Manny Ruiz (New Bern Alderman Ward 5, North Carolina, candidate 2025)
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Manny Ruiz ran for election to the New Bern Alderman Ward 5 in North Carolina. He was on the ballot in the general election on October 7, 2025.[source]
Ruiz completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.
[1]Biography
Manny Ruiz provided the following biographical information via Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey on August 29, 2025:
- Bachelor's: Pensacola Christian College
- Gender: Male
- Religion: Anglican
- Profession: Teacher
- Incumbent officeholder: No
- Campaign slogan: Refresh & Renew
- Campaign website
- Campaign Facebook
Elections
General election
General election for New Bern Alderman Ward 5
Barbara J. Best and Manny Ruiz ran in the general election for New Bern Alderman Ward 5 on October 7, 2025.
Candidate | ||
| Barbara J. Best (Nonpartisan) | ||
 | Manny Ruiz (Nonpartisan)  | |
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| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Election results
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Ruiz in this election.
Campaign themes
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Manny Ruiz completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Ruiz's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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Manny Ruiz is the son of Colombian refugees that escaped the terrors of cartels and communist terrorists. He has been involved in politics since he was 12 and has been a passionate voice for Gen Z. . While finishing his bachelor's degree in Pensacola, Florida, Manny saw that New Bern was at a crossroads. Rather that just sit back and wait for others to act, Manny has led the charge in tackling the housing crisis and lack of responsive leadership in city hall by running for New Bern Board of Alderman.
- Urban Redevelopment: many of our communities feel abandoned under our current leadership in Ward 5. That is most seen the our leaderships lack of involvement and effort to reinvigorate areas that need redevelopment. These communities deserve to live in safe and dignified communities. We know what we've gotten under our current absentee alderwoman, it is time for real leadership.
- Updating Our Zoning & Infrastructure : Our current zoning laws are severely out of date. Current laws do not allow us to do traffic studies to make evaluate the impact of new developments on our roads. This then leads to our local infrastructure needing more repairs. We need to be able to support our local neighbors and our developers. We welcome development in our city, but we must ensure our laws and our infrastructure are keeping up with the demand.
- Completing Martin Marietta Park: Martin Marietta Park is promised to Ward 5 as a large new park with expansive kids areas, piers, a skate park, and an amphitheater. Despite this, our current leadership has begun advocating from ending the development of this park. This park has the potential to become the heart of Ward 5, yet our current leaders seem disinterested in fulfilling their promises to us. That is unacceptable. My goal is to champion that project and ensure it gets the funding it needs. It's about keeping our promises to our citizens.
Election Reform: our current elections occur in an off month in an odd year. Most voters don't even know there is an election going on at all! It's time we move our elections to be in sync with all other elections. This ensures that more people show up to vote AND saves our city roughly $100k that could be used on other vital projects.
Show Up & Listen: our current leadership in Ward 5 hasn't done that. Our neighbors feel forgotten and abandoned. To combat this, I have pledged to do monthly "office hours" where voters can sit down with me and ask me any questions or bring any concerns they might have. It's that simple! Additionally, I will fight to have our city host a yearly listening session to make sure every part of our city is heard.
My family came to this country with nothing but the clothes on the backs, so to speak. They didn't speak the language, or know the culture. Despite that, New Bern came around them and gave them the tool they needed to fulfill the American Dream. If anything is to be my legacy, it would be that we as a city continued to make sure that the American Dream is still possible in our city.
My first job was a janitor at the high school I attended. I worked there for most of my junior and senior year of high school. The job really taught me the value of hard work and keeping stuff clean. When you are the one who has to clean it, you make sure its well maintained. This is a concept that is severely lacking in local government nowadays.
(Besides Holy Scriptures) The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis is amongest my favorites. It was one of the key books that brought me back to my faith after a dark period in my life. It showed what true love is and what it demands of everyone of us. It shows the importance of caring for those around us and how that is properly to be done.
Not long ago, I was door knocking in a neighborhood and knocked on the door of an older woman. We spoke for a little bit and by the end of the conversation she was nearly in tears. Why? Because she said in all her years of living in this community, no one running for office had ever bothered to knock on her door and just listen to her. That is what our community leader who will listen and fight for us.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2025 Elections
External links
Footnotes
