Decision 2026: John Sununu Is The Kind of Republican America Needs. That's Just as True Today As It Was 20 years ago

 

 

There's this belief among academics, pundits and certain people on social media that because a state or region of the country has been Democratic or Republican for the past twenty or thirty years in Presidential politics or at a Congressional level that it will always be that way. This is how many on the left have viewed the South in my lifetime and its how many on the right have viewed New England. Consequently during this period the opposing party have done little to do disturb the status quo.

But it's becoming clear in this election cycle that the Democrats are going to make some real inroads in Dixie at a Senate level and perhaps even a few governorships. And if the Republicans want to move forward in a post-Trump America they'd do well to make similar efforts in New England, which honestly has been far friendlier to them for longer.

This may seem difficult to believe considering that New England not only has by far some of the most far-left Senators and Congressman in the nation such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders but the Republican Party has  no representatives at all in New England and only one Senator Susan Collins who is under immense fire for reelection this cycle and very well might not survive it.

And yet over the same era that Donald Trump has taken over much of the Republican Party New England has had Republican Governors win multiple elections during that same period. Charlie Baker would be elected governor of Massachusetts in 2014 and win reelection the same year that Elizabeth Warren easily won reelection to the Senate. Bernie Sanders became a hero to the left in 2016 the year that Phil Scott was elected governor of Vermont and has twice won reelection in years that Bernie was running for the Senate. (Vermont has two year terms for governor and Scott is heavily favored to win his fifth term this cycle.) And this election cycle with the Democrats looking increasingly like they may take the Senate Majority Democrats in New Hampshire are sounding the alarm that they might lose a Senate seat they've held for a while.

New Hampshire is by far more conservative then its neighbors in New England and actually had a Republican win election to the Senate as recently as 2010. Kelly Ayotte was the attorney general of New Hampshire who resigned in 2009 to explore a run for the Senate. Despite never having run for office she narrowly won the primary and the general election with nearly 60 percent of the vote. In doing so she succeeded Judd Gregg, another Republican who had served the people of New Hampshire for three terms.

Ayotte was running for reelection in 2016 against the incumbent Democratic governor Maggie Hassan. As early as February Americans For Prosperity made it clear they would not support her because  support for the Clean Power Act. When the Access Hollywood tape came out in October of that year Ayotte made it clear that as a mother and prosecutor she wouldn't vote for Trump and would write in Mike Pence for President. This almost certainly cost her reelection as Maggie Hassan would win election to the Senate by a little more than 1000 votes. In 2022 Hassan became the first Democrat to win reelection to that particular seat.

During that election Republican Chris Sununu would be elected governor. The Sununu family is a significant name in American politicians. John H. Sununu was once governor of New Hampshire from 1983 to 1989 and was George H.W. Bush's first White House Chief of Staff. John Edward Sununu, his son, would represent New Hampshire in the House from 1997 to 2003 and then be elected to the Senate in 2002. 38 at the time he was the youngest man elected to the Senate and he lost to Jeanne Shaheen for reelection in 2008.

By the standards of 1990s and 2000s politics John Sununu was one of the most conservative men in Congress, voting to impeach Bill Clinton, opposing abortion, favoring the death penalty and receiving a 100 percent rating from Citizens Against Government Waste. However he had a streak of independence, choosing to join the Democrats in filibustering the PATRIOT ACT and W's energy bill and voting against a constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage and restrictions of trade with Cuba. He was always more of a fiscal conservative then a social one while in Congress. He was also the co-sponsor of the Clean Air Planning Act. And he was always popular in New Hampshire: in 2008 he outperformed John McCain in New Hampshire at a state level

Jeanne Shaheen has served in the Senate ever since but in March of 2025 she announced that she would not seek reelection, having just become the oldest woman in the Senate. By this point Ayotte had won the governorship in New Hampshire after Chris Sununu chose not to seek a fifth term. Both Vermont and New Hampshire were one of two Republican governorships up for reelection in a state Biden had carried in 2020. While the race was close by 2024 standard  Ayotte beat the Democratic candidate by nearly 9.3 percent and running over Trump by 40,000 votes. With Harris getting 418,000 votes and Ayotte getting 436,000 it's clear that ticket-splitting is alive and well in New England.

New Hampshire Republicans had tried to recruit Chris Sununu to run for Senate against Shaheen in 2020 and Maggie Hassan in 2022. In 2026 they had better luck convincing his big brother to run for his old seat after Shaheen stepped down. This was enough to send New Hampshire Democrats to send up warning flares to the National Party.

With good reason. Ever since March Sununu has been polling close to the Democratic candidate Chris Pappas, usually within the margin of error and in some cases ahead of him by a slight margin.

