While Jay Ruais and the uniparty establishment elite are still reveling in his recent reelection, I’m here to rain on his parade because he’s clearly a captain who’s not a team player. He sabotaged “Team Red” in Manchester, and that cost his city their best alderman and their Ward 1 seat. There’s plenty of “Picklegate” content out there if you want a detailed recent history, but numbers don’t care about anyone’s feelings. They went from 7-7 down to 5-9 because of the mayor’s vendetta against Alderman Joe Kelly Levasseur.
Being the young mayor that he is, Jay Ruais is enjoying his gig as “cleanup man,” cleaning up after the Joyce Craig regime. Remember that Joyce is no longer in office because Buckley and her other handlers decided in 2023 that it was her turn to run for governor last year. Let’s talk about political careers for a moment —red and blue —that Manchester City Hall was part of, but first, some background on recent former governors.
While it’s not uncommon for a new governor, one-term or not, in any state (Benson and Youngkin, for example) to jump from CEO to the Corner Office, it’s more often someone who came from another political office. And the movement does happen in both directions. I use Judd Gregg, Kristi Noem, and even Kelly Ayotte as examples that a governor can come from either chamber in DC, but let’s think about the more common direction.
Aside from being a member of the State Royal Family, the Damn Emperor came from the executive council (Janet Stevens’s seat). The senior Maggot came from the senate (Gannon’s seat). Old Witch Shaheen also came from the State Senate (RPK’s seat). Lynch came from academia and was also a CEO. Governor Merrill was the attorney general, as were Kelly Ayotte and her current counterparts in Maine and Massachusetts. Old Man Sununu came from both the House and academia. Gallen was a car dealer. Hey, Keene voters, read that again and pay attention to THAT signpost warning! Let’s go back in time for one more, and my favorite, Meldrim Thomson, who was the Orford school board chair. Oops, I changed my mind and will also look at his predecessor, Walter Peterson Jr, a former Speaker of the House.
Having looked at every NH governor that’s been in office in my lifetime, red and blue, they all have something in common. None of them have been the mayor of our largest city. One can look back a little further in time and find Judd Gregg’s father, who was the mayor of Nashua in 1950. I could dig further down the rabbit hole of previous Nashua mayors and possibly find some more ex-governors, but let’s redirect back to Manchester. This city enjoys some superiority over Nashua in many ways, albeit marginal.
While Nashua has to envy Manchester because Ruais is not as bad as Donkness, one claim it can make is that Hugh Gregg’s career as mayor-to-governor is several decades newer than that of anyone from Manchester. The most recent Manchester mayor who became the governor was James A Weston, a Dem who was mayor in 1871 and governor in 1874 (here’s a link to his biography). That’s an 80-year difference on the timeline. Though not enough to say “four score and seven years,” it’s still a big chunk of time, considering NH’s age and how long Nashua and Manchester have been incorporated as cities. Eighty years is a length of time approaching 86 years, which anyone in Red Sox Nation will point out was the duration of The Curse.
I could research how many Manchester mayors have run for governor in addition to Joyce Craig and Ted Gatsas, but I’m not going to because they lost in November or in a primary. The question is whether the Corner Office of Manchester City Hall is cursed and whether NH is safe from a future “Governor Ruais.” You tell me.
