‘WE’RE MOVING ON’
Sununu predicts Trump won’t win 2024 nomination
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, himself considered a possible candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, predicted Sunday in no uncertain terms that former President Donald Trump won’t win.
“Thank you for your service, we’re moving on,” Sununu said.
The leader of the “live free or die” state was speaking with Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday when the fourth term governor predicted former President Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee in 2024.
“I just don’t believe the Republican party is going to say that the best leadership for America tomorrow is yesterday’s leadership; that doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
Trump “is not going to be the nominee, that just isn’t going to happen,” according to Sununu.
Sununu’s supposition is at odds with polling, where the former president is currently leading among Republican hopefuls, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis often cited as a distant second.
A recent Harvard survey seemed to indicate the former commander-in-chief would win the Republican nod regardless of who is running or how many contenders there are and theoretically go on to beat President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.
Sununu’s prediction is also at odds with attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where this weekend a straw poll showed Trump holding support by wide margins.
So far, among well known candidates, only Trump and former U.N. Ambassador
Nikki Haley have officially declared their intentions towards the White House, though both DeSantis and Sununu have broadly signaled their own ambitions towards the nation’s highest office.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Michigan businessman Perry Johnson have also announced presidential bids.
The quickly growing field may explain Sununu’s appearance on the Sunday shows this weekend and for most of February’s Sundays, as he and the rest of the party’s hopefuls begin the process of building national name recognition ahead of a potentially crowded list of candidates, all of whom will all have to vie for the attention that Trump has so successfully held for the last eight years.
“I think there is a lot of opportunity to bring forward what the Republican party, not what we were, not yesterday’s leadership or yesterday’s story or crying about what happened in November of ‘22, but what we are going to bring to the table and get done tomorrow,” Sununu said Sunday.
However, according to New Hampshire’s governor, it would be Florida’s chief executive, DeSantis, not Sununu or Trump, winning the state’s primary if it were held immediately.
“Right now, if the election were today, Ron DeSantis would win in New Hampshire. There’s no doubt about that in my mind,” he said.
That prediction did not stop Sununu from launching a national fundraising organization earlier in February, created with the ostensible purpose of talking “about the model that New Hampshire has,” but more likely as a bid to feel out donors for 2024.
Sununu’s ambitions have been particularly popular in his home state, where the first primaries will be held. According to polling the governor’s approval numbers have jumped from +13% to +36% since rumors of a run began.
“Currently, 66% of New Hampshire residents approve of Governor Sununu’s job performance, 30% disapprove, and 5% neither approve, disapprove or don’t know,” pollsters at the University of New Hampshire Survey Center said in late February.
As of now that’s not enough to win the primary, according to UNH political science Professor Dante Scala.
“Polling shows DeSantis with the edge here,” he told the Herald. “The more interesting question is what happens to DeSantis if a third strong candidate — maybe Sununu, maybe someone else — emerges.”
Another much rumored potential candidate, outspoken Trump critic and former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, announced Sunday he would not seek the nomination and would instead clear the field, since, he said in a statement, “the stakes are too high for me to risk being part of another multicar pileup that could potentially help Mr. Trump recapture the nomination.”
“I have long said that I care more about ensuring a future for the Republican
Party than securing my own future in the Republican Party. And that is why I will not be seeking the Republican nomination for president,” Hogan’s statement reads, in part.