Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig, who is one of New Hampshire’s more prominent Democrats, announced Thursday that she would not seek reelection this fall as the leader of the state’s largest city, but we may be hearing more from her soon. WMUR notes that political observers have long speculated that Craig could run for governor. When asked about her interest in a potential bid for higher office, the mayor repeatedly refused to give an answer.
Craig’s immediate future, though, may depend most on what Republican Gov. Chris Sununu decides to do in 2024. Sununu, who just won a fourth two-year term with an imposing 57% of the vote, has spent months musing about a long shot White House bid and, because New Hampshire has one of the latest candidate filing deadlines in America for non-presidential offices, he’d have time to turn around and seek reelection if national primary voters rejected him. Sununu said back in December that he hadn’t “ruled out a fifth term,” but he doesn’t appear to have commented on the topic since.
If Sununu does indeed run for his current post one more time, he’d be the first Granite State governor to ever try to claim a fifth term since the state stopped electing its chief executives to single-year terms in 1878. Last year, Sununu matched the record that Democrat John Lynch set in 2010 when he earned a fourth straight term, but Lynch opted to retire two years later. (The all-time record is considerably longer, though: According to the University of Minnesota's Eric Ostermeier, Federalist John Gilman won 14 one-year terms in two separate stints between 1794 and 1816.)
Sununu would be difficult to beat if he did go for term number five, though he could see his standing deteriorate at home if he were to spend a significant amount of time trying to fulfill his unlikely White House dreams. His departure, though, would set off a wide-open campaign that could attract Craig and many other contenders from both parties. It’s also possible that Craig could take a look at running for the swingy 1st District should her congressman, Democrat Chris Pappas, seek the governorship. (Pappas spent months last cycle keeping the idea alive, though he ultimately sought and won reelection instead.)
First, though, there’s this year’s race to succeed Craig as mayor in a contest that attracts outsize attention every two years. While Manchester, with a population of just over 110,000, isn’t a particularly large city by American standards, its status as one of the few places with a sizable concentration of voters and activists in New Hampshire makes it an attractive place for presidential hopefuls to burnish their profiles—not to mention fill their favor banks. That’s why it's not unusual to see potential White House contenders endorse candidates for mayor, as Joe Biden did on Craig's behalf before her successful 2017 bid, or even campaign with them, as Cory Booker did in 2019.
So far, though, the officially nonpartisan race to lead of "Manch-Vegas" (yes, that’s one of the city’s self-deprecating nicknames) consists only of Republican Jay Ruais, a former congressional staffer who sports endorsements from both Sununu and Executive Councilor Ted Gatsas. There’s still plenty of time for the contest to succeed Craig to take shape, though, as the filing deadline isn’t until late June. (All contenders will face off in September, and the top-two vote-getters will advance to the November general election.)
Republicans had held the mayor's office for more than a decade prior, but Craig broke their streak in 2017 by unseating incumbent Gatsas. The GOP is now hoping to win this key city back even though Biden carried it by a 56-42 margin, which was the best performance by a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996.
Whoever wins this post will, like Craig, quickly emerge as a top candidate for higher office, particularly given the dearth of statewide elected positions in New Hampshire. (Only the governor and its two U.S. senators are elected by the entire state.) Republican Frank Guinta, for example, had this job in the late 2000s, then went on to represent the 1st Congressional District for two nonconsecutive terms.
Gatsas, who succeeded Guinta as mayor, similarly tried to use the position as a springboard to run for governor in 2016, but he took a distant third to Sununu in the primary. Gatsas lost to Craig the next year, though he proved he was still politically relevant in 2018 when he won a spot on the state's powerful Executive Council.
