{"id":18528,"date":"2026-02-01T21:31:45","date_gmt":"2026-02-01T21:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-endorses-john-e-sununu-in-new-hampshire-senate-race-over-scott-brown\/"},"modified":"2026-02-01T21:31:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T21:31:45","slug":"trump-endorses-john-e-sununu-in-new-hampshire-senate-race-over-scott-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-endorses-john-e-sununu-in-new-hampshire-senate-race-over-scott-brown\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump endorses John E. Sununu in New Hampshire Senate race over Scott Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump on Sunday endorsed former Sen. John E. Sununu in New Hampshire\u2019s open Senate race, boosting a longtime critic over one of his former ambassadors, Scott Brown.<\/p>\n

Trump hailed Sununu, who Republicans see as their best chance to flip the blue Senate seat, as an \u201cAmerica First Patriot\u201d in a Truth Social post Sunday afternoon<\/a>. And Trump said Sununu will \u201cwork tirelessly to advance our America First Agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn E. Sununu has my Complete and Total Endorsement \u2014 HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN \u2014 ELECT JOHN E. SUNUNU,\u201d he posted.<\/p>\n

Sununu, a moderate who has opposed Trump across his presidential runs, thanked him in a statement and quickly pivoted to talking about his priorities for New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to thank the President for his support and thank the thousands of Granite Staters who are supporting me,\u201d Sununu said. \u201cThis campaign has and always will be about standing up for New Hampshire \u2014 every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s endorsement further tips the scales in an already pitched GOP primary between Sununu and Brown, who represented Massachusetts in the Senate before moving to New Hampshire and running unsuccessfully for Senate there in 2014. He served as Trump\u2019s ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa in his first term, and has been presenting himself as the more Trump-aligned candidate as he courts the MAGA base.<\/p>\n

Brown vowed to fight on. And he took a veiled shot at Sununu, accusing him of not being sufficiently dedicated to the MAGA movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am running to ensure our America First agenda is led by someone who views this mission not as a career path, but as a continuation of a lifelong commitment to service,\u201d Brown said in a post on X<\/a>. \u201cLet\u2019s keep working.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two are competing to take on Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. Pappas issued a simple response to Trump\u2019s endorsement of Sununu: \u201cI\u2019m Chris Pappas, and I approve this message,\u201d he wrote on X<\/a>. His campaign manager, Rachel Pretti, said in a statement that Trump\u2019s endorsement \u201cconfirms\u201d that Sununu \u201cwill sell out Granite Staters to advance his political career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s support for Sununu once would have seemed unfathomable. The scion of a moderate New Hampshire Republican dynasty, Sununu served as a national co-chair of former Ohio Gov. John Kasich\u2019s 2016 presidential campaign and joined his family in backing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley for president against Trump in the 2024 GOP primary.<\/p>\n

Ahead of New Hampshire\u2019s 2024 presidential primary, Sununu penned an op-ed lambasting Trump as a \u201closer.\u201d (Trump went on to win by 11 points). And he later derided Trump\u2019s 2020 election conspiracies as \u201ccompletely inappropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans initially were bullish about flipping an open seat in purple New Hampshire that\u2019s already changed hands between parties twice this century \u2014 Sununu defeated Shaheen to win the seat in 2002, then lost it to her in 2008 \u2014 and coalesced quickly behind the moderate Republican as their best option against Pappas. Sununu received instant backing from the GOP\u2019s Senate campaign arm upon his launch last October<\/a> and has wracked up endorsements from the majority of Republican senators<\/a>. He\u2019s also won support from Republican leaders in New Hampshire \u2014 all of which Trump noted in his Truth Social post Sunday.<\/p>\n

Trump also initially supported Sununu’s younger brother<\/a>, former Gov. Chris Sununu, running for the Senate seat. Chris Sununu, also a vocal Trump critic, declined to launch a bid, prompting GOP interest in his brother.<\/p>\n

But some in Trump\u2019s Granite State MAGA base quickly rejected his endorsement of Sununu, calling it a \u201cslap in the face to grassroots supporters\u201d long loyal to the president.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Sununu family openly mocked, degraded, and worked against the America First movement, the President himself, and the policies that energized New Hampshire voters,\u201d a group of MAGA activists wrote on X<\/a>. \u201cWe will continue and intensify our campaign opposition to the Sununu operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sununu holds a wide lead over Brown in polling of the GOP primary. The latest, a University of New Hampshire online survey of likely primary voters from mid-January<\/a>, showed Sununu up 48 percent to 25 percent with 26 percent of likely voters undecided. But Pappas is ahead of both Republicans in hypothetical general-election matchups, leading Sununu by 5 percentage points and Brown by 10 percentage points in the UNH poll. The survey of 967 likely GOP primary voters had a margin of error of +\/-3.2 percent.<\/p>\n

Pappas also outraised both Republicans<\/a>, bringing in $2.3 million last quarter and amassing a $3.2 million war chest heading into the year. Sununu hauled in $1.3 million and had $1.1 million in cash on hand in his primary campaign account while Brown raised $347,000 through his main account and had $907,000 in the bank.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump on Sunday endorsed former Sen. John E. Sununu in New Hampshire\u2019s open Senate race, boosting a longtime critic over one of his former ambassadors, Scott Brown. Trump hailed Sununu, who Republicans see as their best chance to flip the blue Senate seat, as an \u201cAmerica First Patriot\u201d in a Truth Social post […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}