Manchester voters will soon decide whether to re-elect Mayor Jay Ruais. Queen City voters almost always give their mayors a second term. But a win – particularly a comfortable one – would further boost the political career of the 40-year-old Ruais.
As NHPR’s Josh Rogers reports, Ruais’ approach to leading the state’s largest city has mixed traditional boosterism, finding common cause with Gov. Kelly Ayotte, and marginalizing local antagonists.
It was moments before the first debate of his reelection campaign. Ruais’ opponent, school board member Jess Spillers, was getting ready to take the stage. But Ruais wanted to share a quick story.
“I got a text message this morning – because I’m notorious about giving out my cell phone number – about trash on Lake Shore Road. It’s funny as mayor, the things that people reach out on,” said Ruais.
Moments later, during the debate, Ruais was again talking trash. But this time it wasn’t to humblebrag about being accessible. It was to cite street cleaning as a leadership metric.
“One of the initiatives that we took on the board of alderman this year was to bring in the downtown street cleaning team, which has cleaned up over 125,000 pounds of trash downtown,” Ruais said.
Ruais holds a Masters in Public Administration, and he likes to rattle off numbers — on trash, and other topics: that new housing units are up in Manchester, that overdoses are down. A member of the Army National Guard, Ruais is also prone to deploy military lingo.
“My commanding officer comes to be and gives me an endstate, and then I have to work back from there, and we don’t view this through a partisan lens, it’s how can we reach our endstate,” Ruais said.
An ex-staffer to former Congressman Frank Guinta — himself a former Manchester mayor — Ruais’ own political endstate is far from clear. Excepting Ayotte, Ruais is probably the most high-profile Republican officeholder in the state right now.
But he didn’t get there by straight-line. Along the way, Ruais has been a lobbyist, worked for an anti-addiction non-profit, and as a fundraiser for Catholic Charities. When he first won election to the mayor’s office in 2023, he did so by focusing on the crime, drugs and homelessness that were seen as plaguing the city under former Mayor Joyce Craig. Ayotte ratcheted up similar arguments to defeat Craig in the governor’s race last year. And with Ayotte in the corner office, Ruais has a powerful friend, someone he worked to curry favor with before she’d even won the 2024 primary by campaigning at her side.
Together, Ruais and Ayotte championed tightening state bail laws and boosting pensions for public safety workers. Ruais later leveraged his relationship with Ayotte to help Manchester avoid — at least for now — a reduction in state school aid. Chris Ager, the former chairman of the state Republicans party, said he sees Ruais as someone with a bright political future. In part, he says, it’s because Ruais has used his position and sway to benefit more than simply Republicans — something not all conservatives like.
“His constituents are all the people of Manchester,” Ager said. “So if some Republicans are upset with him because he is not sufficiently ideologically pure, that’s okay, because he is doing his job.”
Not every Republican sees it that way, and that’s been obvious at recent aldermanic meetings, where tensions have flared and debates have turned personal, particularly over Ruais’ push to have the Board of Alderman draft a code of conduct for members.
At times, recent meetings have looked pretty unpleasant for Ruais, and his efforts to chasten more outspoken aldermen in his own party have earned him plenty of pushback.
“He’s catering to the Democrats on the board, he’s catering to whatever they want,” said Alderman-at-Large Joe Kelly Levasseur.
Spillers, Ruais’ rival in the mayor’s race, says Ruais’ been weak in policing his fellow Republicans.
“He has no backbone, and no willingness to stand up to people, and say, ‘You all need to cool it,’ ” Spillers said.
But there is little to indicate the bickering that’s characterized recent alderboard meetings is much affecting how people see Ruais outside city hall, even just a few blocks away.
Jerry Bourassa is general manager of Bravo, a new restaurant on Hanover Street. He says he’s not predisposed to see politics through a partisan lens, but he’s seen Ruais up close, and was impressed
“He’s great. He’s super friendly. He’s been to all the ribbon cuttings on the street," Bourassa said.
Which may not sound like too much, but it may actually be a lot. Bob Baines, a Democrat who now sits on the Manchester school board, and himself served as mayor from 2000 to 2006, says when it comes to leading Manchester, showing up — preferably with a smile — is essential.
“How visible you are in the community: That’s the success of any person who has been in that office,” Baines said. “The mayor’s a great guy. I like working with him, and he’s done a pretty good job.”
Manchester voters will weigh in with their verdict on what kind of job Ruais’ done on November 4.
