MANCHESTER, NH — Republicans in close midterm contests nationwide are putting distance between themselves and President Donald Trump. In New Hampshire, John Sununu has another sell: It’ll all be over soon.
“Lots of people would like to make this about the president. The president is going to be out of office in two years,” Sununu said at a candidate forum Wednesday morning in Manchester. “This is about what comes next. Where does our country go? Who are the leaders? What’s the tone? What’s the temperament? What are the priorities?”
That afternoon, sharing the debate stage with Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas, Sununu returned to the theme in his closing statement.
“Chris would like this election to be about Donald Trump. But this Senate election is about the future. Not the next year, not the next six years, but the long-term future of the country,” the Republican former senator said before reprising his point about the time until the president leaves the White House.
Sununu, a member of New Hampshire’s most prominent political family — both his father and brother were governors — served in both chambers of Congress before leaving for the private sector.
Pappas and Sununu on the debate stage in Salem. (Spectrum News)
Mounting a political return, he earned Trump’s endorsement in February. At the time, the president wrote in a Truth Social post that Sununu would “work tirelessly to advance our America First Agenda.”
But over the course of two debates and a candidate forum this week, the Republican nominee seemed to repudiate some of that agenda’s underlying policies and sought to cast aside its author.
The 62-year-old criticized Trump’s tariffs as raising building costs, emphasized his opposition to fighting a war with Iran “without a very clear plan for keeping the straits open,” and said he would “look at articles of impeachment” and “consider them seriously,” should they be brought against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Pappas parried Sununu’s thrust to the political center with a reminder to the audience.
“This is about who will be independent for New Hampshire,” the Democrat said. “Donald Trump has given John Sununu his complete and total endorsement in this campaign, and he’s backed it up with his allies with tens and tens of millions of dollars of attack ads on your screens.”
To be sure, millions of dollars have flowed in the other direction, too, and Sununu spent plenty of time labeling Pappas a career politician and a Democratic partisan out of step with New Hampshire’s independent politics.
That is to be expected.
His effort to move voters’ gaze past the current White House, however, is distinct from what other Republicans in tough races this cycle have said to shed their association with a president whose approval rating is hovering in the mid-30s.
Next door in Maine, Sen. Susan Collins, facing a tough challenge from Democrat Troy Jackson, recently remarked of the president: “I’m not exactly his favorite senator.”
Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers disagreed with Trump over the administration’s moves to import diesel from Russia, according to reporting from Politico.
Sununu, however, stands out for a message that asks voters not just to see the space between him and Trump, but also to look ahead to when the president is no longer atop the party.