Sununu, Christopher T (1974- )

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    Chris Sununu Skips a New Hampshire Senate Bid, Dashing Trump’s Hopes

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    The former New Hampshire governor had been seen as a top Republican recruit in the liberal-leaning yet competitive state. President Trump had said on Sunday, “I hope he runs.”Chris Sununu, the Republican former governor of New Hampshire, announced on Tuesday that he would not run for Senate in 2026, dashing the hopes of President Trump and others in their party that he would help flip a seat in the state after a Democratic senator’s retirement.Mr. Sununu, who served for four two-year terms as governor, was once a vocal critic of Mr. Trump’s — he endorsed Nikki Haley in the 2024 primary race — but the president had warmed to the possibility of luring the popular former governor into the Senate race.“I hope he runs,” Mr. Trump said on Air Force One on Sunday, noting that he had met recently with Mr. Sununu in the Oval Office. “He’s been very nice to me over the last year or so.”Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, announced her retirement last month. Representative Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, a Democrat, recently began a bid to succeed her. The other House member from the state, Representative Maggie Goodlander, has said she is also considering a run.Mr. Sununu, who has flirted with Senate campaigns for years but never actually declared a candidacy, officially pulled himself out of contention on Tuesday.”No, I’m not going to run,” he said in a radio interview on The Pulse of NH, saying it was not right for his family.He said that Republicans could still win, and that he had on Tuesday informed Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, of his decision. “It doesn’t have to be me,” Mr. Sununu said.A spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Maeve Coyle, called it “ an embarrassing recruitment failure.”Another potential Republican candidate is Scott Brown, a former senator from Massachusetts, whom Ms. Shaheen needled after she announced her exit, telling Semafor: “He’s making noises. He’s not from New Hampshire.”The New Hampshire seat is one of three vacancies that Democrats must defend in 2026, along with Michigan and Minnesota. No Republican senators in competitive states have yet to announce retirements. More

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      New Hampshire Bans Gender-Transition Surgery for Minors

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      The move is in line with what other Republican-led states have done, but it is the first such ban in the Northeast.The NewsNew Hampshire will ban gender-transition surgeries for minors after Gov. Chris Sununu signed a bill on Friday that bars health professionals from performing the procedures. The new law also threatens disciplinary action for doctors who refer minors to other providers for such services.The governor, a Republican, also signed a bill that bars transgender athletes from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities, and another that lets parents choose to have their children opt out of any public school instruction in “sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or gender expression.”Mr. Sununu vetoed a fourth bill that would have allowed businesses and public entities to separate bathrooms, locker rooms and athletic teams based on biological sex.BackgroundThe moves are in line with what other leaders in the Republican Party have done. About two dozen other states have passed laws that bar transgender minors from receiving gender-transition care.“This bill focuses on protecting the health and safety of New Hampshire’s children and has earned bipartisan support,” Mr. Sununu said in a statement about the measure banning gender-transition surgeries.Before Friday, Mr. Sununu had taken a relatively mixed stance on gender-identity issues and L.G.B.T.Q. rights.In 2018, he signed bills that banned discrimination based on gender identity in housing, employment and public accommodations and prohibited therapies that sought to change the sexual orientation of minors.“We must ensure that New Hampshire is a place where every person, regardless of their background, has an equal and full opportunity to pursue their dreams and to make a better life for themselves and their families,” Mr. Sununu said at the time.At a State House hearing last year, Courtney Tanner, senior director of government relations for Dartmouth Health, testified against the measure banning surgeries, saying: “We don’t like to legislate medicine. These are complex subject matters that are really between a patient and a provider.”The measure signed into law was significantly pared down from its initial version, which included prohibitions on a wider range of medical treatments for transgender minors, such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and top surgeries.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden’s Stance on Marijuana Has a Political Upside, Allies Say

