One of his friends, longtime New Hampshire GOP hand Steve Duprey, is eager for the governor to get to the Senate, earn some foreign policy experience and then run for president at the first available chance.
“Foreign relations isn’t keeping the river guarded against Vermont,” said Duprey. “Do one term, if it hits it hits.” Sorry, Steve, Sununu said: “No, could I make it more clear that I’m not running for the Senate?”
I sat down with Sununu at Franklin Pierce University on Saturday, where the governor snapped a selfie of himself in front of a portrait of the school’s former president, Andy Card (speaking of New England chiefs of staff for presidents named Bush).
“Four terms as governor?” he said. “That’s enough for anybody.”
But you clearly enjoy being in the fray, I said.
“I love it,” he shot back. “But it’s not a career. It shouldn’t be for anyone.”
It’s notable for his future viability, though, that he’s now saying he’ll support Trump as the nominee. And that he’s ruling out any possibility of running as a No Labels candidate.
“I’ve told her straight up, I’m not interested,” Sununu said, alluding to conversations he’s had with the group’s chief, Nancy Jacobson.
He can’t himself, though, and reveals that he “gave them advice,” namely “the characteristics of who you want on the ticket.”
It’s what makes Sununu fun to cover — he’s both irrepressible and cocky — and what makes me thinks he’ll follow in his father’s footsteps onto television while skipping the chief of staff part (which, the elder Sununu was happy to remind me, was actually “the
Sherman Adams model”). While John H. Sununu is well-remembered as George H.W. Bush’s cantankerous chief of staff, what’s less well recalled is he went on to be a co-host of the late CNN show, “Crossfire.”
The younger Sununu’s fellow politicians can be less enamored of him, though.
Why are mainstream Republicans, like fellow Gov. Joe Lombardo in Nevada, already bowing to Trump, I asked? Because they’re “afraid of their image” and not being “Trump enough in their own state” for the GOP base, he said.
Why didn’t Haley hire any of New Hampshire’s experienced political professionals to steer her campaign? “What could they do that I can’t do?” he said, before plunging the knife in deeper. “Those guys take a lot of money to give you general advice that anybody could figure out.”
When I pressed him on why he hadn’t given Christie a head’s up on endorsing Haley, Sununu went on at some length about why that made no sense, even recounting the same criticism when he didn’t first call Mitch McConnell after deciding not to run for the Senate in 2022.
“Screw you, Mitch McConnell,” Sununu said, working himself up a bit. “I don’t work for you. I work for the people in the state.”
As for Christie being upset about the lack of contact, the governor said, “So go have a beer with John Kasich and see where that leads you,” alluding to the former Ohio governor turned failed presidential hopeful who backed Biden in 2020. “I mean, they’re just disgruntled, angry.”
Christie declined to comment. He was, however, stung by the lack of advance warning about Sununu’s plans, I’m told. He was on a plane with his wife, Mary Pat, when he found out. She asked if Sununu had just texted him to tell him. No, he told her, he saw the news pop on the website of WMUR, New Hampshire’s only TV station.
One of Christie’s advisers predicted some time ago that Sununu would never back him because that would mean Sununu would not be the star of the buddy show in the final weeks of New Hampshire.