New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu said he’s considering a bid for president, one of his most direct statements to date about whether he may enter the 2024 race.
“Yes,” Sununu said Sunday when asked by CNN’s Dana Bash on “The State of the Union” whether he was mulling a presidential run. Sununu appeared on the show the same weekend that former president Donald Trump got his campaign underway with visits to New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Although the Republican governor said he does not have a timeline on when he might make an official decision, he cited the Granite State’s “live free or die spirit” as the ideal model for the GOP moving forward, noting that it “works really well” in New Hampshire.
“Obviously folks are talking, but I really don’t have a timeline,” Sununu said. “I’m spending a lot of time naturally trying to grow the party as Republicans, talk to independents, talk to the next generation of potential Republican voters that right now no one is really reaching out to.”
Sununu has been making more media appearances over the past year, boosting his profile on the national stage as the Republican Party wrangles over its path forward.
“It really is about good government, and I’m trying to — I think we’ve done that really well in New Hampshire — trying to bring that a little bit to the table and then down the road,” he said. “If that leads into something bigger, so be it.”
He has previously taken thinly veiled shots at other potential contenders, such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and digs at Trump and his leadership style.
While Trump is the only high-profile Republican to launch a presidential bid, other names have also been floated as likely challengers to the former president, DeSantis and Sununu among them.
Sununu passed on running for the Senate in 2021. Asked in November by CBS’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” whether he was considering a presidential bid, the now four-term governor laughed off the suggestion and did not comment.
But he has been increasingly open about the prospect in the past month.
“A lot of folks are coming to me,” Sununu said on Fox News in early January. “A lot of folks want me to run. It’s definitely conversations that we’re having.”
He acknowledged on CNN that Trump could become the Republican nominee again but said he does not think it’s likely, criticizing Trump’s speech in New Hampshire as “very mundane” and “not really bringing that fire, that energy.”
“We cannot have leadership that is only about the fight,” Sununu said.
Bash asked Sununu about a University of New Hampshire poll released last week that showed DeSantis leading among likely GOP voters. DeSantis came in at 42 percent, while Trump received 32 percent. Other potential GOP contenders, including Sununu, were in the single digits.
Sununu referred to Trump and DeSantis as “the two candidates,” saying that DeSantis is “obviously looking to run for president.” He conceded that DeSantis would “probably win New Hampshire right now, without a doubt.”
“I think other candidates will look to get in this spring or into the summer. I’m surprised other candidates, I think a lot of us, aren’t doing better,” Sununu said. “I’m surprised I’m on that poll at all, frankly, because we haven’t really been talking about that.”
“There’s a lot of hope and opportunity for good candidates to get in, drive the message where it needs to be,” he added, but that contenders need to be disciplined and leave the race when it’s clear that they won’t win the nomination.
Shannon Larson can be reached at shannon.larson@globe.com. Follow her @shannonlarson98.