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      The president’s allies say the Justice Department’s chill take on marijuana has a political upside.On Labor Day in 2022, John Fetterman found himself in a room in Pittsburgh with President Biden.Fetterman, a Democrat who was then the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and in the middle of his successful run for the U.S. Senate, had a simple message he wanted to share: Go big on legal weed.And how did the president respond? “He was just, like, ‘Yeah, absolutely,’” Fetterman told me yesterday.The Justice Department on Tuesday said it had recommended that federal restrictions on marijuana become a whole lot chiller. And while it is not clear that lobbying from Democrats like Fetterman has played any role, the move was the latest step by the Biden administration to liberalize the nation’s cannabis policy — something his allies believe comes with an obvious political upside when more than two-thirds of Americans support legalization of the drug.“High reward, zero risk,” said the perpetually sweatshirted Fetterman, joking that he advises Biden only on matters of fashion and weed policy.Biden, a suit-wearing president who is more statesman than stoner, has become something of the pot president. It could elevate his standing specifically with young voters, who support rescheduling, or reclassifying, marijuana as a less serious drug, as well as with supporters of changes to criminal justice laws.One of the president’s allies just wishes he would talk about it more.“He has pardoned people, he initiated this rescheduling, but he has not embraced it. It’s not too late,” said Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, the 75-year-old Democrat who has been pushing for looser cannabis policy for half a century. “The public needs to know that this is the single most significant step that has been taken by the federal government in the more-than-50-year-old war on drugs.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sununu Says Trump ‘Contributed’ to Insurrection, but Still Has His Support

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      Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire said on Sunday that former President Donald J. Trump “absolutely contributed” to an insurrection and that Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election were “absolutely terrible” — but that nothing, not even felony convictions, would stop him from voting for Mr. Trump because the economy, border security and “culture change” were more important.The interview, on ABC News’s “This Week,” showcased Mr. Sununu’s transformation from Trump critic — while supporting Nikki Haley in the Republican primary, he said Mr. Trump was “worried about jail time” and “not a real Republican” — to loyal foot soldier.It is a transformation that has repeated itself time and again within the Republican Party, and one that Mr. Sununu previewed in January, when he was campaigning for Ms. Haley but said he would support Mr. Trump if he won the nomination.“No one should be surprised by my support,” he said on Sunday. “I think the real discussion is, you know, Americans moving away from Biden. That’s how bad Biden has become as president. There’s just no doubt about it, right? You can’t ignore inflation. You can’t ignore the border and say that these issues in the courthouse are going to be the one thing that brings Biden back into office.”The interviewer, George Stephanopoulos, pressed Mr. Sununu on why he was supporting a man who he said had “contributed to the insurrection” on Jan. 6.Mr. Sununu affirmed that he still believed that. But he said it shouldn’t surprise anyone that a Republican governor would support a Republican nominee, and suggested that Mr. Stephanopoulos was out of touch with public opinion if he thought concerns about democracy or felony convictions would sway voters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For Anti-Trump Republicans, It All Comes Down to New Hampshire

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      The old guard of the Republican Party has rallied around Nikki Haley ahead of New Hampshire’s primary, in a long-shot bid to stop the former president’s march to the nomination.The first-in-the-nation primary could be the last stand for the anti-Trump Republican.Since 2016, a shrinking band of Republican strategists, retired lawmakers and donors has tried to oust Donald J. Trump from his commanding position in the party. And again and again, through one Capitol riot, two impeachments, three presidential elections and four criminal indictments, they have failed to gain traction with its voters.Now, after years of legal, cultural and political crises that upended American norms and expectations, what could be the final battle of the anti-Trump Republicans won’t be waged in Congress or the courts, but in the packed ski lodges and snowy town halls of a state of 1.4 million residents.Ahead of New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday, the old guard of the G.O.P. has rallied around Nikki Haley, viewing her bid as its last, best chance to finally pry the former president from atop its party. Anything but a very close finish for her in the state, where moderate, independent voters make up 40 percent of the electorate, would send Mr. Trump on an all-but-unstoppable march to the nomination. The Trump opposition is outnumbered and underemployed. The former president’s polarizing style and hard-nosed tactics have pushed many Republicans who oppose him into early retirement and humiliating defeats, or out of the party completely. Yet, their long-running war against him has helped to frame the nominating contest around a central, and deeply tribal, litmus test: loyalty to Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Trump Falsely Claims Democrats Can Vote in New Hampshire’s GOP Primary

