By Tom Brennan
Governor Chris Sununu finds himself in an unlikely position this autumn. Everyone is waiting to hear who he supports for president. He was even a hot presidential prospect himself, until he took himself out of consideration. He was only 14 when his father, also Governor of New Hampshire, rescued the faltering presidential campaign of George HW Bush and parlayed that into a leap from the Governor’s office in Concord to White House chief of staff (COS). Another NH Governor had pulled this off. Sherman Adams helped orchestrate a NH primary win for an absent Dwight Eisenhower, launching him on his way, and became Ike’s COS.
It ended badly for both men, who enjoyed telling people “no” a little too much, and didn’t suffer fools gladly. They found themselves with few defenders in Washington and their fondness for such perks as vicuna coats, and flying in style, cost them their jobs. Egos in Washington are fragile. If you seem to actually enjoy pushing people around, don’t expect the benefit of the doubt when you slip up.
The younger Governor Sununu has gotten far by not being like these other two NH governors.
While the NH primary looms large in presidential campaigns, Granite State pols do not do well as presidential candidates. Other than TV’s Jed Bartlett, COS is the closest a chief executive of our tiny state has gotten to the modern presidency. Publisher Bill Loeb, and his various pet governors, drew national attention from the fringes. Wesley Powell, governor in the early 1960s, mused about running for president even after losing the governorship. Senator Bob Smith made an equally marginal attempt, paving the way for the younger John Sununu’s single term as senator from New Hampshire. There is also the grand legacy of Franklin Pierce, 14th president, whose unhappy tenure was just prior to the Civil War, brought on in part by his dithering. Other governors have tried to play kingmaker, with our famously mischievous voters often not cooperating.
The first Governor Sununu was born in Cuba, the son of a film distributor, and grew up in New York City. He was educated at a military academy on Long Island. After MIT, and an academic career at Tufts, he became an immigrant of sorts again, as part of the wave that fled “Taxachusetts.” Chris, born in 1974, is the first “native born” Granite Stater Sununu. The family settled in Salem NH in 1969. The elder Sununu joined the local planning board. His wife served on the school board. The future Governor won a state house seat in 1972, then proceeded to lose four bids for public office. He lost state senate races in 1974 and 1976. He lost a 1978 race for executive council to Dudley Dudley. Warren Rudman beat him in a primary for a seat in the US senate in 1980. In 1982, he narrowly won the GOP gubernatorial primary against the state senate president, Robert Monier, and then ousted Governor Hugh Gallen. He was easily reelected twice. Chris Sununu was finishing high school in suburbs of Washington, DC as he watched that city eat his father alive.
But today, this Governor Sununu, Chris Sununu, is the belle of the ball for the moment. He is unusually popular while voter grumpiness is breaking records. Much of this is owed to an affability and spontaneity, a style more associated with Bill Weld than with most Sununu men, all three MIT trained engineers. Nobody ever called Chris’ father affable. The 48 year old governor’s understated and faintly libertarian brother, a full decade older than Chris, was turned out of the US senate after a single term. But Sununu’s four straight gubernatorial wins are matched only by the hugely popular John Lynch.
In 2022, it was widely assumed the Governor could have walked into a U.S. senate seat. He didn’t bother, reliable sources tell us, because neither he or his wife like Washington. Yet for almost two years Sununu has pulled off a remarkable political feat. He has poked the MAGA bear, clearly delighted in doing so, and lived to tell the tale. He has done this as he flirted seriously with a run for president himself before abandoning that idea in June. In July he announced he would not seek a fifth term as governor. But he is not leaving quietly.
Sununu has instead set himself up as the nation’s principal evangelist for those Republicans seeking an alternative to Trump closing ranks behind one alternative. Trump sprinted to nomination in 2016, in significant part because formidable alternatives stayed in too long, allowing Trump to notch primary wins and delegates with much less than half of the votes cast.
Today both parties seem locked into nominees the public does not want, but whose gatekeepers insist they must accept.
Chris Sununu seemed an unlikely politician at first. His father’s experience could not have gone unnoticed by him. He studied film at NYU for a few months. He was CEO of Waterville Valley Resort. He only began his political career after his older brother was ousted from the senate, the youngest Sununu being elected to the executive council in 2010. He only narrowly won the GOP gubernatorial nomination, against a hard right education “reform” activist, in a crowded 2016 primary. He then squeaked into the governorship that November, awkwardly navigating the choppy waters of the Trump era (his brother supported Kasich against Trump in the 2016 NH primary). These waters were choppy enough to sink Sen. Kelly Ayotte.
While Sununu is hardly a liberal, NH is a moderate state, and Sununu operates in a Republican party where independents can vote in their primaries. He is often at odds with MAGA and far right influences that tend to miscalculate and overreach. He deftly brought his most formidable rival into his administration as education secretary. He is pro choice, but against public funding of abortion. He criticized legislature Republicans after Covid killed an incoming House speaker, and faced down executive council members in his own party, as well as some rowdy protesters, over promotion of vaccines. He teamed up with former Governor Lynch in 2018, narrowly saving Secretary of State Gardner’s job, thwarting a strong challenge from the Democrat Sununu narrowly defeated to become governor. He was comfortably reelected in 2018, and won landslide reelections in 2020 and 2022.
But Sununu has a strained relationship with MAGA Republicans, O’Brienites, and “Free State” libertarians key to his party’s edge in the House, when they have an edge at all. Trump appears stronger in the GOP than he was in 2016, the improbability of that situation underscored by J6 and close to 100 criminal charges. Sununu tried to block MAGA candidates in congressional and senate primaries in 2022, and came up short.
