After months of speculation about his political future, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu announced Tuesday that he will not run for U.S. Senate in 2022, dealing a blow to Republicans hoping to retake the chamber in the midterm election.
“My responsibility is not to the gridlock and politics of Washington, it is to the citizens of New Hampshire,” Sununu said at a press conference Tuesday. “I’d rather push myself 120 miles an hour delivering wins for New Hampshire than just slow down and end up on Capitol Hill debating partisan politics without results.”
“That’s why I’m going to run for a fourth term,” Sununu announced. “And I’d be honored if the people in New Hampshire would elect me again as their governor.”
Sununu was reportedly a top pick of many senior Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. and National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., to challenge incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., in next year’s race. Republicans saw Sununu as one of the safest bets to break the 50-50 logjam in the Senate and put Republicans back in power in the chamber.
“He’d be a great candidate,” McConnell said of Sununu to POLITICO, while Scott told the outlet that “if he runs, we’ll win.”
At a Republican gathering in Las Vegas over the weekend, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told the audience to encourage Sununu to run for the Senate seat.
“Every person here needs to come up to Chris and say, ‘Governor is great but you need to run for Senate,'” Cruz told the crowd. “Because this man could single-handedly retire Chuck Schumer as majority leader of the Senate.”
Sununu, the son of former White House Chief of Staff and New Hampshire governor John H. Sununu, was tracking ahead of Hassan in recent statewide polling of the 2022 Senate race. President Joe Biden won the state by 7 points in the 2020 election, but Sununu won re-election with a 22-point margin.
Hassan, who served as governor of the state before Sununu, narrowly defeated Republican incumbent Sen. Kelly Ayotte in 2016. Ayotte could be a potential challenger to Hassan in the 2022 midterm.
Hassan, alonside her counterpart Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, another former N.H. governor, are the only two women in American history to be elected to both the U.S. Senate and as governor.
Meanwhile, former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, indicated to New Hampshire ABC affiliate WMUR that he is not interested in running for the seat, instead focusing on his wife Gail Huff Brown’s bid to represent the state’s 1st congressional district in 2022.
“I’m really just focusing on Gail right now,” the former U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa told WMUR. “She has a real shot to be the next Congresswoman from the 1st district. So, I don’t think so, unless something traumatic happens. I don’t think it’s fair to her.”
“But someone should run against Maggie Hassan,” he continued, slamming the Democratic lawmaker’s support of President Biden’s economic agenda.
“You never say never to something, but I really don’t have much interest in doing it right now,” he added.
Brown previously ran for Senate in New Hampshire in 2014, but lost to Shaheen. He won a special election in Massachusetts in 2010 to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy after his death in 2009, but was defeated by Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2012.