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      WHAT WAS SAID“Nikki Haley is counting on Democrats and liberals to infiltrate your Republican primary.”— Former President Donald J. Trump during a New Hampshire rally WednesdayThis is false.Mr. Trump has falsely and repeatedly suggested in recent days that one of his Republican rivals, Nikki Haley, is counting on Democrats to win the Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire next week. In fact, registered Democrats cannot vote in the state’s Republican primary — though voters who are not affiliated with a party can.During a rally on Wednesday in Portsmouth, N.H., Mr. Trump asked of the state’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu, who has endorsed Ms. Haley: “But why does he allow Democrats to vote in the Republican primary?”A day earlier, in Atkinson, N.H., Mr. Trump made similar claims. “As you know, Nikki Haley in particular is counting on the Democrats and liberals to infiltrate your Republican primary. You know that, that’s what’s happening. You have a group of people coming in that are not Republicans.”In New Hampshire, undeclared voters — often called simply independents — can choose to vote in either the Democratic or the Republican presidential primary, though not in both, as the New Hampshire secretary of state’s website explains. The voters become registered members of the party they select, though they can return to being an undeclared voter after the primary, if they want.But in order for registered Democrats to vote in the state’s Republican primary, they needed to have changed their party affiliation months ago: The deadline was Oct. 6.It is worth noting that these rules were in place in 2016, when Mr. Trump won New Hampshire’s primary during his first bid for president.Ms. Haley, who served as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, has been courting the state’s independent voters. On Friday, she pushed back on Mr. Trump’s claims and other attacks, accusing her former boss of pushing “too many lies.” More

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      Nikki Haley Looks to New Hampshire Primary With a Focus on Independents

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      The former South Carolina governor has banked her campaign on the state, buoyed by an influx of cash and an advertising blitz as she looks to rebound from Iowa.Former President Donald J. Trump’s resounding victory in Iowa significantly raises the stakes of next week’s New Hampshire primary for Nikki Haley and the increasingly desperate contingent of Republicans who want to move on from Mr. Trump.While Iowa was largely a foregone conclusion at the top, with a spirited battle only for second place, a small but ever narrowing path still exists for Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, to beat Mr. Trump in New Hampshire. It relies heavily on tens of thousands of independent voters expected to participate in the Republican primary.Ms. Haley, who got a late start in Iowa, has from the beginning banked her campaign on a strong showing in New Hampshire, and has recently been buoyed by an influx of cash from the super PAC supporting her. The demographic makeup of the state is also much more favorable to her than the more rural and conservative Iowa. She has invested significant money and time here — holding 80 events in the state — and has the support of some its top Republicans, including the popular governor, Chris Sununu.“She’s on the ground, she’s in the diner, she’s doing the town halls,” Mr. Sununu said. “She’s answering anybody’s questions. Trump’s not doing that. You’re lucky to get him to fly in once a week to do a rally and then get the heck out of there.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Trump Takes Aim at Haley as Primary Enters Final Phase in Iowa

