An assertive Gov. Chris Sununu – on the presidential campaign trail this week – was unapologetic about New Hampshire’s move to keep its presidential primary first in the nation.

“Yes, we are first,” Sununu boasted. “Suck it, South Carolina.”

New Hampshire’s Republican governor exhibited a bit of political brashness as he introduced Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a rally in Manchester hosted by Never Back Down, the GOP presidential candidate’s aligned super PAC.

Sununu said New Hampshire will once again retain its first-in-the-nation presidential primary position, even though the Democratic National Committee tried to place the Granite State second, after South Carolina.

The governor was the busiest politician on the presidential campaign trail in New Hampshire this week, and he’s not even running for the White House.

Sununu teamed up on Monday afternoon with former ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at a town hall in Hooksett. Hours later he joined former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who’s making his second bid for the GOP presidential nomination, at a town hall in Nashua. And on Tuesday afternoon he teamed up with DeSantis.

The governor said he’ll endorse one of those three candidates when he decides on whom he’ll back in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race sometime after Thanksgiving.

Two weeks ago, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa – whose caucuses lead off the GOP presidential nominating calendar – endorsed DeSantis. And this past weekend, Reynolds joined DeSantis at multiple stops on the Hawkeye State campaign trail.

Sununu said his endorsement would also be much more than just a one-day announcement.

“That’s the fun part. Are you kidding? I’m not going to do an endorsement and sit on my hands. When I do an endorsement, it’s going to be a six-, seven-, eight-, nine-week push, whatever it is, to really make sure folks know where we are. I tend to not leave anything on the table,” he said.

Sununu, who’s won four two-year terms as Granite State governor, said he’d help whichever candidate he backed “put together a ground game. I think we know how to do it pretty well here.”

But he’s also tempered expectations that his endorsement might move the needle in the Granite State, saying last month that “I’m never a big believer that endorsements matter as much as the press think they do.”

He downplayed the idea of serving in a potential Haley, DeSantis or Christie cabinet.

“I don’t need anything out of Washington,” he said. “I just want a great candidate and a great president, and I think there’s a huge opportunity for that. No, nothing for me. I’m ready to go get a real job.”

The governor, who flirted with a White House run of his own before announcing in early June that he wouldn’t launch a 2024 campaign, has been a vocal critic of former President Donald Trump, who remains the commanding frontrunner for the Republican nomination as he seeks to win back his old job.

“He’s got a floor, but he’s also got a ceiling,” Sununu said as he pointed to Trump’s large lead in the latest New Hampshire polls. “And when you look at the fact that well over 50% of the Republican core-based voter wants somebody else, the fact that in New Hampshire you can have independents that come out – I believe in record numbers – most of which won’t vote for yesterday’s news in terms of Donald Trump.”

The governor emphasized that the field is still open.

“These candidates have a lot of opportunity to make up a lot of ground quickly,” he said.

Granite State voters are known for traditionally being late deciders when it comes to deciding their choice in the state’s treasured first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

“They always make them after Thanksgiving, and I think this year even later than normal,” Sununu said.

“I think a lot of folks are just going to wait and see where this thing goes in late December and early January and make up their minds,” Sununu added.

Christie turns up the volume

As he aims to be the last challenger standing against Trump, Christie’s turning up the volume on Haley and DeSantis, amplifying criticism that they’re not vigorously targeting the former president.

“Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley have not made the case against him. They refuse to make the case against him. They’re scared to make the case against him,” Christie charged in an interview Tuesday in Derry.

DeSantis and Haley are currently battling for second place in the latest national surveys in the 2024 Republican race and in the most recent surveys in Iowa.

As Christie runs a second time for the White House, he’s once again concentrating most of his time and resources on New Hampshire and is currently in third place in the latest Granite State polls, far behind Trump and slightly trailing Haley.

Christie placed all his chips in his campaign for president eight years ago in the Granite State. However, his campaign crashed and burned after a disappointing and distant sixth-place finish in New Hampshire, far behind Trump, who crushed the competition in the primary, boosting him toward the nomination and eventually the White House.

Christie became the first among the other GOP 2016 contenders to endorse Trump and for years was a top outside adviser to the then-president and chaired Trump’s high-profile commission on opioids. However, the two had a falling out after Trump’s unsuccessful attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Biden. In the past three years, Christie has become one of the harshest Trump critics in the Republican Party.

“I think the one person Donald Trump doesn’t want to have a one-on-one with is me,” said Christie.

“He’s not afraid of Nikki Haley,” Christie argued. “And he certainly made his feelings about Ron DeSantis known. He doesn’t look like he’s very intimidated by him. But the fact is you don’t hear him saying that stuff about me. He doesn’t want to be on that stage with me.”

Christie said that he needs to do “well” in New Hampshire’s primary to be successful in his long-shot bid for the 2024 nomination. Asked to define what “well” means, Christie answered he’ll know it when he sees it.

“If I don’t think I’ve done well enough, I’d get out,” Christie said. “I’m not somebody who’s going to linger here. This is hard work, and you’ve got to get up out of bed every morning and feel like you have a chance to win. And if that moment comes where I don’t feel like I have a chance to win, I’m not going to elongate a campaign just for the sake of doing it.”

At this stage of the campaign, Christie has a lot of fight left in him.

“I’m convinced that I’m going to do very well here,” he said. “And I’m going to be the last one standing against Donald Trump, and I’m going to take this right to the convention because he’s going to be convicted of federal crimes of interference of our election process this spring.”

Trump has made history as the first former or current president to be indicted for a crime, but his four indictments – including in federal court in Washington, D.C., and in Fulton County court in Georgia on charges he tried to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss – have only fueled his support among Republican voters.

DeSantis’ early state prediction

While DeSantis has been concentrating most of his firepower in Iowa, he’s also making regular trips to New Hampshire, including Tuesday’s stops in Manchester and Keene.

Trump continues to enjoy a massive lead in the early state polls in the GOP nomination race, but DeSantis is confident that late-deciding voters in Iowa and New Hampshire will flip the current narrative.

“These first two states are going to totally upend the conventional wisdom,” he predicted.