Republican Chris Sununu is OUT for 2024: New Hampshire says he WON’T run for president, Trump has no chance of beating Biden and other GOP contenders are auditioning to be VP
- The sitting governor said the stakes were ‘too high’
- Said he can be more effective working against Trump as governor
- N.J. Gov. Chris Christie is expected to announce his run here Tuesday
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu announced Monday he will stay out of the increasingly crowded Republican presidential primary – saying former President Donald Trump can’t win and cautioning other contenders not to enable him.
‘The stakes are too high for a crowded field to hand the nomination to a candidate who earns just 35 percent of the vote, and I will help ensure this does not happen,’ he wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post, in a reference to Trump’s seeming lock on a base chunk of GOP voters.
Sununu, who has been critical of Trump in a series of TV interviews, including on CNN, said his party was on a ‘collision course toward electoral irrelevance,’ citing defeats in 2020 and disappointments in off-year elections.
He delivered much of his criticism not at Trump but at the bevy of people running to challenge him – with a number that could grow to a dozen this week.
He spoke on a day when former Vice President Mike Pence filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to run after riding a motorcycle at an Iowa political event over the weekend, hours after former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley held a CNN town hall where she didn’t aggressively target Trump, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was making his own preparations to run with an event expected at St. Anselm College Tuesday.
Staying out: New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said he won’t run for president in 2024, and warned of the risks of a crowded field handing the nomination to former President Donald Trump
Sununu argued that by diluting opposition, these figures could allow Trump to walk back into the nomination.
‘We must not be complacent, and candidates should not get into this race to further a vanity campaign, to sell books or to audition to serve as Donald Trump’s vice president,’ he said.
‘No one can stop candidates from entering this race, but candidates with no path to victory must have the discipline to get out,’ he said.
Sununu himself faced the prospect of underperforming in his own state in a divided field had he decided to run in 2024. Trump was at 42 per cent in an April University of New Hampshire poll, with Ron DeSantis at 22 and Sununu at 12 – 30 points behind his rival.
In that same survey, just a third (35%) said Sununu should definitely or probably run for president, while a majority said he shouldn’t. The poll also showed 56% of Trump backers naming Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as their second choice, giving him prospects in the state.
Sununu, whose father served as governor and White House Chief of Staff under Geroge H.W. Bush and whose brother served in the Senate, has prominently challenged Trump’s claims about January 6, and called perpetrators ‘domestic terrorists.’
He has also kept his name in the mix as a potential presidential contender, attending the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner and speaking at a Gridiron dinner event in D.C.
Donald Trump Jr. ripped the development on Twitter.
‘The establishment RINOs are desperate to stop Trump & destroy the America First movement. These globalist politicians want to return the GOP to being the party of George Bush, Mitt Romney & Paul Ryan, but we’re not going to let them win. We’re going to Make America Great Again!’ he wrote.
