth, on Oct. 3 — or was it Oct. 4? — 1956. At least, that’s how his mother always told it, Horrigan said in a phone interview last week.

When Horrigan was born in South Bend, Indiana, there was disagreement within the state about whether to observe standard time or daylight saving time, an hour ahead. Most people on the ground were observing daylight time, but official policy put the state on standard time, Horrigan said — so though, as his mother recalled, the clock on the delivery room wall showed 12:30 a.m., records put his first breath at approximately 11:30 p.m. on Oct. 3.

The uncertainty sown in that moment gave rise to Horrigan’s belief that eliminating the twice-yearly time change would be a straightforward way to simplify modern life. 

Horrigan has taken that belief to the State House, proposing multiple bills on the topic since 2011.

In his attempts to rally his fellow legislators around the idea of abolishing daylight time, Horrigan has emphasized a range of benefits he said New Hampshire would experience from such a change. Periodically shifting the schedule of our days by an hour, he says, is disruptive to people’s internal clocks and their overall health; ending the practice would alleviate that.

Indeed, medical professionals including the American Medical Association have called for the abolition of daylight saving time, citing health research on the negative effects of disruptions to the body’s natural daily rhythm. And other research suggests that the practice of changing the clocks can also disrupt roadways, with mixed impacts from sleep disruption and light changes causing some crashes to increase in the wake of the adjustment.

Horrigan also experiences seasonal affective disorder, sometimes called seasonal depression. Research, and Horrigan’s own experience, indicates that more sun exposure can help alleviate those symptoms; thus, the brighter mornings that year-round standard time would lead to, Horrigan believes, would help him and others make the most of the limited sunlight of the darkest months of the year. 

“Just going out, getting more sunlight helps,” he said. “… It would be more useful for me, like most people, to have the extra hour of daylight in the winter in the morning.”

Yet Horrigan’s proposals to end daylight saving time have thus far been quashed. This year, that pattern continued with House Bill 1149, which proposed New Hampshire adopt standard time year-round. The bill, co-sponsored by Rep. Joe Alexander, a Goffstown Republican, was voted down without leaving the House on a 13-2 recommendation from the House Committee on Executive Departments and Administration.

New Hampshire has also seen pushes in the other direction. Former Rep. Josh Yokela proposed a permanent shift to Atlantic Standard Time, which would in effect make daylight time permanent, in 2017, 2019, 2021, and 2024. Each measure was ultimately defeated or sent for interim study.

Nationally, standard time detractors include some in the field of agriculture. The American Farm Bureau Federation favors adopting daylight saving time permanently; the move would “provide consistency and reduce disruptions for farmers and ranchers,” the federation said in a statement. 

But in New Hampshire, feelings among farmers are nebulous — and the local branch of the federation does not have an official stance on the matter, said Robert Johnson, policy director for the New Hampshire Farm Bureau Federation.

In Johnson’s experience, New Hampshire farmers have a range of personal preferences and don’t rely only on the hands of the clock to time their work. 

“For the most part, I don’t believe there would be a great impact, as farms operate more by the sun and natural routines rather than artificial changes to the clock,” he said in an email. 

Those in some other fields have stronger feelings. New Hampshire broadcast media outlets would face “real problems” if the state fell out of step with nearby major markets, including Boston and New York, New Hampshire Association of Broadcasters representative Scott Spradling said during testimony on HB 1149 earlier this year. 

Horrigan said he believed he had addressed this by including a requirement in his bill that New Hampshire do away with daylight saving time only once Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine had all done so, or agreed to. But that’s not enough, Spradling said. He requested more coordination with other states if New Hampshire is serious about changing its time traditions.

“There’s a process by which this should be done, and it really … needs to involve the federal government because it needs to be the entire Eastern Seaboard making this decision and moving together and not disrupting commerce,” he said. 

Indeed, the debate is occurring at the national level, too, with two opposing measures proposing a national shift to standard time and to daylight saving time currently before Congress. President Donald Trump has favored the latter, deemed the “Sunlight Protection Act.”

“For many years, the vast Majority of Americans have asked to make Daylight Saving Time permanent,” he wrote Wednesday in a post on Truth Social. 

However, recent polling on the topic indicates that the public is, in fact, ambivalent. 

A Gallup poll released in March 2025 found that 54% of Americans wanted permanent standard time, compared to 40% in favor of permanent daylight time. Yet an AP-NORC poll released in October 2025 showed those numbers approximately flipped: 42% of Americans favored permanent standard time, and 56% wanted permanent daylight time, it said.

According to AP-NORC, while Americans are divided on which way to go from here, few like the practice we currently embrace of changing the clocks. 

That rings true for Horrigan, too, he said. He hopes the national debate yields some change, even if it’s a switch to permanent daylight time.

“I think if we just go one way or the other, that’s a lot simpler,” he said.

If Congress can’t decide, Horrigan, who is running for reelection, said he hopes to keep the long-running conversation going in New Hampshire himself.

“It’s an important issue, but it’s sort of a simple issue. … It’s nice having something that’s not quite as partisan, and everybody kind of knows the subject matter and has an opinion,” he said. “We’ll see what happens.”