Saying he’s had “tremendous success” in his first year and a half in office, Gov. Chris Sununu filed for re-election on Thursday.
“We’ve been incredibly successful. In just 18 months we’ve been able to achieve not just a balanced budget and cutting taxes and instituting full-day kindergarten and returning money to property taxpayers and investing in clean water, investing in quality health care,” the governor touted as he spoke with reporters after officially filing his candidacy.
And a confident Sununu vowed that “we’re going to continue that success over the next two years.”
Sununu also took aim at the two Democratic candidates running to challenge him in November, claiming that “the Democrats are running as far left as they can. They’re talking about raising taxes. They’re talking about increasing government. That is not the New Hampshire way.”
With less than five months to go until the election, Sununu appears to be in a favorable position. His most recent approval rating among Granite Staters stood at 65 percent in a Saint Anselm College poll and 59 percent in a University of New Hampshire survey.
By a 51-36 margin in the Saint Anselm poll, Granite Staters said Sununu deserved to be re-elected rather than give someone new a chance in the corner office. And both surveys indicated that nearly three-quarters didn’t know enough about either of the two Democratic candidates to form an opinion.
Those two candidates, former Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand and former state Sen. Molly Kelly of Harrisville, along with the New Hampshire Democratic Party, have been relentless in tying Sununu to President Donald Trump and his administration. Anger over Trump’s actions as president has energized Democrats in New Hampshire and across the country and the party is hoping for a blue wave in the midterms to topple Republicans nationwide.
After filing earlier in the day, Marchand charged that Sununu’s “been to the White House more than any governor in America over the last year-plus that he’s been the governor.”
“There’s been so many times where he’s either agreed with President Trump and the folks in Congress or he has been silent. And I think that at a time when the rhetoric about everything from immigration to our relationships with our most important partners in the world to the unfairness in the economy, silence is complicity,” Marchand added. “And I feel like Gov. Sununu too often has been silent at a time when more than ever we need people speaking up.”
Kelly plans to file her candidacy on Friday.
In a statement Thursday, Kelly charged that “Sununu is pushing Donald Trump’s agenda.”
“He’s welcomed Trump, Mike Pence, Betsy DeVos and Scott Pruitt to our state, and time and time again he’s refused to call out Trump – even after the Access Hollywood tape. The Governor has failed put New Hampshire’s best interests ahead of loyalty to President Trump,” she added.
Asked by the Monitor about that criticism and the Democrats’ strategy of linking him to Trump, Sununu answered “I’m really not paying attention to my opponents and I don’t think the rest of state is either.”
And in an interview later in the day with the Monitor and WKXL Radio, Sununu touted “I’m one of the most popular governors in the country and I haven’t even started campaigning on all the success we’ve had yet.”
“We’re going to run on success,” he said. “We’re going to run on reality. We’re going to run results. They’re (the Democrats) are going to run on Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, as if that’s a viable message. It’s not.”
Sununu – the state’s first GOP governor in a dozen years, also has history on his side. Only one incumbent governor has failed to win re-election to a second two-year term in the past nine decades. That dubious honor goes to Republican Gov. Craig Benson, who lost his 2004 re-election bid to Democratic challenger John Lynch.
Sununu faced a complicated 2018 legislative session compared with last year, when the vast majority of his agenda was passed by the GOP-dominated state Senate and House.
With bills dealing with explosive issues like voting eligibility, educational savings accounts, Medicaid expansion, family leave, and a proposed constitutional amendment giving crime victims’ rights equal to those of alleged perpetrators – the session was packed with legislative landmines jam-packed with political consequences.
While he enjoyed victories – such as Medicaid Expansion and striking a deal with the state’s hospital to resolve multiple lawsuits over payments – earlier this spring two of those landmines exploded.
The governor was a major proponent and top cheerleader for the victims’ rights constitutional amendment, known as Marsy’s Law. While the measure sailed through the state Senate earlier this year, it was killed by an overwhelming 284-51 margin in the House. In a stinging defeat for Sununu, only 11 Republicans in the House voted for the amendment.
A few weeks later, a school choice bill that the governor championed was twice narrowly rejected by the House.
The legislation (Senate Bill 193), which Sununu had pushed for since campaigning for governor during the 2016 election, would have set up a voucher-like system – allowing families who remove their kids from public schools to be able to put state money into an education savings account to spend on alternative education such as private or home schooling.
Another item the governor pushed for, such as tax credits for first-time homebuyers was sidetracked.