Politics

Chris Sununu still believes the GOP is bigger than Donald Trump

Published

1 year ago

January 1, 2025

Donald Trump remade the GOP in his image. Chris Sununu doesn’t think it’ll stick.

That’s because the outgoing Republican governor of New Hampshire, who routinely oscillates between supporting Trump and criticizing him, believes his party is bigger than both its enduring standard bearer and the political movement he created.

“Trump is extremely unique. There’s no ‘Trump lite’ or ‘Trump 2.0’ that can replace or replicate what he’s brought to the table, for better or for worse,” Sununu said in an interview.

And the GOP, he insists, is still a “big tent,” ticking off varied constituencies like the Log Cabin Republicans, fiscal hawks, libertarian-leaners and social conservatives.

Sununu needs this to be true, at least if he wants a future in politics beyond punditry. The scion of a New Hampshire political dynasty whose old-school brand of Republicanism has been supplanted by hard-liners and flamethrowers in the Trump era, Sununu has been thrice reelected and consistently ranked as one of the nation’s most popular governors — even as he sometimes defies his party’s Trumpian bent.

Yet Sununu, who declined to seek a fifth term, has a mixed track record of translating his success in navigating a MAGA-fied GOP to other like-minded politicians. This year alone, he helped elect former Sen. Kelly Ayotte as his successor, but failed to get former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley across the finish line in the Granite State’s GOP presidential primary. And he has no obvious constituency outside of New England should he seek higher office himself.

Sununu, 50, who passed on a Senate run in 2022 and a presidential bid in 2024, insists he’s not looking at either office for at least the next few years. Instead, he says he’s content to return to the private sector and, as he often notes, “make some money.”

As he prepares to hand over the office he’s held for eight years, Sununu spoke at length with Blue Light News about his efforts to reduce opioid overdose deaths, how he plans to stay involved in politics, why he’s still largely against legalizing recreational marijuana and how Trump doesn’t have the GOP in as much of a vise grip as it seems.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

What would you say is your biggest policy achievement as governor?

When I first ran for governor, the two big issues facing the state were obviously the opioid epidemic and the mental health crisis. And we just jumped right in. We really focused on rural access to care and reinvented recovery-friendly workplace programs. It was really about opening up access.

Trump has talked a lot about trying to stop the flow of fentanyl, an opioid, over the southern border. Do you think the policies he’s proposing can help do that?

The No. 1 problem with the fentanyl crisis is the open border. Closing up the border definitely makes it harder for that stuff to come in.

How do you want to see Trump and Republicans in Congress tackle the border? There was a plan on the table last year…

That plan was terrible. The key to all of this is closing the border, but making the ports of entry much more robust to handle the number of people who may want to come across in a legal and authorized and processed way. And, most importantly, the “Remain in Mexico” policy has to be reinstated. Aside from closing the illegal crossings at the border, you need to have immigration reform that deals with creating a more modernized pathway for folks to become citizens the right way.

Trump’s plans for larger-scale deportations, do you think that’s the right way to go?

Specifically for criminals, yes. These are the first folks that should absolutely be deported. Beyond that Congress and the president can kind of tackle the next phase, but I think it does have to be broken in phases.

Back to New Hampshire for a minute. I want to talk about cannabis. You’ve largely been a skeptic of legalizing recreational marijuana, which failed again this year in the state Legislature. Why should New Hampshire miss out on tax revenues from this when all the surrounding states provide access to it?

You should never legalize drugs for the money. That’s awful. If you’re legalizing marijuana because you need more money, then you have a horribly malfunctioning state. So there’s an ethics and a health issue here. I can tell you virtually every one of the governors [in the surrounding New England states] has indicated to me various problems with the legalization of marijuana, whether it’s the exacerbated mental health issues, whether it’s the black market that it fundamentally creates, whether it’s the advertising problems, the proximity to schools that creates a lot of problems for parents. There’s so many reasons not to do it. If you were going to do it here, [you would need to do so in a] responsible and controlled way that keeps it away from kids and allows the state to control the marketing messaging. I was semi-open to it if it could be controlled in the right way.

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley (center) addresses members of the media while standing with New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (left) and retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc (right) Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024, near a polling place in Hampton, New Hampshire.

Before the election, we spoke about abortion and how Democrats were running hard on the issue in New Hampshire. You said the issue was losing salience and that voters were more concerned with the economy. The Republican won the governor’s race, so what is your assessment now?

In 2022, Roe v. Wade had just happened; it was much more of an unknown issue. This time around, two more years have passed. People in New Hampshire — no one’s denied an abortion, no one’s denied their rights [the state restricts abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions]. So the fearmongering hasn’t borne true. There are some individual states and places that are more restrictive or less restrictive, but that’s up to voters [in those states] to decide. It’ll still be an issue, but it’s just not going to be the political backbreaker issue that the Democrats want it to be.

Do you think that there’s still room within the Republican Party for criticism of Trump when warranted?

