Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, was on the verge of announcing his Senate candidacy, giving the Republican Party what they felt was a strong candidate in 2022. He then discussed it with Republican senators and quickly changed his mind.
“They were all, for the most part, content with the speed at which they weren’t doing anything,” Sununu told the Washington Examiner in January. “It was very clear that we just have to hold the line for two years. OK, so I’m just going to be a roadblock for two years? That’s not what I do.”
Sununu said virtually every Republican senator he spoke with said they plan to do little more than obstruct President Joe Biden with the majority they are fighting to win this November until, “hopefully,” 2024 ushers a Republican into the White House. Sununu said, “It bothered me that they were OK with it.”
“It’s hard to recruit a governor to go down and do nothing,” Dave Carney, national Republican consultant based in New Hampshire told Politico. “I think the approach by Washington folks recruiting was more on ego and thinking about how great he’d be, rather than talking about the bread and butter of what he was going to accomplish.”
Republican leaders in Washington were disappointed, The Washington Examiner said. They were also unhappy with Sununu’s method of informing them, in that he did not call them ahead of time to give them notice. Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky learned the same way the rest of us did: at a press conference announcing his plans.
“The takeaway was this was handled so poorly,” a Republican operative said to Politico of how Sununu’s announcement was received by McConnell’s team. “He publicly flirted with it. He hyped it up as this big announcement to the national press, and then bailed in a way that hurts the party’s momentum after a big week in Virginia last week.”
Axios reported last December that, according to people who attended meetings with McConnell, the minority leader told colleagues and donors that a legislative agenda will not be released before the midterm elections next year. During a mid-November dinner, McConnell told the donor that the next Republican presidential nominee in 2024 would be in charge of laying out the party’s future agenda.
During a press conference on January 18, McConnell was asked what Republicans would do if they recaptured both chambers of Congress in November, Business Insider reports.
“That is a very good question,” McConnell told reporters. “And I’ll let you know when we take it back.”
As for Sununu, he had a sit-down interview with the Washington Post on January 19 and was asked about his comments in the Washington Examiner about the republican platform heading into the 2020 midterm elections.
“Democrats are just as bad [about] doing nothing,” he said. “They did, they wanted to roadblock everything Donald Trump wanted to do and the Republicans wanted to do in 2017 and 2018. Republicans are trying to roadblock a lot of things now, and I’m very supportive of that, actually; I don’t want [you] to misunderstand. I think the Build Back Better bill was a disaster.”
Sununu said he believes Social Security and Medicare will go bankrupt within the next decade or so, something he feels Democrats have failed to address.
“We have elderly citizens here in my state that are counting on those benefits being there,” he said. “And if we don’t (address Social Security and Medicare) — there’s no real surety of that happening. So, you got to find a way forward to make sure that there’s solvency. I think immigration reform, both sides of the aisle have put forth good ideas of their pieces of immigration reform to be done. Everyone agrees it has to be done in some fashion. So do it.”
Sununu made similar comments in August of last year while considering the Senate run. He was criticized by Democratic leaders, who interpreted them to mean that he supported cutting the programs.
“Chris Sununu made it crystal clear that if he runs for Senate, he will do everything he can to help Mitch McConnell achieve his long-held goal of cutting Social Security and Medicare for Granite Staters,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party (NHDP) Chair Raymond Buckley. “This is just one of the many examples of how Sununu would eagerly push McConnell’s agenda at the expense of New Hampshire.”
Kathleen Allen, the New Hampshire organizer for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said, “Governor Sununu’s support for Washington Republicans’ plans to cut Social Security and Medicare should raise serious concerns for the hundreds of thousands of Granite Staters who rely on their earned benefits to pay for health care, afford lifesaving prescription drugs, and retire with dignity … It is incredibly alarming that Governor Sununu is gearing up to follow the lead of Republicans in Washington who want to slash funding for these popular and successful programs.”
Sununu also told the Washington Post that Democrats have not discussed balancing the United States’ budget or addressed its $30 trillion in debt, despite their majority in the federal government.
As Governor, Sununu received criticism from the NHDP for his budget at the state level. In a statement early last year, NHDP Chair Buckley commented, “Time and time again, Sununu pays lip service to the issues that impact everyday Granite Staters, but he only ever delivers for his friends, his family, and his special interest donors.”
