Mayor Joyce Craig’s Substance Abuse/Homeless Programs Likely Will Be Discontinued by Republican Mayor Jay Ruais & Aldermen
Manchester Municipal Elections — OPINION
MANCHESTER, NH — The November 7th municipal election was an unprecedented victory for Queen City Republicans an an unprecedented disaster for City Democrats.
With the help of the New Hampshire Republican Party and the generosity of in-state and out-of-state campaign donors, the City GOP not only put tyro politico Jay Ruais into the Mayor’s office but won effective control of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen as Republican aldermanic candidates won seven of 14 seats. The 7–7 split means that, with Mayor Ruais voting during any ties, the Republicans will have a parliamentary majority.
Outgoing Mayor Joyce Craig’s initiatives on substance abuse and homelessness likely will be overhauled at best or simply unceremoniously shitcanned, while her appointee as Manchester’s first director of the Department of Housing Policy probably be terminated. The Beech Street low-entry engagement center likely will lose its city contract as a “tough love” paradigm replaces the current “guest” policy.
Expect City Solicitor Emily Rice likely to be replaced too, as the Board of Aldermen under Joe Kelly Levasseur — the favorite to be the next Chairman of the Board — flexes its muscles under a new, inexperienced mayor.
Mayor Ruais will have outside advice, fore sure, but in the inside politics of running the board, he will will rely on Levasseur and his Republican majority, a situation that Levasseur the political media warrior and kingmaker must be given a lot of credit for helping make a reality.
City Solicitor Emily Rice issued a legally suspect opinion limiting the rights of aldermen to access departmental information that has been harshly criticized by Levasseur, a practicing attorney.
A Democrat and former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Hampshire whose patron was U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (a Democrat), Rice was appointed by then-Mayor Ted Gatsas to replace the disgraced City Thomas Clark, who resigned as City Solicitor during a scandal.
It was a masterful stroke by Gatsas, but her usefulness to incoming Mayor Ruais and the future Republican majority on the Board is suspect. Expect her to be replaced, likely in response to the wishes of Alderman-at-Large Joseph Kelly Levasseur, Esq.
Republican’s 2024 Agenda
The state and city GOP are are not going to sit on their hands with their thumbs up their backsides while a presidential primary and national and gubernatorial elections are being held in 2024. They will exercise power here in Manchester.
There was a reason Jay Ruais was hand-picked to run for mayor.
A political novice who has never been elected to any office, nor apparently participated in any meeting of any elected or appointed board in Manchester government, Jay Ruais was groomed by top state Republicans to run for mayor of Manchester.
The two most obvious Republican front-runners for mayor, Rich Girard and Victoria Sullivan, were two-time losers in mayoral politics, and had no “coat-tails” to help elect Republican candidates down-ticket, and the state GOP was taking no chances.
The state Republicans sought control of the Manchester’s mayor’s office for the 2024 election season. Former U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte reportedly wanted a Republican in the Mayor’s Office to abet her run for governor.
With Manchester’s outgoing mayor running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, in-coming Mayor Jay Ruais and his Republican majority, with Joe Kelly Levasseur the favorite to become the next Chairman of the Board, are going to go on the attack to repudiate Democrat Joyce Craig and her programs to give the Republicans a boost in 2004.
Levasseur will have his revenge on Craig for the humiliations he believes he has suffered at her hands over the past six years. And Manchester Republicans humiliating Craig will strengthen Republican Kelly Ayotte’s bid for the governorship.
Levasseur Will Lead the Attack on Craig’s Legacy
While the Mayor chairs the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, the Board of Aldermen — the group of 14 aldermen that the City Charter acknowledges as existing as an entity inside the BMA — has its own Chair, the Chairman of the Board, who sets the meeting agenda with the Mayor and selects special committee chairs and their members.
Joe Kelly Levasseur led the attack on soon-to-be ex-Mayor Joyce Craig and her substance abuse control and homeless policies. His campaign against Craig’s policies made him the most powerful politician in Manchester, after the mayor herself.
Levasseur could be seen as having played a “King Maker” role in the recent aldermanic races, by making those the major issues in the 2023 municipal election. And when the voters weighed in, the result was a stunning, an unprecedented setback for Manchester Democrats.
Backed by Mayor Jay Ruais and the other Republicans on the Board, Levasseur is sure to lead an assault on that policy and the centerpiece of Craig’s program, the new Department of Housing Stability and its Beech Street substance abuser engagement center.
When the last Manchester mayor ran for governor back in 2016, the handling of crime and a drug abuse pandemic were the major issues that Chris Sununu used to wreck Ted Gatsas’ gubernatorial hopes. The same issues will be used by Republican Kelly Ayotte and her Manchester GOP allies to attack Joyce Craig.
