There’s an increasingly central question in these midterms, one that I talked about on The Daily today: Is it possible, in the year 2026, for Republicans to credibly distance themselves from President Trump?
The president has remade his party. Many of the people who represent what came before him have been run out of the G.O.P. by the base or by Trump himself. He has demanded total loyalty from those who remain.
But there’s a pair of Republican candidates in purple Maine and New Hampshire — Senator Susan Collins and former Senator John E. Sununu — whose success depends on voters’ willingness to see them as independent of the president. Over the last couple of months, as the national climate has soured for their party, some candidates in red states have begun to emulate them.
Yesterday, I traveled to Rye, N.H., to talk with Sununu, who served in the Senate from 2003 to 2009. He’s running against Representative Chris Pappas, a Democrat, in an effort to reclaim his old seat. While Pappas leads in polling, Sununu appears to be running more competitively than the last couple of Republicans who have tried to win Senate seats there.
Here’s an edited excerpt from our interview.
Jess: Your father, John H. Sununu, was a governor of New Hampshire. So was your brother, Chris Sununu. Your family has a specific kind of political brand — a pre-Trump political brand. Do you think that has helped you differentiate yourself from the president?
Sununu: Sure. Look, I think it helps that I have a reputation for standing up for what I believe in, supporting candidates I believe in. In presidential primaries, I supported candidates that were friends, or that I believed in — that I thought were right for the country. My legislative record, never hesitating to take on President Bush or take on my party when I was in service — I think all of those things reinforce a reputation for independence and for directness and honesty.
I have a brother. Is it annoying when your opponents say that voters think that you are your brother?
It just makes no sense because voters absolutely know who I am. Your colleague was with me at the Deerfield Fair. I had 12- and 14-year-old kids yelling out, “John Sununu!” They saw it. Your newspaper knows fully, there’s no confusion. And again, if that’s what the opposition thinks is a winning campaign strategy, it’s because Chris Pappas has attempted very little, accomplished even less, and doesn’t have anything else to run on.
Now, there’s one thing you talk about that —
And sorry to be — I have four brothers. I have four brothers, three sisters.
Let’s not do other brother erasure. Or sister erasure, while we’re at it!
Now, there’s something you talk about that I don’t hear a lot of Republicans talking about, and I cover races all over the country. You talk about how in two years President Trump will be out of office. Why?
Because that’s what a Senate seat is really about. The Senate’s designed to look far forward to have stability, six-year terms. So it’s important that voters, you know, realize the nature of this election, the nature of this seat, and the kinds of things that I’m going to prioritize. I want to prioritize things that don’t necessarily happen in six months, but that if we work hard, we can accomplish in three or four or five years.
What do you think the Republican Party should look like after Trump leaves office in those two years?
I’m worried about the next seven days and winning this election. But I’ll be happy to talk to you about that after the election.
Do you want to be part of shaping its future?
Absolutely.
A Times Exclusive
How Democrats stacked Alaska’s ballot
There are two Republicans named Dan Sullivan running for the Senate in Alaska. A Times investigation found operatives aligned with the campaign of Mary Peltola, the Democratic candidate, were involved in the recruitment of the second Dan Sullivan — a retired teacher from a tiny fishing village — to run for the seat.
The effort was broader than just Sullivan, working to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, my colleague Kellen Browning reports. His article is based on interviews with a dozen people, including Peltola’s former campaign manager and longtime aide Elisa Rios, as well as dozens of text messages.
Here’s what the investigation found:
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Washington’s role: Rios said aides with the D.S.C.C., which directs Democrats’ campaign strategy for Senate races, introduced Peltola advisers to an operative from the Midwest. He would go on to traverse Alaska, using a fake name as he tried to recruit candidates, including the second Dan Sullivan.
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Sullivan’s motives: According to Rios, the second Sullivan told that operative that “he hated Trump, and if it was going to help Mary, he liked Mary.” Sullivan, a longtime supporter of Democrats, registered as a Republican just before the deadline to run.
