The most important thing for a governor or president to do is protect their people in a disaster, like our COVID pandemic. Now, hoping that most of the deaths are behind us, let’s compare our governor with Florida’s in regard to the actual death rates in their states. Both were governors for the whole pandemic and both are possible presidential candidates. Of the 4 most populous states, the highest incidence (deaths/100,000) is Florida. It ranks #1 ahead of New York, Texas and California. California has the most deaths, but has by far the largest population, so the incidence ranked very low. All governors in early 2020 promoted public measures except Florida. Gov. DeSantis’s plan was to bring on the sunshine (remember promoting spring break while NYC had spiraling deaths).
In comparison, our governor’s rate was about half of DeSantis’s, but NH doesn’t have the big cities. However our rate is still higher than Maine which has the same population and significantly higher than Vermont. Sununu’s record on deaths is better than the national average while DeSantis’s record is much worse. Based on Florida’s clear-cut data I would propose changing their governor’s surname from DeSantis (meaning of holiness) to DeMortis (meaning of death). If you want a president to protect public health and your safety Sununu was better than average, but worse than Maine and Vermont, but nothing like dead last Gov. DeMortis. By the way, of all 50 states, no mater of what size, the highest death rate was Arizona. So much for sunshine.
Nick Perencevich
Concord