The Republican Who's Thriving Despite Calling Trump 'F-King Crazy'
The Republican Who's Thriving Despite Calling Trump 'F-King Crazy' https://digitalalaskanews.com/the-republican-whos-thriving-despite-calling-trump-f-king-crazy/
ALTON, N.H. — On a sparkling September Friday, seven weeks out from election day, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu is on the trail — literally. We’re shuffling our way down the slope of Mount Major when a retired couple stops him to chat. The governor greets them playfully. “You! I know you — no, just kidding, I’m Chris,” Sununu teases as he extends a hand.
Clad in trail sneakers, gray cargo pants, and a steel-blue button-down cut from moisture-wicking cloth, his sandy gray hair matted to his head, Sununu has the overall aesthetic of a Granite State mascot, if that mascot were a middle-aged dad. “I’m obsessed with this place,” Sununu says of New Hampshire. That morning, he’d debuted a song on local radio, written to the tune of Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere,” that listed towns in the state. This home-state obsession is why Washington Republicans were so eager to recruit the three-term governor to run for Senate against Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassan. It’s also chief among the reasons why he demurred.
The couple on Mount Major, recent transplants from Minnesota, offers high praise of their new home. They’d moved east to be closer to adult children in New York and New Jersey — “we didn’t want to live in either of those places,” the wife says. Sununu is selling her on the state’s new tax exemptions for retirees when she turns the conversation to the man who three days earlier won the GOP Senate nomination Sununu had passed up: retired Army general Don Bolduc, a MAGA-style Republican who is everything Sununu is not. Bolduc falsely claimed Donald Trump won the 2020 election, called to abolish the FBI in the wake of the search of the former president’s home, implied that masks may actually cause the coronavirus, and voiced conspiracy theories about Covid vaccines. “The only chip that’s going in me is a Dorito,” Bolduc has vowed.
To Sununu, who took Covid more seriously than most of his GOP peers and knows Biden won fair and square, Bolduc amounted to a “conspiracy theory extremist” and “not a serious candidate,” he said on a local radio show ahead of the primary. (Bolduc responded in kind, deeming Sununu a “communist sympathizer” whose family “supports terrorism.”) But by the Thursday after the primary, Bolduc retreated from some of his more outlandish statements, admitting on Fox News that “the election was not stolen.” At the GOP unity breakfast later that morning, Sununu gave Bolduc a hug. (“I’m not gonna speak on why Don changed his tune, but he understands it wasn’t stolen, and that’s great,” Sununu told me later that Friday.)
Now, as the retired couple listens, Sununu’s trying to sell them on the candidate he’d once spurned. “You know — he’s an interesting cat,” he says. “Give him 60 days. We’ll see if he can grow on us a little bit.” For the hikers, it’s an emphatic “no.” Sununu chuckles. “Well, at least I tried.”
Sununu occupies a rare corner of the modern Republican Party: He’s a hardcore libertarian who has eschewed most of his party’s culture wars and, occasionally, Donald Trump — all the while avoiding the RINO label that plagues others who dare to do so. He often finds himself ranked near the the top of “Most Popular Governors” lists and election watchers have deemed his chances of winning a fourth term as almost certain. Sununu looks like he’s cracked the code on how to be in Trump’s Republican Party without being a Trump Republican. His endorsement of Bolduc and other MAGA candidates, however, throws that independent streak into question. How deftly he’s been able to traverse the chasm that’s swallowed other conservative lawmakers who refused to bend a knee to the former president has raised Sununu’s prospects beyond New Hampshire. The question at the center of his political trajectory is whether he can hold his purchase.
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I had proposed the hike; Sununu, who’d completed the Appalachian Trail in his youth, had selected Mount Major and the steep route up the side of the mountain for our ascent. An hour earlier, we were scrambling over a stretch of boulders on our climb upward when I asked Sununu if he had any regrets about passing up the Senate race.
“Oh dear God no — are you kidding me?” Sununu huffs as we climb. “I thank my lucky stars every day that I didn’t get conned into that nonsense.”
Disdain for “that nonsense” — known to James Buchanan as the world’s greatest deliberative body — had been near the top of the list. “The U.S. Senate is the B team, compared to governors,” Sununu said. “Can you honestly tell me if we got rid of every U.S. senator and replaced them with 100 randomly chosen, employed American adults that it would get worse?” Disdain for Washington was a close second. “It’s just a bubble, and you’re talking to your own echo chambers, convincing yourself of this non-reality,” Sununu says.