Of course there is. Did [former Rep.] Matt Gaetz just get pushed right out of his nomination to be the U.S. attorney general? Yes. Look, it’s never easy criticizing the president and the standard bearer of your party, and there’s always that kind of political honeymoon period that happens when you first get elected. But there are already signs of folks that are willing to push back and criticize and say no when they feel like they have to say no. And that should give the American people a big sigh of relief that it’s not the evil dictatorship that the liberal media was telling us it was going to be.

Trump is term limited. So that opens up the question of what happens in 2028. Do you think Vice President-elect and Ohio Sen. JD Vance has a lock on the nomination in ‘28? Or do you think there will be a real, contested primary?

There’ll definitely be a real, contested primary. I think JD is great, by the way. He’s shown himself to have overcome a lot of the early criticisms that he [faced]. He’s competent. He’s incredibly smart on his feet. He knows the issues. He’s very cordial. He gets along with the other side — that was shown through the vice presidential debate, and I think that gave strength to the entire ticket. So there’s no doubt he’s in a great position if he wanted to run in ‘28. But no one’s going to just hand it to him. You’ve got to bring him through his paces. I imagine if he wanted to be a front-runner, he would be. But no, you’re gonna have a lot of folks from all walks of life running.

You know I’m going to ask if you’re thinking about it.

No. Not for ’28, I’m definitely not thinking about it.

So are you ruling out a presidential run in 2028?

I don’t rule anything out, but there’s no story there. It’s literally zero on my list in terms of thinking about anything. I can’t see myself running in 2028. That would be, holy cow, that would be a real change of my plans. I don’t see any path to that actually happening. I’m excited to go back to the private sector.

So what are your plans? What’s next for you?

I’m going to enter the private sector and make some money, do some business-type stuff, but I’ll also be in the media a bit. I have some ideas to keep myself kind of scratching the political itch through various venues in the media and content creation around smart political content.

You’ve been making a push to support Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s plans for the “Department of Government Efficiency.” Tell me how that can work.

You can really look to the states to get ideas. Musk has to use — even though he’s an outsider, he has political capital — he needs to use it and make sure he’s not just putting a list of good ideas in front of Congress, a Republican Congress that is typically tepid about actually doing anything substantive. Congress just can’t help themselves about overspending, Republicans included. So he and Trump could use their combined political capital to ensure that whatever they do is lasting. It would be a huge legacy initiative for them. You gotta really push Congress to dig in for a balanced budget of some sort. Ultimately, they’re going to have to start talking about entitlement reforms or Social Security reforms that just have to come because we have the bills coming due.

Trump wants to end daylight saving time. You said in a recent op-ed that you support that. But the current push in Congress is to make daylight saving time permanent. What’s your thinking on that?

I don’t care whether you make it permanent or you get rid of it, but let’s stop changing the clock, right? That’s my point. I don’t care. Pick an hour. You get the exact same thing, whether you make it permanent or get rid [it]. The whole point is, let’s stop changing the clock.

Politics

Summer ICE

Published

54 minutes ago

June 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A hectic summer of events brings the threat of ICE agents surging into New York City.

WINTRY MIX: The Knicks ticker-tape parade. World Cup festivities. Pride Month. America 250. The Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce wedding.

It’s all happening this summer in New York City — and those events and more may coincide with a surge in federal immigration enforcement at the direction of President Donald Trump’s administration.

The convergence of events as an ICE crackdown looms has not gone unnoticed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and immigrant-rights advocates who are already bracing for a hectic summer in the city.

Hochul last week warned that a surge would “create chaos” especially as the World Cup was getting underway. The mayor told reporters earlier today that the city — and especially the NYPD — is prepared to handle the uncertainty.

“We are the biggest city in the country,” Mamdani said at a press conference in Queens. “We are used to big events, and we are incredibly excited for this one.”

Yet the potential operation — teased repeatedly by Trump border czar Tom Homan — adds a different dimension to the center-of-the-world festivities and celebratory atmosphere that’s pervasive in New York at the moment.

“We’ve just had a lot of practice with being in the streets — thankfully celebrating,” said state Sen. Pat Fahy, a Democrat. “It’s New York. People are not going to tolerate any type of surge here.”

Homan has insisted the federal government’s New York campaign will be much different than the Minneapolis crackdown six months ago, which ultimately led to civil unrest and the deaths of two U.S. citizens.

He told SiriusXM’s Chris Cuomo last week that federal immigration agents would take a refined, precision-based approach.

“Every day we leave the office and we know exactly who we’re looking for, more likely where we will find them, because we have a targeted operation,” Homan said. “We have a folder on each target. It’s not gonna be driving around looking for people that we have no idea who we’re looking for. It’s gonna be a well-planned, targeted operation.”

Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign led Hochul and the Democratic-led Legislature this year to approve a package of measures meant to protect undocumented immigrants.

