New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is first among equals as Senate Republicans recruit challengers they believe can deliver them the majority in 2022.
Polling suggests Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan is vulnerable. But New Hampshire has proven to be difficult terrain for Republicans lately. Even with President Joe Biden in the White House, there is no guarantee the GOP will benefit from historical tailwinds and oust the incumbent. Sununu, Republicans are convinced, can make it so, tipping the scales in their favor in the midterm elections battle for control of the Senate.
“You’ve got to have the fire in the belly,” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said recently, in a conversation with reporters about his approach to candidate recruitment. “This idea that you can just go talk somebody into running — if they don’t have the fire in the belly, they’re not going to win. This is not for the faint of heart.”
Sununu, 46, son of a former governor, is a popular chief executive in his third two-year term. In March, a St. Anselm College poll showed Sununu with a healthy 47% to 41% lead over Hassan, who has never garnered the kind of support enjoyed by Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire’s other Democratic senator and a former governor. Shaheen won election to the Senate in 2008 by defeating an incumbent Republican, Sununu’s brother, John E. Sununu.
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The Republican Party has not won a race for federal office in New Hampshire since capturing the 1st Congressional District in 2014, a seat it relinquished just two years later. The GOP has not won a Senate seat in the state in more than a decade. Not since 2000 has the party’s nominee won New Hampshire’s Electoral College votes. But Republicans believe Sununu is uniquely positioned to break the Democrats’ spell on statewide victories.
That is why the governor is getting the hard sell from prominent Republicans in Washington, especially Sen. Scott of Florida, the NRSC chairman. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who was to headline a county GOP fundraising dinner Thursday evening, was sure to give his good friend Sununu a nudge. If the governor is leaning toward a Senate bid, he has yet to say so publicly.
Democrats are already working hard to define Sununu as a flawed Senate challenger who is putting his national political ambitions ahead of his responsibilities as governor, as New Hampshire continues its recovery from the coronavirus and the economic downturn sparked by the pandemic.
“Sununu has spent valuable time hobnobbing with national Republicans,” Raymond Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said during a news conference. “Sununu should be focusing on the challenges facing New Hampshire, but instead, he’s planning his next political move with a parade of national Republicans.”
Former congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter said Republicans are heavily recruiting Sununu because “they know he would be a guaranteed ‘yes’ for their anti-New Hampshire agenda.” Porter criticized Sununu for supporting legislation included in a forthcoming budget bill in Concord that would ban “late-term” abortions — abortions after pregnancy has passed 24 weeks. “What is he thinking?” Porter said. “This is a hard, hard swing to the right.”
“I’m a pro-choice governor, but like most citizens of the state of New Hampshire, I do not think that we should be doing late-term or, you know, these at-the-very-last-minute-type abortions,” Sununu told New Hampshire Today host Chris Ryan when asked if the abortion measure would cause him to veto the state budget.
