Kelly Ayotte

Kelly Ayotte’s first job was bussing tables at Mame’s Restaurant in Meredith during the summer.¹ Raised in Nashua, she later worked through college at Penn State and earned her law degree at Villanova.¹ She and her husband, Joe Daley, have two children, Kate and Jake; Kate is now a cadet at the Air Force Academy.¹

Ayotte also helped Daley start a landscaping and snow removal company, shoveling snow at night while working as a prosecutor during the day.¹ He was an Air Force A-10 pilot and retired as a lieutenant colonel.¹ They married shortly before September 11, 2001, and he deployed to the Middle East after their honeymoon.¹

Appointed attorney general in 2004, Ayotte was New Hampshire’s first woman in that job and received reappointments from a Democratic governor.¹ She personally prosecuted Michael Addison in 2008 for the 2006 murder of Manchester Police Officer Michael Briggs.² Elected to the Senate in 2010, she later helped guide Neil Gorsuch’s 2017 Supreme Court confirmation and became governor in January 2025.¹

Seeking reelection against Democrat Cinde Warmington, Ayotte opposes income and sales taxes and supports locally approved property tax caps.³ Her housing agenda includes accessory dwelling units, converting commercial buildings into homes and considering state land for affordable housing.³ She supports Education Freedom Accounts for expenses outside assigned public schools, while Warmington would end their state funding.³