– Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is keeping the door open to a possible Republican run next year in the race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.
Sununu, who enjoys a large national profile, thanks to his regular appearances the past few years on the cable news networks and Sunday talk shows, emphasized that the ‘door is not closed,’ when asked on Fox News Radio’s ‘The Guy Benson Show’ if he’s considering a Senate run.
And Sununu, who was elected and re-elected to four straight two-year terms as governor of the key New England swing state, touted on Thursday that if he were to run, ‘I would win, by the way.’
The 78-year-old Shaheen, the first woman in the nation’s history to win election as governor and as a U.S. senator, announced this week that she would retire at the end of next year rather than seek a fourth six-year term in the Senate.
Even before Shaheen’s announcement, her seat in New Hampshire was considered one of the GOP’s top pick-up opportunities in the 2026 midterms – along with Michigan, where Sen. Gary Peters is also retiring, and Georgia, where Republicans consider first-term Sen. Jon Ossoff vulnerable – as Republicans hope to expand their current 53-47 majority.
Sununu, in 2021, expressed interest in running for the Senate against his predecessor as governor, Democrat Sen. Maggie Hassan, who was up for re-election in 2022. And the popular governor was heavily courted by national Republicans to take on Hassan.
But on Nov. 9, 2021, Sununu announced that he would instead run for a fourth term as governor, upsetting many Republicans in the nation’s capital.
And he heavily criticized the Senate.
‘When you look at what their (senators) job is and what a governor’s job is . . . it’s not even close. I can’t tell you how many senators told me, ‘You’re just going to have to wait around a couple of years to get anything done.’ Can you imagine me sitting around a couple of years,’ Sununu emphasized at the time. ‘They debate and talk and nothing gets done. . . . That’s not the world I live in.’
Fast-forward to this past year, and Sununu repeatedly said he wouldn’t seek to run for the Senate in 2026.
In a November interview with Fox News Digital, the then-governor reiterated what he had first said in a July interview.
‘Definitely ruling out running for the Senate in 2026. Yeah, definitely not on my dance card,’ Sununu said in an interview along the sidelines of the Republican Governors Association winter meeting in Florida.
The 50-year-old Sununu, who when he was first elected in 2016 was the nation’s youngest governor, was asked again about a 2026 Senate run in a Fox News Digital interview in early January, in his last full day in office.
‘I’m not planning on running for anything right now. I’m really not, at least for the next two, four, six years,’ he emphasized. ‘Who knows what happens down the road, but it would be way down the road and nothing, nothing I’m planning on, nothing my family would tolerate either short term.’
Sununu, in his interview on Thursday, cautioned that while he’s keeping the door open to a potential 2026 campaign, ‘I’m not saying it’s a high probability. Can’t wait to jump in. Definitely not.’
As for his change of mind from his steadfast no to a slight maybe, Sununu said that ‘some folks in New Hampshire especially, and some of our mutual friends in Washington, D.C., have asked me to at least keep the door open and reconsider, and I am.’
As for his timetable for making a decision, Sununu said on Friday in an interview on Fox News’ ‘America’s Newsroom’ that he would ‘take a few weeks to think about it.’
Sununu isn’t the only Republican mulling a Senate bid in New Hampshire.
Former Sen. Scott Brown, of Massachusetts, who later narrowly lost to Shaheen in New Hampshire in the 2014 election, is seriously considering a 2026 run.
Brown, who served four years as U.S. ambassador to New Zealand during President Donald Trump’s first administration, has been holding meetings with Republicans across New Hampshire for a couple of months and has met multiple times with GOP officials in the nation’s capital.
Brown recently met with top Trump administration political officials at the White House, sources tell Fox News Digital.
Brown, who told Fox News Digital late last year that he was seriously considering a Senate run, took aim at Granite State Democrats, arguing that ‘they’re just completely out of touch with what we want here in New Hampshire. And the more I think about it, I think we can do better.’
Sununu, who’s long been known for his frenetic pace and his confidence on the campaign trail, highlighted, ‘I know how to run. I know how to win. . . . I think we’ve got a great record here. I just know my voters, and they know me. . . . And so, if I really wanted to do this, I have no doubt we could be very, very successful. I know that sounds arrogant. . . . I don’t care. I’m just saying things are the ABCs of me winning.’
On his past criticism of how the Senate functions, Sununu noted that ‘there’s something that definitely changed from when I really didn’t want to do it in ’22 to today. You know, specifically just the priority. I mean, back then, I had Republicans in the U.S. Senate telling me balancing budgets didn’t matter,’ Sununu elaborated.
And he argued that ‘clearly that has changed.’
Sununu, who regularly highlights that he is a ‘budget hawk,’ pointed to President Donald Trump’s recently created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which aims to overhaul and downsize the federal government. DOGE, steered by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, has swept through federal agencies, rooting out what the White House argues was billions in wasteful federal spending. It has also taken a meat cleaver to the federal workforce, resulting in a massive downsizing of employees. The moves by DOGE have triggered a slew of lawsuits in response.
‘We have DOGE going on. Thank you, President Trump. He’s talking about balancing budgets. He’s driving that message. And clearly, there’s a need for some leadership on something that I believe very, very strongly,’ Sununu said. ‘There’s a different attitude here. They’re taking their job seriously.’
Following Trump’s first term in the White House and in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters aiming to upend congressional certification of former President Biden’s 2020 election victory, Sununu became a leading vocal GOP Trump critic.
Sununu was a top surrogate and supporter of former U.N. ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Trump’s final challenger in the 2024 GOP presidential primaries.
But he did back the Republican nominee in the general election.
Asked about his current relationship with Trump and his team, Sununu shared in his Fox News Radio interview, ‘I was at the white House three weeks ago and emphasized ‘that relationship is not of concern.’
‘There’s a great understanding. I’ve been very supportive of what he’s [Trump] been doing, Sununu added. ‘Everyone has seen me out in the media for the last year, working hard for the Republican Party, working hard to get folks to vote the right way.’
And he added that his relationship with Trump and the president’s team ‘is the least of my concerns, to be honest.’