AUBURN – Auburn’s state senator, Republican Eric Brakey, resigned his seat Tuesday so he could vote in New Hampshire on Election Day.

In a video he posted on social media Tuesday morning, the 36-year-old can be seen walking down a typical New England street as he tells viewers, “I just resigned my seat in the Maine State Senate, completing my move to the state of New Hampshire and I’m now walking to the polls to go register to vote and cast my ballot.”

In the video he made on his way to the polls, Brakey said he planned Tuesday to vote “for a Free New Hampshire.”

Moments earlier, he posted a copy on Facebook of a resignation letter he submitted to Maine State Senate President Troy Jackson declaring that “after much reflection and necessitated by my relocation” to New Hampshire, he had to give up the seat. He said almost a year ago he planned to move to New Hampshire after the election.

Auburn will soon have a new state senator in any case, with voters deciding whether it should be Democrat Bettyann Sheats or Republican Bruce Bickford, both experienced state House hands.

“I am committed to ensuring a smooth transition and extend my well wishes to whomever is elected by the people today to represent my constituents in the Maine Senate,” Brakey said in his resignation letter.

The 20th Senate district includes Auburn, New Gloucester, Poland and Durham.

Brakey has twice sought higher office in Maine. He lost a 2018 U.S. Senate race against incumbent Angus King, an independent, and came up short in a 2020 congressional primary in a bid for a U.S. House seat.

Brakey, who got his start in Maine politics in 2012 as director of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign in the state, has served as Auburn’s state senator from 2014 to 2018 and then again since 2022.

In his resignation letter, he noted the Federal Reserve, which oversees banking and the money supply in America, “should be destroyed.”

In the letter, Brakey also cited his leadership in Augusta for getting several pieces of legislation passed, including the right to try law that gives terminally ill patients more leeway in seeking new medical treatments and the right to carry firearms without a permit.

Brakey is the executive director of the Free State Project in New Hampshire that aims to convince libertarians to move to the Granite State.