Former Sen. John E. Sununu is expected to launch a Senate comeback bid in New Hampshire this week, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the campaign-in-waiting.
Sununu has been exploring a run since September for the seat he held for a single term before being ousted by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen in 2008. Shaheen is retiring next year.
He has been in contact with the White House and is expected to visit with President Donald Trump soon, according to a senior White House official granted anonymity to disclose details.
Trump’s endorsement will be critical in the GOP primary, even though the state’s broader electorate rejected him for president in all three of his campaigns.
Sununu has long opposed Trump, serving as a national co-chair of former Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 presidential campaign and backing former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley in 2024. He penned an op-ed ahead of the state’s GOP presidential primary last year lambasting Trump as a “loser.” Trump went on to win that primary by 11 points.
Still, the scion of a prominent Republican political dynasty in the state — his father is former governor and White House chief of staff John H. Sununu; one of his brothers is former Gov. Chris Sununu — would likely give the GOP its best hope of flipping the Senate seat.
National Republicans consider Sununu to be a strong candidate. He has previously discussed a potential bid with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who he served with in the House and Senate and who he remains close to, and former Sen. Cory Gardner, the outgoing Senate Leadership Fund chair. A spokesperson for Sununu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Former Sen. Scott Brown, who represented Massachusetts before moving to New Hampshire, is already running in the GOP primary. He is not expected to step aside for Sununu and is positioning himself as the more Trump-aligned candidate of the two. Another candidate, state Sen. Dan Innis, recently ended his campaign and preemptively endorsed Sununu.
While Sununu would start as the polling front-runner in the GOP primary, he trailed Democrats’ leading contender, Rep. Chris Pappas, in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup in a recent University of New Hampshire survey.
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