Kristin Tate is a Republican political strategist and contributor at Sky News. Her latest book is “The Liberal Invasion of Red State America.”
If this were an ordinary midterm election, Republican Senate candidate John E. Sununu of New Hampshire would probably be in trouble.
President Trump’s approval rating in the state had fallen to 37 percent as of July, with 62 percent disapproving. Nearly two-thirds of Granite Staters said going to war with Iran was the wrong decision in a poll published in June. Also as of June, Democrats held a 10-point advantage on the generic congressional ballot. Nationally, Trump’s approval has fallen to 33 percent, while Democrats enjoy a substantially greater enthusiasm advantage heading into November.
Sununu and Representative Chris Pappas, a Democrat, are vying to succeed Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who is not seeking reelection. This is not a political environment in which Republicans should be dreaming about flipping a Senate seat in New England. And yet Sununu might do exactly that. The latest poll has him narrowly leading Pappas, 45 percent to 43 percent. His strategy offers a lesson for the party in hostile territory: Localize yourself and nationalize the Democrat.
Sununu has little incentive to spend the next two months defending every decision made by a Republican president whom most Granite Staters dislike. Trump has endorsed him, but the former senator has not turned that endorsement into the organizing principle of his campaign. Most notably, he has broken with the president on the war in Iran. He has also criticized tariffs on imported building materials amid New Hampshire’s housing crunch.
The message to voters is straightforward. They may dislike Trump and the GOP in Washington but neither is on the ballot. Sununu is.
Meanwhile, he is trying to nationalize Pappas by tying him to the most unpopular figures and excesses of the Democratic Party. Conservatives have taken to calling the Democrat “Pajama Boy” Pappas, a reference to the infamous Obamacare promo graphic featuring a grown man in a plaid onesie and hipster glasses clutching a mug.
The nickname is funny but purposeful. Republicans want voters to see Pappas less as a familiar congressman and more as a product of the Democratic Party of Washington and the activist left. The national Democratic Party has spent much of the past decade drifting away from the sensibilities of moderates.
Its most visible figures have championed lax immigration enforcement, flirted with eliminating private health insurance, embraced trans athletes competing in women’s sports, and embraced criminal justice policies that voters came to associate with disorder and weak enforcement. Some of its rising stars call themselves democratic socialists.
Pappas is not New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, but Republicans are trying to make it harder for voters to separate him from the wing of the party Mamdani represents. Democrats, of course, are attempting the same maneuver. They want every vote for Sununu to look like a vote for Trump. But Sununu has decades of history working in his favor. Voters already know what the Sununu name stands for.
His father was governor, his brother Chris was governor, and John himself represented the state in both the House and Senate. In most states, political dynasties can feel like relics or exercises in entitlement, but in a small state like New Hampshire, familiarity can work differently. The Sununu name carries a political identity independent of the national Republican Party.
Granite Staters have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to split their political personalities. Kamala Harris carried New Hampshire in 2024, but on the same ballot voters elected Republican Kelly Ayotte governor. Chris Sununu won four gubernatorial elections even as New Hampshire leaned Democratic in federal races. Voters in the state are accustomed to liking a local Republican while disliking the national GOP.
New England once had a thriving tradition of locally rooted Republicanism. Massachusetts elected Republican governors for 24 of the 32 years between 1991 and 2023. Vermont elected Republicans, Maine still does, and New Hampshire has repeatedly done so. They succeeded because voters saw them less as avatars of a national political movement than as governors, senators, and neighbors.
Modern politics has turned even local races into referendums on the national parties. Every election becomes Trump versus the Democrats, and every candidate is expected to answer for the most extreme members of their party.
A Sununu victory would offer Republicans a path back to relevance in New England that may not require persuading the region to love the national GOP.
It may simply require giving voters permission to ignore it.