Pappas has solid routes in New Hampshire, having been elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives right out of College, serving two terms there before being elected treasurer of Hillsborough Country before being defeated in 2010, being elected to the New Hampshire Executive Council and serving three consecutive terms there. He had been floated for Congress, the Senate and the governor ship and in 2018 he ran for the 1^st district in a crowded Democratic primary, then the general in the Blue Wave of 2018. He was reelected three consecutive times (defeating Karoline Leavitt in 2022).

As John Sununu was as a Republican Pappas was ranked the most bipartisan Democrat in 2023. He was one of six democrats to vote against the legalization of Cannabis at a federal level in 2020, criticized Biden's plan to cancel student debt and in 2025 was one of 46 House Democrats to vote for the Laken Riley Act. He's also in favor of Israel's right to defend himself and while he is in favor or Palestinian self-determination, he joined 22 of his fellow Democrats in favor of censuring prominent progressive Rashida Tlaib in 2023.

So even though he would be keeping in with the spirit of bipartisanship that marks both parties in New Hampshire he faced a challenge from his left while running for the Democratic nomination from Karishma Manzur who challenged Pappas for being two centrist while in Congress. And as was the case with the overwhelming number of left-wing challengers in the Democratic primaries Pappas easily defeated the challenger with 64 .6 percent of the vote to Manzur's 33.2,

By that point John Sununu was the heavy favorite to try and win the seat he'd lost back in 2008. He faced a challenge from Scott Brown, best known for defeating Martha Coakley in a 2010 election to fill out the term of Ted Kennedy before losing to Elizabeth Warren when he ran for election in his own right. Brown would later try to run against Jeanne Shaheen in 2014. Brown narrowly lost to Shaheen in that election and served as Ambassador to Samoa and New Zealand in Trump's first term.

Its telling that the Republican primary voters, when given a choice between their more recent history and more distant one, chose to go back to a pre-Trump era when they overwhelmingly chose John E. Sununu. 154,000 voters cast their ballots in the Democratic primary and 110,000 in the Republican one but Pappas got 65.2 percent of the vote in the former and Sununu received nearly 69 percent in the latter. Small wonder the Democrats are concerned about how well Sununu will do in the general.

It might seem counterintuitive that in a post-Trump America the GOP must go backwards rather then forward. But it's really no different then the Democratic strategy in this election: in both cases the parties must head towards the center. Sununu is far more experienced at doing so then Pappas is (even though both have impressive records for bipartisanship) but there's a good argument that Sununu is more in touch with the electorate of his state then Pappas is. He will definitely be helped by the fact that Ayotte is easily favored to win reelection as governor – though, as I've noted, this is a state noting for ticket splitting.

New Hampshire, very much like the rest of New England, has a longer history of being Republican then it ever has been Democrat. It was in the GOP's camp ever since the Party was founded, didn't go for FDR in his first term and barely did in his second. It only went Democrat in 1960 because JFK was on the ballot and went right back to the Republicans in 1968. As recently as 2000 it went Republican for George W. Bush and there's an argument that the only reason it went Democrat is because New Englander John Kerry was running as a Democrat. Even then he only carried it by a little more then 1 percent. As recently as 2004 both its Senators were Republican. It wasn't until 2016 that it had two Democratic Senators for only the second time since the Civil War.

The Republican governors of New England have always had a greater independence from Trump in large part because they are able to win in states he has been unable to do so in his three runs for the White House.  While the President has done much to increase the margins of the vote for himself that has rarely worked out as well for the candidates who have run with his endorsement and while they have made some gains in swing states at a Senatorial level (most notably in Pennsylvania) that obstacle is just as much in place the decade after he became the voice of the party as it was before.  While he was in power that wasn't an issue for the Republicans. With him a lame duck, it's about to come back.

It may be impossible at this juncture to see a Republican party where its candidates are becoming more centrist rather then even further to the right.  They may be forced to do so after this midterms and the 2028 elections but that prospect is uncertain at best. If however they can do so it will be in large part if John Sununu can manage to win in New Hampshire.  As someone who has never once been associated with Trump at any time in his political career and who seems to have no interest in being associated with him as he attempts to rebuild it there's something very attractive about that in a Republican right now.

Whether he would fit in a Senate that is under Democratic control (as is increasingly likely even if he were to win) will be hard to measure. But America needs centrists and bipartisanship far more than it ever has and a man who was one of the models for it during his original tenure in the Senate would be more than willing to show the way. Both Pappas and Sununu would be invaluable in the Senate for next several years but I think we need Republicans like Sununu far more and its why I'm more than willing to endorse him to win this cycle. He was the right man for his era 24 years ago; he's just as right for it now.