For his first visit after the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump has decided to come to New Hampshire and visit his good friend, Gov. Chris Sununu, who proudly proclaims himself a “Trump guy through and through.”
Sununu was already willing to put lives at risk in July when Trump was scheduled for a rally in Portsmouth. Right-to-know requests showed he sidelined his own public health experts by letting the Trump campaign set its own rules for a potential superspreader event in Portsmouth. When that event was postponed, Sununu didn’t enact a policy to help safeguard the state. He has continued to drag his feet and failed to implement a mask mandate despite every one of our neighbors doing so.
This week, Trump is again endangering New Hampshire residents, and Sununu knows it. In fact, when asked if he would attend the rally on Friday, Sununu admitted he would not because he doesn’t want to be in a “large crowd.” He also refused to say how he would enforce his own 100-plus person event mask mandate.
New Hampshire is a free-thinking, independent state. Our protection of free will is unlike anywhere else in the nation. But our governor has continually made it clear that he is uninterested in doing his job. He has failed to hold Trump accountable for his catastrophic COVID leadership. Much like Trump, Sununu’s failure to develop concrete national plans to scale testing and contact tracing harms us at the local level.
He, like Trump, has left our state’s teachers, school administrators, students, and parents in the dark after having more than 5 months to plan for back-to-school protocol. The truth is, Chris Sununu wants New Hampshire to function just like his friend Donald Trump’s administration. Sununu took a $31,000 raise for himself while blocking a bill to increase the pathetic $7.25 minimum wage for hard-working Granite Staters. He has failed to have an adequate school reopening plan. He has given no-bid contracts to his allies during the pandemic. He continues to nominate far-right, anti-choice judges like Gordon MacDonald to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, a nomination I successfully led the opposition to on the Executive Council. He appointed Frank Edelblut, New Hampshire’s own version of Betsy DeVos, to further dismantle public education in the state and push privatization. Does any of this sound familiar?
In a week where we have seen cataclysmic wildfires in California, dual hurricanes in the Gulf, and a report that 20% of our own state is now in a “severe drought,” it is also clear that we are in a climate emergency that our governor is uninterested in fighting.
New Hampshire is one of the most beautiful states in the nation, but our fishing, farming, forestry, and tourism industries are all imperiled by the threat of climate change. On this issue, too, Sununu is in lockstep with Trump in climate denying and fealty to fossil fuel interests. He has taken hundreds of thousands from corporate interests like Eversource and Liberty Utilities to push the interests of the fossil-fuel industry at the expense of our air and water. He supported the Granite Bridge pipeline project and has stood in the way of high-growth sectors like solar and renewable energy from creating jobs and financial opportunity here in our state. In short, Sununu cares more about protecting his corporate contributors than he does about protecting you and me.
Over the past several months, I’ve heard many Granite Staters tell me, “Sununu isn’t so bad; he’s better than Trump.” But, let’s be clear – he is in lockstep with Trump. Sununu’s blueprint is exactly the same as Trump’s and New Hampshire must do better. We cannot afford another two years of the Trump/Sununu agenda.
The reason I am running for governor is because we have a COVID crisis, a racial justice crisis, a school funding crisis, an economic crisis, and a climate crisis. In order to move New Hampshire forward, we need bold solutions and courageous leadership. We need leadership that challenges our president when he’s dismantling environmental regulations, pushing school vouchers, or making offensive racial remarks, all of which impacts New Hampshire.
We need to confront the hard truth that New Hampshire’s future under Trump/Sununu would take us back further from the progress we need. We need to stand on the right side of history for our children and planet’s sake.
(Andru Volinsky is executive councilor for District 2 and a candidate for governor.)