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      Nearly a week before the state’s caucuses, a frenzy of campaigning belies a seemingly static G.O.P. race, with former President Donald J. Trump the prohibitive front-runner.Donald J. Trump’s escalating attacks on Nikki Haley both on the airwaves and at his rallies — criticisms she likened Saturday to “a temper tantrum” — captured the turbulent dynamics in the final week before the first votes of the 2024 Republican presidential primary are cast.Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley and Ron DeSantis fanned out across Iowa this weekend to make their case before the state’s caucuses on Jan. 15 in a frenetic burst of activity as voters endured an unending barrage of mailers, TV ads and door knockers.But the late gust of campaigning belies a Republican race that has remained stubbornly static for months despite unfolding under the most extraordinary of circumstances. Mr. Trump remains the party’s prohibitive front-runner, even as he stares down legal jeopardy in the form of 91 felony counts spread across four criminal cases.For months, the date of the Iowa caucuses has been circled on Republican calendars as the first and one of the best opportunities for those hoping to slow Mr. Trump’s march toward a rematch with President Biden. Iowa Republicans, after all, were some of the few voters in the party to reject Mr. Trump in the 2016 primary.But the former president’s two top rivals — Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, and Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor — continue to thrash each other as much as Mr. Trump, though both are badly trailing him in most polls.Nikki Haley, left, the former governor of South Carolina, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, have attacked each other as much as they have Mr. Trump, even though most polling shows him leading them both by wide margins.Brian Snyder/ReutersThe leading pro-Haley super PAC has spent more than $13 million attacking Mr. DeSantis in Iowa since December, including one recent mailer that features Mr. Trump’s distinctive blond hair photoshopped onto Mr. DeSantis, calling the governor “unoriginal” and “too lame to lead.” A pro-DeSantis super PAC, meanwhile, has funded more than $8 million worth of attacks in Iowa on Ms. Haley since November, with ads calling her “Tricky Nikki Haley” and condemning her positions on China and transgender rights.“It’s literally a circular firing squad for second place,” said Terry Sullivan, a Republican strategist who managed Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign. “Trump is the de facto incumbent nominee of the party, and if you want to beat an incumbent, you have to give a fireable offense. Their effort has been abysmal at delivering a fireable offense.”On the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol on Saturday, Mr. Trump indulged in the same lies about the results of the last election that were at the center of the violent uprising, and described those imprisoned for their roles in the attack as “J6 hostages.” But his leading G.O.P. rivals, ever wary of crossing a Trump-aligned party base even as the election nears, left the anniversary mostly unremarked upon. And it was Mr. Biden who on Friday used the occasion to pitch Mr. Trump as unfit for the presidency.Chris McAnich, who was at Mr. Trump’s event in Newton, Iowa, on Saturday wearing his white “Trump Caucus Captain” hat, said he had specifically attended because of the Jan. 6 date.“He did not incite a riot, and that’s kind of why I’m here, on Jan. 6, to say I’m with Trump and stick a thumb in their eye,” Mr. McAnich said.A Trump rally in Clinton, Iowa, on Saturday, the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Mr. Trump has described those imprisoned for their roles in the attack as “J6 hostages.”Tannen Maury/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA confident Mr. Trump continued to throw punches at a range of Republicans, including the late Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war whom Mr. Trump infamously mocked in 2015 when he said, “I like people who weren’t captured.” In Newton on Saturday, Mr. Trump brought up Mr. McCain’s vote against repealing the health care law known as Obamacare.“John McCain for some reason couldn’t get his arm up that day,” Mr. Trump said, mimicking Mr. McCain’s thumbs-down gesture. Mr. McCain had sustained injuries during his imprisonment that limited his arm mobility.Entering 2024, Ms. Haley appeared to be gaining momentum, consolidating support among more moderate Republicans. She announced this week that she had hauled in $24 million in the fourth quarter, a major infusion of cash at a critical juncture. The political network founded by the industrialist Koch brothers said it was plunging another $27 million into aiding Ms. Haley, including the first spending in Super Tuesday states.But she has made some verbal stumbles in recent days as a brighter spotlight shines on her. She suggested that New Hampshire would “correct” Iowa’s vote and that “you change personalities” as the calendar turns to the second voting state, miscues that Mr. DeSantis’s operation hopes he can capitalize on as the battle for second place has raged in Iowa. The DeSantis campaign was texting the quotes to Iowans over the weekend.Mr. Trump slashed at Ms. Haley, much as he has Mr. DeSantis, for daring to run against him after she said she would not. “Nikki would sell you out just like she sold me out,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday. The day before, he accused her of being “in the pocket” of “establishment donors,” and of being a “globalist.”