Sununu’s bet is that Trump has a glass jaw. That if Trump loses early contests, and then faces one broadly acceptable rival, he can be denied victory in the New Hampshire primary, and denied re-nomination. Sununu knows a heavy hand, of the sort his father might have used, will not work. So he has squired various candidates around NH, playing the gracious host, but always reminding them that the party, perhaps the country, needs them to face facts if their campaign is not catching on. Sununu is milking this moment for all it is worth. His ‘Happy Warrior’ posture is a contrast with the style his father was known for. He has turned up on The View, of all places, and been a regular on the Sunday morning interview shows.
With Pence and Scott out of the race, only two others have any real chance of emerging as the un-Trump. The primary date has been set for January 23rd. Sununu has hinted he will make his choice known shortly after Thanksgiving. Who will the Governor toss his bouquet to? By the time this appears in the hard copy we may know.
The logic is clear. Sununu will endorse Nikki Haley. You heard it here first, in mid November.
Sununu would like to endorse Chris Christie, and Christie would very much like to have that support. His forthright willingness to confront Trump contrasts with the evasions of more “savvy” contenders. Trump has sidestepped any such game changing moment which the pugilistic former New Jersey governor might exploit on a debate stage, by ducking debates, and sitting on his lead. Christie gets points in heaven for calling out Trump, but has no chance of winning our primary, and even less of being nominated.
DeSantis looked to be a formidable contender a year ago, in New Hampshire and nationally. Early on Sununu predicted DeSantis would win NH. He mastered the politics of a large (and until recently) swing state. He is as nasty as Trump, but expressed this in policy victories, not tweets. He is young. He has military credentials. His charismatic wife is an asset. He was a baseball star in his youth. He debates well on substance, a bit like Michael Dukakis, complete with the seemingly brittle personality, but has not worn well. Disturbing stories emerged about him eating pudding with his hands. His choice of footwear raised eyebrows. He has evident trouble smiling. He is smart, but fails the likability test. Because he was seen early on as Trump’s most formidable rival, he drew a lot of fire, and was not prepared for it. If people want nasty, and a lot of Republicans clearly do, Trump is the classic coke.
DeSantis still has cards to play. The popular Governor of Iowa endorsed him. He may pick up the formidable block of evangelical Iowa Republicans, with Mike Pence and Tim Scott gone. This block lifted up Huckabee, Santorum, and Cruz, none of whom were nominated. A win in Iowa could affect New Hampshire, although Granite State voters tend more to negate Iowa’s choices than ratify them. And in contrast with our usually smooth running primary, Iowa has a chronic problem counting and reporting results in timely fashion. Santorum beat Romney in Iowa in 2012, but it was not reported until after NH voted. A large number of ballots were simply lost. “Maybe a hog ate them,” speculated one exasperated pundit.
Vivek Ramaswamy has not caught on. His vigor, and skillful handing of verbal brickbats in the first debate, does not outweigh strange ideas and an evident lack of judgment or sense of occasion. Like Christie, his polls are not moving.
The most interesting story to emerge this year, on the GOP side, is Nikki Haley. It did not appear so at first. The GOP is not much for what some might see as affirmative action hires. She seemed unsure, like many of her fellow second stringers, whether she ran to praise Trump or bury him. Tim Scott, who she appointed to the US senate, was getting early traction, and further complicating her home state, an important state in the nominating process in any event.
She burst on to the national consciousness as a Palin prototype, only smart. She was elected Governor of South Carolina in the Tea Party wave of 2010. She did it by first beating the good old boy club in the primary. She travelled a similar path to the state senate six years earlier. The Clemson educated daughter of Indian immigrants, is a convert to Christianity, and was an accountant at the dress shop the family owned.
As Governor, her support for removing confederate imagery from the state flag, after a shooting at a mostly black church, evoked memories of Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter hanging Dr. King’s portrait in the state capitol, after winning election as a Wallace friendly “redneck.” She supported Rubio in 2016. Then she served deftly as Trump’s UN ambassador, and made a graceful and timely exit, largely avoiding the drama and chaos that characterized all else MAGA.
To the extent the debates advanced anyone, they advanced her. The attacks from Ramaswamy showed her mettle. While Christie banged away at the absent Trump, her own criticism escalated gradually, and was more measured. Finally, with the world catching fire in a way that was not as obvious in 2020, Haley has converted the modest credential of a few years as United Nations ambassador to distinguish herself from MAGA on foreign affairs, particularly regarding Putin. As a military wife, she makes this case with particular force. It remains to be seen whether she will seem “too neocon,” a Cheney in heels to quote one critic, in a showdown with MAGA. Her call for mental acuity testing of presidential candidates over age 75, while craven, is a shot at Trump as well as Biden. Her support ranges from former Senator Sununu to Don Buldoc.
Taking the nomination from Trump, baggage and all, is a tall order. It is the MAGA party now, not the Republican party. But Haley emerges as the best bet. She polls better against Biden (or a generic Dem) than does Trump or DeSantis. She has saved her money for a large late media buy in Iowa and the Granite State. If you are Sununu, what is your calculation? You want someone who can win the open primary in New Hampshire. You don’t want to be embarrassed again. You want someone who could unite the scattered and often intimidated anti Trump Republicans, and still hold MAGA voters in November. You want someone with the charisma to contrast favorably with Biden or any other Dem nominee. You want someone who might navigate the abortion issue, although Governor Youngkin’s effort along lines similar to Haley’s approach failed in Virginia. Like anyone else who makes predictions, I reserve the right to deny I ever asserted this if I turn out to be wrong.