Chris Sununu looks to make his mark as governor

By ELLA NILSEN

Monitor staff

Published: 01-03-2017 12:45 AM

In 1983, a 10-year-old Chris Sununu stood on the ski slopes of Loon Mountain with his parents, then-governor John H. Sununu and state first lady Nancy Sununu, and five other siblings, all outfitted in puffy ski jackets, hats and goggles.

It was the elder Sununu’s first few weeks as governor, and the first family was already busy taping a television commercial to promote New Hampshire’s ski industry to the Boston and Rhode Island markets.

A photo was snapped just after taping had finished and just a few hours before a major snowstorm was set to hit New Hampshire. But the Sununus weren’t just there for the cameras.

“After the taping, the family did some skiing of its own,” a caption noted.

This blend of family time and state promotion was a hallmark of John H. Sununu’s administration, and something that Chris – now the incoming governor – experienced as a child.

“He lived through it, he saw the kinds of things I tried to do as governor,” John H. Sununu said in a recent interview.

Chris Sununu was just 10 years old when his father took office, and now he’s ready for his turn. After his inauguration Thursday, the 42-year-old Sununu will be the United States’ youngest governor and the first Republican to sit in New Hampshire’s corner office for the last 12 years.

Sununu comes from one of the state’s most prominent political families – in addition to his father’s tenure as governor and White House chief of staff, his brother John E. Sununu was also a U.S. congressman and senator.

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But Chris Sununu is determined to make his own mark.

“I want to set an example of doing it different,” he said in a recent interview. “We can work together, we can work across party lines, within our own party, with stakeholders, with the private sector, bringing everybody in. That’s not just political talk; I believe that’s how you get the best results.”

His father, for one, didn’t think his second-youngest child would become involved with politics at all. Out of his eight children, he said Chris “was one of the ones who seemed least interested in politics.”

The elder Sununu said he was very surprised when his son first ran for office, winning a seat on the Executive Council in 2010. The council is a five-person body that works with the governor to approve state contracts and confirm judges and state commissioners; Sununu’s Democratic opponent for governor this year was a fellow councilor, Colin Van Ostern of Concord.

When Chris Sununu reflects on what inspired him to run, he points to the future of his own three young children.

“You don’t run for governor because it gets you a nice office at the State House; you run for governor because you care about the future of the state,” Sununu said. “That’s for my kids, that’s really making sure the state is viable and successful and we’re solving some of these problems of today so that they want to stay and work and live.”

Preparing to be governor

Sununu has been keeping long hours in the weeks leading up to his inauguration. Many of his days are spent tucked away in a windowless, beige office on the second floor of the N.H. Department of Safety.

It’s home base for his transition team, and while Sununu and his advisers say the bland space is conducive to focusing on state business, they’re also looking forward to moving into the historic State House, where the offices have windows.

Preparing to take office is a lot of work, but Sununu said it’s preferable to campaigning.

“We’re busy, we work hard, we have long days, but I sleep well,” he said. “You’re not stressed. It doesn’t have all the emotional strain of a campaign.”

The governor-elect has been trying to keep up with family time as well. He recently took his daughter Edie skiing, tweeting out a photo of the two of them enjoying pizza at the top of Waterville Valley Ski resort, where Sununu just resigned as CEO.

At a recent ceremony dedicating a new chairlift at Cannon Mountain, Sununu took the opportunity to get a few runs in with his kids, reporting back to a crowd at base lodge that the trails were in great condition.

“In four days, I will have the honor of resigning from that other resort down the road,” he said, to some laughter. “But that comes with the honor of putting on the Cannon hat. I guess from CEO of one mountain to the CEO of another, in a way.”

A childhood in politics

Sununu’s upbringing was out of the ordinary in many respects.

He remembers childhood trips to the National Governor’s Association when both his father and Bill Clinton were governors, and spending time with Chelsea Clinton, who was a few years younger than he was.

“We’d see her every summer and we’d hang out,” Sununu said. “I just got to meet a lot of those first families in different states, which was interesting, because they had a lot of the same dynamics we did.”

He was in high school when his family moved to Virginia because his father became White House chief of staff for George H.W. Bush.

Those years brought intense media scrutiny for the elder Sununu, who later resigned from his White House post after accusations he used official military aircraft for personal trips to New Hampshire and, in one instance, to Boston to see his dentist.

Chris Sununu later recalled not being able to leave the house for school without cameras flashing and said, “I could never go into politics – no privacy,” according to the book What Really Happened to the Class of ’93, written about Sununu’s high school class and published in 2004.

But Sununu also said his childhood in New Hampshire was “surprisingly normal.” Since the state’s governor’s mansion has only two bedrooms, the Sununu family continued to live in their Salem house.

“Nothing changed,” Sununu said. “I went to North Salem public elementary school, I played Little League baseball, I did everything everybody else does. That’s kind of the benefit of being in New Hampshire, I don’t think that has changed a whole lot.”

He thinks that will remain the same for his own children. Going from ski resort CEO to governor, Sununu said he’s actually anticipating being able to carve out more regular hours for his family.

“If anything, there are times of vacation and the weekends where I can have more time with my kids, where I didn’t before,” Sununu said. “(With) my business, vacations and weekends are my peak times, that’s when I really have to work at Waterville. So in some ways, being on more of a regular schedule in tune with them is going to be a nice change for all of us.”

When Sununu spoke about his family’s political past on the campaign trail, he often remembered how his parents taught their children the importance of public service.

His older brother John E. Sununu remembers that when he was growing up, the only member of the family who held political office was their mother, Nancy – she was the chairwoman of the Salem School Board.

John E. Sununu calls that job “some of the most dynamic, challenging work in New Hampshire.”

“(It) showed in a dramatic way what kind of a difference individuals can make at the local level,” he said. “It made a difference in Salem, in our public schools.”

Former governor John H. Sununu said his son, Chris, has a lot of challenges ahead of him as he prepares to become the state’s 82nd governor, but he says the act of taking office is a way to give back to New Hampshire.

“It is the most special state,” he said.

(Ella Nilsen can be reached at 369-3322, enilsen@cmonitor.com or on Twitter
@ella_nilsen.)

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