Jokes at Donald Trump’s expense that grabbed national attention, a voting controversy by a New Hampshire transplant who wants to serve the state in Congress, visits by two high profile potential White House contenders, and a record-breaking fundraising figure made for a jam-packed week on the Granite State campaign trail.
Let’s start in chronological order and spotlight a week where big names and big news made headlines not only in New Hampshire, but across the nation.
Gov. Chris Sununu made headlines on Sunday morning after he took some verbal jabs at former President Donald Trump as well as plenty of other political figures at a well-known and prestigious comedy-themed dinner in the nation’s capital.
“He’s f***ing crazy,” Sununu said of Trump Saturday evening’s Gridiron Dinner, an elite dinner that includes skits and roasts where politicians and journalists make fun of themselves and others.
A few moments later, Sununu continued his edgy jokes, saying “The press often will ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy. And I’ll say it this way: I don’t think he’s so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution. But I think if he were in one, he ain’t getting out!”
After Sununu’s jabs at the roast grabbed headlines on Sunday, the governor emphasized in two local radio appearances in New Hampshire on Monday morning that it was all in jest.
“It’s all a joke. Look. I don’t think he’s crazy,” Sununu said on “New Hampshire Today with Chris Ryan.” “It’s all in fun. It’s all a joke. And anyone who’s trying to make this more than it is either seriously doesn’t understand what the Gridiron Dinner is all about or just has to lighten up a bit.”
The governor continued to emphasize on “Good Morning New Hampshire with Jack Heath” that “it’s a roast. It’s fun… I made jokes about my own family and myself and Republicans as much as I made fun about Democrats and Joe Biden and AOC and Bernie Sanders and socialists.”
Sununu supported Trump during the 2016 general election and again as the then-president unsuccessfully ran for reelection in 2020. But over the past year and a half, Sununu’s pushed back against Trump’s unproven claims that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and “stolen.” He’s also stated more than once that the GOP is larger than any one person, which was perceived as a swipe at the former president, who remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party.
Sununu’s jokes at Trump’s expense angered the former president’s top adviser in New Hampshire, Corey Lewandowski, who once again teased that the governor could face a primary challenge this year as he runs for reelection, writing in a statement that “if the right Republican were to run against him, I’d be willing to bet Donald Trump would endorse Sununu’s opponent.”
The Gridiron Dinner made more headlines as the week progressed, as high-profile attendees of the dinner – including two cabinet secretaries in President Joe Biden’s administration – tested positive for COVID-19.
The Corner Office said the governor had no symptoms, but took a COVID test, which they say came back negative.
On her first trip back to New Hampshire in a year and a half, Nikki Haley was laser-focused in supporting Matt Mowers bid for Congress.
Haley, the former two-term South Carolina governor who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during then-President Donald Trump’s administration headlined a grassroots event in Derry and a fundraiser in Salem, as well as other events, for Mowers.
That was on Monday.
The morning after his events with Haley, Mowers was back in the spotlight, facing questions over his voting record. An AP report showed that Mowers voted in New Hampshire’s February 2016 presidential primary before voting four months later in New Jersey’s presidential and down-ballot primary, after he had left the Granite State and moved back to the Garden State.
Mowers is a former New Hampshire GOP executive director and state director for then Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey’s 2016 presidential campaign, and who later worked on Trump’s 2016 general election campaign before serving in the State Department during the former president’s first two years in office. He’s one of the contenders in the crowded and competitive GOP primary field in the 1st Congressional District, a longtime premiere House swing district that the GOP’s aiming to flip from blue to red in November’s midterm election.
Mowers’ rivals in the First District race charged that he had broken federal laws by voting twice, and Democrats also attacked him. But Mowers argued that he was “in total compliance with the law” because he voted in “totally separate elections.”
The story dominated political headlines in New Hampshire this week, and the optics appeared to give Mowers’ rivals new energy with five months to go until the primary.
Besides being a crucial general election battleground state, New Hampshire for a century has held the first presidential primary in the race for the White House. The trip by Haley, whom pundits considered a potential 2024 GOP presidential hopeful, sparked more speculation about her possible national ambitions.
Asked about her 2024 timetable, Haley told reporters “I don’t have to make a decision until the first of next year. But I can tell you I’ve never lost a race. I’m not going to start now. I’ll put a thousand percent into it and finish it.”
Mike Pompeo made the most of his one day in New Hampshire this week.
The former congressman from Kansas who served as CIA director and later as Secretary of State during the Trump administration, was in the Granite State on Thursday to keynote the Hillsborough County GOP’s annual Lincoln-Reagan fundraising dinner and headline a separate roundtable with the group.
But he also held a meet and greet with Republican leadership in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, and was the main attraction at a luncheon with the New Hampshire Homebuilders Association. Pompeo, a U.S. Military Academy graduate who served as a tank platoon leader in Germany during the Cold War, met at an American Legion with fellow West Point graduates who live in New Hampshire.
The trip to New Hampshire for Pompeo, another potential GOP presidential contender who’s said he’ll decide on a White House run in 2023, was his third over the past year. Pompeo’s travels have also taken him four times over the past year to Iowa, the state whose caucuses for half a century have kicked off the presidential nominating calendar. He’s also made visits to South Carolina and Nevada, which hold the third and fourth contests in the GOP schedule.
U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan, who’s being targeted by Republicans as she runs this year for a second six-year term in the U.S. Senate representing New Hampshire, set a new fundraising record.
The former two-term governor announced this week that she hauled in $4.3 million during the January-March first quarter of fundraising and had a very healthy amount of $7.5 million cash on hand in her campaign coffers as of the end of March.
The senator’s fundraising figures dwarf those of the candidates running for the GOP Senate nomination.
Former Londonderry town manager Kevin Smith raised $410,000 since declaring his candidacy in late January. Retired Army Gen. Don Bolduc, who came in second to Corky Messner in the 2020 Republican Senate primary, and who launched his 2022 Senate bid soon after the 2020 election, raised roughly $100,000 in the first quarter.
State Senate President Chuck Morse, who launched his campaign in early January, has yet to announce his fundraising figures.
Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Bruce Fenton who jumped into the race for the GOP nomination last week, has said he’ll self-finance his Senate bid.