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The other Republican: The fourth candidate on the Alaska Senate ballot, a drywall contractor named Gerald Heikes, also said he was recruited to run for Senate “by a guy from the Midwest.” But Heikes could not remember the man’s name, and did not think he resembled a photo of the Midwestern operative.
Both the Peltola campaign and the D.S.C.C. denied participating in efforts to recruit spoilers to the ballot. The operative from the Midwest did not respond to repeated requests for comment, and in recent days removed his LinkedIn profile from public view.
Trump, who had already directed the Justice Department to try to block the certification of the Alaska Senate race, wrote on social media today that “Mary Peltola should suffer the Legal and Political consequences for what she has done.” (Kellen’s story notes that ballot-stacking tactics are generally considered legal.)
What We’re Watching
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Former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris are both headed to Georgia. Polls show Senator Jon Ossoff, the Democratic incumbent there, with a lead. But Keisha Lance Bottoms, the party’s candidate for governor, appears to be in a much closer race.
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Trump is in Ohio, his third trip to the state this month, to boost Senator Jon Husted and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are trying to keep a Senate seat and the governor’s mansion under Republican control.
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In New Hampshire, Pappas and Sununu are holding a debate tonight. I’ll have a takeaway or two in tomorrow’s newsletter.
Poll Watch
The Times and Siena University are out with new polls today in South Carolina, Minnesota and Florida. We asked Ruth Igielnik, an editor on our polling team, to explain the findings.
A South Carolina shake-up
Democrats are rapidly expanding the map in the race for the Senate, and nowhere is that more clear than in South Carolina. Two years ago, Trump won the state by nearly 18 percentage points. This year, our poll found, the Senate race there appears even.
Senator Darline Graham — who is running for the seat that her brother, Lindsey Graham, held until his death in July — is effectively tied with Dr. Annie Andrews, the Democrat, at 48 percent each.
The poll suggests that is partially because voters in the state are worried about Graham’s experience, as the chart below shows:
Minnesota is not moving
On the other end of the map, Democrats had been worried Peggy Flanagan, their nominee for Senate in reliably blue Minnesota, could be in trouble, as the Republican Michele Tafoya tried to make the race about fraud in the state government. That’s not the case in our poll, which found Flanagan ahead by double digits.
Flanagan leads on every measure in the poll — including, by 8 points, whom voters most trust to handle immigration, an issue that typically favors Republicans.
Florida is closer than expected
Somewhere in the middle there’s Florida. In our poll, Republicans are ahead in both the Senate race and the governor’s race, though by narrower margins than they might hope.
The governor’s race, in particular, is close. Byron Donalds, the Republican, is ahead of his Democratic opponent, David Jolly, by only four percentage points — an unexpected finding in a state that the president won by 13 points in 2024.
Quote of the Day
“The most important race in this country is Bo French as Railroad Commissioner.”
That was Steve Bannon, discussing a statewide race in Texas that has become a lightning rod.
Bo French, the Republican nominee, set off a firestorm when he posted a photo that appeared to show students of South Asian descent at a University of Texas football game and wrote, “The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”
French has a history of bigoted comments, but figures like Bannon have rallied around him. Joe Straus, a Republican former speaker of the Texas House, said the race for Railroad Commissioner — which oversees oil and gas regulation in the state — would serve as a test of tribalism: “Are people so loyal to the Republican Party, which hasn’t lost a statewide election in decades, that they’ll support a known racist?”
ONE LAST THING
Yes, we’re six days out from a huge election.
But tonight, I want to leave you with this: The strip club king of Tampa has died.
Joe Redner helped make his city a hotbed for adult entertainment. And his commitment to the right to bare all took him deep into law libraries and into politics (and got him arrested some 150 times, by his estimate, often alongside his dancers). He became an advocate for women’s rights, gay rights and civil liberties broadly.
And at public hearings, he liked to point out which local pols visited his best-known venue, the Mons Venus.
“They say the golf club is where deals get made,” he said. Shaking his head, he added: “It’s the Mons.”
Ruth Igielnik, Taylor Robinson and Luke Caramanico contributed to this newsletter.
The post He Predates Trump. Will He Be There After? appeared first on New York Times.
