Gov. Chris Sununu won the GOP nomination for governor of New Hampshire by a wide margin Tuesday and will go on to face Democratic state Sen. Tom Sherman, a doctor from the coastal part of the Granite State, in November. Sununu’s renomination comes after he declined to enter New Hampshire’s U.S. Senate race.
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The popular centrist Republican faced five primary challengers, but none gained any traction. Sununu led the field with more than 70% of Republican primary voters’ support in some polls.
In February, Trump ally and political operative Corey Lewandowski told Howie Carr, a regional talk radio host, that Donald Trump had asked him to find a candidate to primary Sununu, a frequent critic of the ex-president.
“The president is very unhappy with the chief executive officer of the state of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu,” Lewandowski said at the time. “And Sununu, in the president’s estimation, is someone who’s never been loyal to him. And the president said it would be really great if somebody would run against Chris Sununu.”
But such a candidate was never found.
Some Washington Republicans had sought to recruit Sununu to enter the state’s Senate race against incumbent Maggie Hassan (D-NH), hoping his platform as governor and popularity might help them unseat her.
But Sununu surprised some political observers when, after weighing such a bid, he declined a run for the Senate and said he would instead seek reelection as governor, reportedly judging that he could accomplish more as the state’s chief executive.
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Should Sununu be reelected, a likely prospect given that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report has ranked his race “Solid Republican,” it would also leave him in a position of influence as the state prepares for its first-in-the-nation primary in the 2024 presidential election cycle.