The End of the Housing Stability Department?
Joe Kelly Levasseur led the attack on the program that Joyce Craig made the centerpiece of her last term in office, the Housing Stability Department and the Beech Street substance abuser engagement center. While the Department may or may not be terminated, its scope will be limited. The contract for the Beech Street Center in all probability will not be renewed, and Director of Housing Stability Adrienne Beloin likely will be fired by Mayor Jay Ruais.
During Joyce Craig’s first term as mayor, she and the Democratic-dominated Board closed the engagement enter created during the Gatsas mayoralty.
Fair or unfair as something had to be done, it is widely seen by both Republicans and many Democrats that Craig poured a great deal of political capital into the inter-connected substance abuse and homelessness issues to position herself for her 2024 gubernatorial run.
According to cynical critics and certain insiders, Craig apparently was worried about attacks over her handling of the axis of substance abuse/homeless/crime by potential political rivals, such as those suffered by her predecessor, former Mayor Ted Gatsas, when he ran for governor.
In the 2016 Republican gubernatorial primary, Gatsas was dealt devastating body blows by Chris Sununu, who held him accountable for the crime and drug abuse pandemic in Manchester. It was a winning strategy for Sununu, who won the GOP gubernatorial primary and went on to win four straight terms as governor.
In the calculus of her critics, Mayor Craig attempted to inoculate herself from such attacks by showing herself to be a hands-on administrator who tackled the problems head-on. She elevated the Office of Homeless Initiatives, then operating under the aegis of the City Fire Department, to departmental status.
She also was a staunch defender of her second director of homeless initiatives, Ardrienne Beloin, and the centerpiece of Beloin’s program, the Beech Street engagement center. The Beech Street center is a low entry shelter whose critics believed coddled the homeless and substance abusers.
Ironically, it was the controversy over her drug abuse program and policies that likely doomed her hand-picked successor, Kevin Cavanaugh, and other Democratic aldermanic candidates to disaster. Homelessness was the #1 issue in the 2023 municipal election.
The Future of Substance Abuse/Homeless Policy
It takes 10 votes on the Board of Mayor and Aldermen to terminate a department. Future Mayor Jay Ruais and the next Chairman of the Board may find the 10 votes to actually abolish the Department of Housing Stability, though a different fate is more likely.
Members of the Board who were responsible for oversight of substance abuse/homelessness policy before Mayor Joyce Craig’s third term initiatives periodically clashed with her and Housing Stability Diretor Beloin as their opinions and efforts were sidelined. Beloin would not share information with the Subcommittee that originally had been tasked with overseeing drug abuse policies, before a new subcommittee more friendly towards Mayor Craig’s agenda was created.
However, no one on the Board has battled Craig and Beloin so vociferously as did likely future Chairman of the Board Joe Kelly Levasseur.
Joe Kelly Levasseur, Republican Alderman Kingmaker.
The future of the Beech Street Shelter and of Housing Policy Director Adrienne Beloin are bleak. It is unlikely that the City’s contract with the Beech Street Shelter will be renewed. An audit of the running of the Shelter is likely, as multiple sources say there is little trust between Beloin’s critics on the Board and the Director herself.
But what of the Department of Housing Stability? Might not Mayor Jay Ruais find it a useful vehicle for his own initiatives?
Mayor Craig’s management of another department likely offers a template of what will happen in the future.
Downgrading a Department
The City Charter requires a supermajority, 10 of the 14 votes of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, to abolish a city department. That is why Mayor Joyce Craig relegated a city department she apparently had little use for, that of Senior Services, to the twilight zone of being put under the suzerainty of the Health Department.
Joe Kelly Levasseur has claimed that her treatment of the Senior Center, effectively stripping it de facto of its departmental status, was retaliation for the Senior Center manager — who is NOT a department head, Craig never having appointed a replacement for Department of Senior Services Director when Gail Senno departed — not supporting Craig’s move to make the Senior Center a part-time homeless shelter during the winter.
Under Levasseur’s influence, so too, will the Department of Housing Stability be de facto if not de jure relegated to also-ran status. The future of the Department Housing Stability is that it will be a department in name only, likely put under the Health Department as the Fire Department never has been popular with Republican mayors. Beloin will be terminated, and Housing Stability will simply have a manager, as does the Senior Center.
Under the new Republican regime in the Queen City, the Chief of Police rather than the Fire Chief likely will go back to being the Director of Public Safety, or it will become an office held by a separate individual.
