MANCHESTER, N.H. — Though the McIntyre Ski Area lodge was packed with Republicans on Tuesday night, there was nary a MAGA hat in sight. Another political brand emblazoned the white trucker caps that bobbed around the room instead. At around 8:30 p.m., John E. Sununu, 62, took the stage to declare his victory over Scott Brown in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate. Absent from his remarks was any mention of the president who had endorsed him in February.
Politics is something of a Sununu family business. The patriarch, John H., served as governor from 1983-89. So did his youngest son, Chris, from 2017-25. John E. tried out other offices: He was a three-term congressman before serving as senator from 2003-09. Given the likeness between the two siblings, some election-watchers have joked that voters are probably confusing a more serious John for the bubblier Chris. Bob Nash, the chairman of the Hillsborough Republican Town Committee, agreed but said that “it won’t be long before John shows that he’s not Chris.”
It might not hurt to be mistaken as the affable one. The basic facts of the race suggest the former senator faces an uphill battle. He’s running against Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas, 46, who defeated democratic socialist Karishma Manzur by 32 points. Sununu is campaigning, moreover, as a member of the ruling party led by an unpopular president who is insisting on being at the center of the GOP’s midterm strategy. “I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot,” Donald Trump told supporters at the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention this week. That won’t be much help in New Hampshire, where Kamala Harris won by nearly three points in 2024.
Pappas, who has represented the state’s 1st Congressional District since 2019, is hoping to hold a Democratic seat left open by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s decision not to run for reelection. He has good reason to be confident. The congressman reportedly has $4.3 million in cash on hand compared with Sununu’s $3 million, and the state hasn’t sent a Republican senator to Washington since it elected Kelly Ayotte in 2010. Then again, Granite State voters are often willing to split their ballots, as they did when they elected Ayotte governor by almost 10 points two years ago.
Polling so far has had Sununu in striking distance, and the RealClearPolitics average as of Friday had Pappas up two points. That’s perhaps confirmation that there’s no better place to try to buck a national trend than New Hampshire, and no better person to do it than a Sununu. That will matter in a race that will largely come down to which brand is more important: opposition to MAGA chaos or an embrace of the state’s purple-tinted independence.
Pappas’s bet is that he can hitch Sununu to Trump’s sinking ship with a touch of populism. “John Sununu has thrown his lot in with Donald Trump and supports the policies that cater to big corporations and billionaires while they make life harder for Granite Staters,” he said Tuesday. His ads get more specific: “Thirty years ago, John Sununu went to Washington with one mission: to sell out New Hampshire, and make a ton of money.” It brands the campaign as a MAGA-style Sununu “sequel.”
Democrats are using a similar playbook elsewhere, but they’ve so far not given New Hampshire as much attention as, say, Michigan or Texas. The state is still crucial to their midterm math. If the party wants to reclaim the Senate majority, it needs to flip at least four red seats while holding everything else. That might explain why big-name reinforcements like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) and Mark Kelly (Arizona) have stumped for the congressman. Kelly spoke at the AFL-CIO Labor Day breakfast in Manchester, saying someone like Pappas would put “people ahead of corporate greed.” The senator added: “We do not need more Trump yes-men in Congress.”
Yet it’s difficult to brand Sununu as a MAGA Republican. He’s adopted some populist lines, like backing term limits and asking members of Congress to “pay full price for their health care.” But on Tuesday Sununu didn’t just neglect to mention the president; he laid out policies that directly undermine parts of Trump’s economic agenda. That includes cutting tariffs on building materials to bring down the cost of housing, one of the state’s biggest issues. Like his father and brother, Sununu endorsed former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley during the 2024 presidential primaries, and even described Trump as a “loser.”
This go-around, however, he is mostly staying out of national politics — and away from national press. Sununu always seemed to have another hand to shake any time I approached him. It’s understandable: His only path to victory is to argue that he’s the best steward of the state’s local strain of politics, focused on “affordability, reform, constituent service.”
He used a different triad to describe his opponent on Tuesday: “ineffective, partisan and out-of-touch.” On ineffectiveness, he pointed to Pappas’s performance during his eight years on the transportation committee: “New Hampshire is dead last in New England in highway funding.” On partisanship, he knocked the congressman’s near-lockstep voting record with Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi: “It may be California, but it’s just not New Hampshire.”
The message is resonating with some voters. Jon Dickinson, a Republican from Portsmouth, believes that an ascendant far-left movement among Democrats could trigger some Granite Staters to think twice about risking their bastion of liberty in deep-blue New England. “Between Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts, I mean, we’re stuck,” he told me.
“I don’t think that’s the identity of New Hampshire.” Sununu’s best bet is that others will agree.
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