O P I N I O N

THE SOAPBOX

Stand up. Speak up. It’s your turn.

I imagine that Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais and the candidate he has endorsed for governor, Kelly Ayotte, had to have one of those so-called “difficult” conversations at some point in the last few weeks.  Surely, the former attorney general and U.S. senator asked the mayor to write a check to the city’s coffers for roughly $30,000, the difference between the annual salary he earns as mayor and the amount his predecessor, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Joyce Craig, took home throughout her tenure as the Queen City’s chief executive.

I am convinced such a conversation took place because Ayotte’s campaign, as part of its cynical tear-down- Manchester-in-order-to-win-the-corner-office strategy, has taken to the airwaves to criticize Craig for supporting some years ago a city charter change that would have increased Manchester’s mayoral salary from $68,000 to $108,000.   

The charter revision was never adopted, but the city’s Board of Mayor and Alderman did subsequently approve a long-overdue salary bump for the person who captured the mayoralty in 2023, a bit of nuance the Ayotte campaign fails to note in its TV spot, thereby intentionally creating the false impression that Craig was feathering her own nest despite never receiving a raise as mayor.

Perhaps Ayotte should have a similar conversation with her biggest cheerleader, Gov. Chris Sununu, as well.  He gladly accepted a pay raise soon after taking the oath of office in 2017.  According to the Concord Monitor at the time, when Sununu became governor, he awarded himself a $20,000 raise by breaking a long-standing gubernatorial precedent of not accepting salary hikes bargained for by the state employees union.  His predecessor, Gov. Maggie Hassan, who did not take the negotiated increase, earned $110,400 annually, while Sununu pulled down almost $133,000 per year. 

I have searched the internet extensively for a statement from Ayotte taking Sununu to task for his avarice, but no such message seems to exist.

The voiceover in the Ayotte spot blasting Craig asserts that “NH can’t afford huge pay raises for politicians,” but it does so without making the distinction between Democrats and Republicans that Ayotte seems to be asserting when she exempts her endorsers, like Ruais and Sununu, from the standard she is inaccurately and unfairly imposing on her Democratic rival.

David Scannell teaches English at Milford High School.  He served as an assistant to Manchester’s mayor from 2000 to 2004.  He was also a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives and a member of the Manchester School Board.

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