Gov. Chris Sununu was recently reelected to his fourth term in office. The Republican governor has been positioning himself for the 2024 presidential primaries for a while now.
Before Election Day, there were a lot of reasons to be skeptical about his chances. He’s a New England moderate in the party of MAGA. He endorsed Donald Trump twice, but he’s also been a stinging critic. And he’s pro-choice, which might be seen as a non-starter in a GOP primary.
Trump’s recent decline has emboldened his potential competitors. The underwhelming results for Republicans in the 2022 midterms have led to an outbreak of interest on the right in electability.
Now, Sununu is trying to define himself against not just Trump, but many of the right’s obsessions that he sees as political losers. On this week’s episode of Playbook Deep Dive, host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza went to the statehouse in Concord, NH, where Sununu was keen to discuss 2024 presidential primary politics in a way that he hasn’t recently.