Among those stuck in the “non-reality”: Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) and his 15-week abortion ban (“Lindsey, Lindsey, Lindsey — God, he’s so disconnected”), as well as Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and his attempt at a 2022 agenda for Senate candidates (“The one with the tax hikes in it? That’s not gonna fly.”). I counter that Scott at least attempted to chart a vision, something Sununu had accused Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) of failing to do — let’s give him an at bat? “Sure, I’ll give him an at bat,” Sununu concedes. “Unfortunately, he got hit by a pitch.”
Sununu, who is 47, delivers these criticisms with an ebullience that nearly undermines the insult. The self-described “joyful warrior” who “likes to wink and smile at people” speaks with a buoyant New Hampshire accent. The overall effect is part eagerness, of part wry sarcasm. He’s the sort of person who can call Trump “fucking crazy” at a white-tie dinner in Washington one night, assure people it was only part of a roast the following day, and leave you uncertain of exactly where the truth lies. “He doesn’t take himself too seriously, but he’s very firm in his beliefs,” says Marga Patterson, who anchors a morning radio show Sununu occasionally guest hosts.
The governor is the seventh of eight children and was in high school when his family dragged him along on the move to Washington, when his father, New Hampshire Governor John T. Sununu, took a job as George H.W. Bush’s first chief of staff. His adolescent protests then echoed his rejection of the Beltway now: “No, I’m not going — I don’t care what you say, I’m not doing this,” he recalls telling them. He came back north to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, did a stint as a hazardous waste engineer in San Francisco, then came back east to take up the family businesses: First, managing their ski resort in Waterville Valley, and, later, running for office. (Chris’ older brother, John Jr., served one term as a U.S. senator.)
As we near the summit, the sharp slopes and dense forest, revealing just the earliest tinge of autumn foliage, give way to a flat trail and sweeping views of Lake Winnipesaukee. It’s at that point Sununu admits there was a moment, at the end of his extended Senate tease, when he nearly stomached the thought of going to Washington after all. The idea of being the “51st senator” appealed to him — of joining a narrow Senate Republican majority and holding forth as the GOP’s answer to Joe Manchin. “There was a lot of talk of that,” Sununu recalls. “I had U.S. senators saying, ‘I wish I could rock that boat, but that time has passed for me.’”
Indeed, Sununu is an ideological oddity among national Republicans with all the markings of caucus wrecker. The self-described “rational conservative” takes a “Live Free or Die” attitude to politics: “Low taxes, limited government, local control, and individual liberty,” he explains. Even so, he bucks fellow libertarians with his opposition marijuana legalization; he cites unsettled data on whether making the drug accessible improves or worsens the opioid crisis, which has hit New Hampshire particularly hard. “I’m pro-choice,” he says, criticizing his state’s 24-week abortion ban for not including exceptions for rape and incest. As for the GOP’s embrace of “parents’ rights,” Sununu likes it — “but you know, kids matter, too, and that’s inherently the balance.”
“The concept of a big government Republican — which I hate — telling a town, ‘Well, you didn’t do it the way I wanted you to do it, so I’m going to pass a state law that takes away your ability to make that choice’ — that’s cancel culture,” Sununu explains. It sounds a lot like a sideways critique of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has built his national brand on the very action he claims to dislike. Sununu only praises the governor by name — save for the Martha’s Vineyard stunt, which he described as a poor use of taxpayer’s money. (He later endorsed DeSantis’ tactic on local news, saying that “anything we can do to bring national awareness to [immigration] has to be done.”)
To critics, Sununu’s account of his politics don’t hold water next to his record. Sununu, after all, signed that abortion ban into law as part of the state budget last year. Though he refers to his views as “pro-choice” in conversation with me, he boasted that he had “done more on the ‘pro-life’ issue than anyone” on a conservative podcast last year. Half of the governor’s diversity and inclusion council resigned when, as part of that state budget, Sununu enacted a bill that curbed what could be taught about racism and sexism in New Hampshire schools. Tom Sherman, the Democratic state senator running against Sununu, burst into laughter when I relayed Sununu had described himself as a “hydro guy” and “wind guy.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, noting vetoes Sununu issued on bills that would have decreased reliance on fossil fuels. “The top issues are freedom of choice and energy co...