Law enforcement officers are banned from wearing masks, federal immigration authorities cannot execute civil deportation warrants in so-called sensitive locations like houses of worship, and the state moved to end cooperative agreements between local police and ICE.

“We’re much better prepared as a result of that legislation,” Fahy said. “We’ve sent a very clear and strong message that ICE is not welcome.”

It’s those very same laws, though, that stoked Homan’s plans to focus on New York. He’s warned that, without cooperation with local law enforcement, ICE will need to take a much more expansive approach to deportations.

It’s all led immigration advocates to ready communities for an unpredictable summer.

“New Yorkers are going to stand up for their neighbors,” said Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition. “You’re going to see local communities organizing more, potentially protests, people standing up for New York and New Yorkers. This is an attack on all 19 million New Yorkers.” — Nick Reisman with Gelila Negesse

FROM CITY HALL

Mayor Zohran Mamdani continues to discuss disbanding the SRG but has offered no timeline.

POLICING PARTY CITY: Days after being sworn in as mayor, Mamdani declared that his promise to abolish the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group wasn’t up for debate.

“We need to disband the SRG,” he said on Jan. 28 after the unit had been involved in arresting anti-ICE protesters. “I’m currently in conversations with the police commissioner about the ways in which we do so that are operational.”

Six months later, the SRG remains intact — and Mamdani is singing a very different tune.

When asked today if it was appropriate for the police department to deploy the SRG in response to the chaos following the Knicks’ NBA Finals victory, the mayor had this to say: “The NYPD handled themselves appropriately in delivering safety across the five boroughs.”

Mamdani told reporters he remains committed to the idea of “decoupling” the SRG’s protest responsibilities from its counterterrorism duties and that he continues to talk with his NYPD commissioner, Jessica Tisch, about how “to disband SRG to ensure that we have responses to each.” He did not give a timeline for how soon that could happen or elaborate on the nature of the holdup, though.

Mamdani’s thumbs up for the SRG’s response to Saturday’s Midtown mayhem speaks to the awkward terrain he’s navigating as his more politically moderate police commissioner continues to reject his push for breaking up the unit.

Tisch, in fact, has continued to publicly and privately praise the SRG as a critical tool in the NYPD toolbox. On Sunday, she gave members of the unit a salute in a department-wide email thanking officers for their work the night before, when frenzied Knicks fans set fire to or destroyed several school buses in Midtown, smashed NYPD vehicles with bats and even fired shots in Times Square, wounding a 17-year-old.

“You managed to meet the challenges that came with one of the most closely watched periods this city has seen in years,” Tisch wrote in the email obtained by Playbook that included a shoutout to those engaged in “SRG disorder-control response.”

While pushing for breaking up the SRG as a mayoral candidate last year, Mamdani noted the unit’s members face disproportionately high rates of misconduct claims, especially as it relates to violating protesters’ First Amendment rights.

In dragging his feet on the SRG issue, Mamdani has put himself at odds with his own political base.

The local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America issued a rare public rebuke of the mayor Friday for not making good on his campaign pledge to eliminate the SRG.

The DSA’s statement also knocked Mamdani for not fulfilling a separate campaign pledge to abolish the NYPD’s gang database (which critics say is a “drag net” for young Black and Latino New Yorkers, but which Tisch touts as a necessity). On top of that, the DSA — Mamdani’s “political home” — also took aim at him for supporting an increase to the NYPD’s uniformed headcount this year despite having promised as a candidate to keep it flat. — Gelila Negesse and Chris Sommerfeldt

From the Capitol

State Sen. Zellnor Myrie’s 2021 gun-control measure remains in effect after the Supreme Court declines review.

GUN BILL SURVIVES: The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a New York law aimed at opening up gun companies to civil liability suits.

Federal law has made the firearms industry generally immune to lawsuits since 2005. But state Sen. Zellnor Myrie proposed a workaround in 2021, authoring a statute to expand New York’s ability to sue manufacturers and dealers whose “reckless” actions endanger public safety.

The law that passed was quickly challenged by the gun industry. A series of lower courts have upheld the law in recent years, and the Supreme Court has now decided it won’t consider an appeal.

“For New Yorkers and residents of the ten other states that have adopted similar laws — covering close to 117 million Americans — this serves as affirmation for victims, survivors, and communities across the nation that live with the realities of gun violence on a daily basis,” Myrie said in a statement. “We are not helpless. Gun violence is not inevitable.” — Bill Mahoney

IN OTHER NEWS

— ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: Progressives Champions PAC, which has spent nearly $400,000 in attack ads against NY-17 Democratic candidate Cait Conley, is reportedly funded by Republican groups. (Popular Information)

— MAKE IT MAKE CENTS: Mamdani’s administration will no longer delay billions of dollars in repayments to contracted nonprofits. (NBC New York)

— INSURANCE SCRAMBLE: Federal cuts will leave 450,000 New Yorkers enrolled in the state’s Essential Plan without healthcare coverage beginning next month. (New York Focus)

Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.