“She likes the globe,” Mr. Trump said. “I like America first.”Mr. Trump’s pivot to Ms. Haley after months of unrelenting attacks on Mr. DeSantis signaled a new phase in the race. Ms. Haley is threatening not only to eclipse Mr. DeSantis for second place in Iowa but also to compete with Mr. Trump in New Hampshire, where independent voters are giving her a lift in a state with an open primary.Since mid-December, Mr. Trump’s super PAC has spent more than $5 million hitting Ms. Haley in New Hampshire — after spending nothing, federal records show. Mr. Trump’s campaign is now on the airwaves there, too.“Isn’t that sweet of him spending so much time and money against me?” Ms. Haley said on Fox News on Friday after she was shown a Trump ad attacking her on immigration.Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who has endorsed Ms. Haley and campaigned with her in Iowa this week, said in an interview that Mr. Trump was “scared.”“He’s seeing exactly what we’re seeing,” Mr. Sununu said. “She’s moving. He’s not. She has momentum. He doesn’t. She’s getting people excited. He’s yesterday’s news.”Ms. Haley campaigning in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday. She is threatening not only to eclipse Mr. DeSantis for second place in the state but also to compete with Mr. Trump in New Hampshire.Rachel Mummey/ReutersMr. Trump’s team is hoping that a string of early and decisive victories, starting in Iowa and then in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, will help make him the presumptive nominee by March, when most of the delegates he needs to secure the nomination are up for grabs. The former president has reliably led in national polling by landslide margins for many months. The indictments at the center of Mr. Trump’s legal vulnerability have so far served only to strengthened him politically, with Republicans consistently rallying to his defense.Mr. Trump’s advisers have said that, in some ways, they are battling complacency as much as they are his rivals, with surveys showing him so far ahead. “Don’t go by the polls,” Mr. Trump said on Saturday, urging Iowa Republicans to turn out despite his lead to send a “thundering message” that will resonate through November.“It is effectively over,” said David Bossie, a Republican National Committee member who oversaw the debates process for the party and was a Trump campaign adviser. “It’s been effectively over since the beginning. This has never been a real race.”Still, millions of dollars are being plunged into the race by all sides. Mr. Trump’s super PAC recently produced a mailer in New Hampshire that counterintuitively links Ms. Haley to Mr. Trump. The mailer calls her “a BIG supporter of Trump’s MAGA Agenda.” It then tries to attack former Gov. Chris Christie as “an anti-Trump Republican.”The twist, according to a person working for the super PAC, is that the mailer went exclusively to independent voters in New Hampshire who have voted in Democratic primaries. The idea is that tying Ms. Haley to Mr. Trump will lure those independents to Mr. Christie, which could help the former president stay ahead of Ms. Haley.It’s just one example of the flurry of tactical maneuvers and advertisements that is now so omnipresent in the early states that one pro-DeSantis ad played on television screens in an Iowa venue on Saturday while Ms. Haley was speaking.Mr. Trump’s decision to bypass all the debates so far has left his rivals to fight among themselves. On Wednesday, Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis are set for their first one-on-one debate, on CNN. Mr. Trump has scheduled an overlapping town hall on Fox News.Ms. Haley, who has made the case that a Trump nomination will bring too much “chaos,” tried to goad the former president onto the debate stage at a town hall in Indianola, Iowa, urging him to “stop acting like Biden” and stop hiding.Mr. DeSantis, who has struggled for months to find an effective message that draws a contrast with Mr. Trump, may have landed on one in the waning days: “Donald Trump is running for his issues. Nikki Haley is running for her donors’ issues. I’m running for your issues.”The Iowa caucuses are quirky. There are no traditional polling places that are open all day. Instead, on a Monday evening of a holiday weekend, more than 1,500 precincts will open in the evening for in-person gatherings that can include speeches and lobbying among neighbors. Temperatures are projected to be in the single digits.The exercise can advantage the most organized campaigns, and Mr. DeSantis is banking that his super PAC’s much-discussed door-knocking operation will pay late dividends.“It’s never in our business inevitable,” said Beth Hansen, who managed former Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 Republican run for president. “But we don’t know what it is that is going to change this paradigm. And I don’t think it exists inside the current set of arrows the candidates are using in the quiver.”Kellen Browning More

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      Nikki Haley Endorsed by Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire

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      Mr. Sununu is popular in the state, though former President Donald J. Trump continues to dominate the field.Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire endorsed Nikki Haley for the Republican presidential nomination at a campaign event Tuesday evening, casting her as a fresh face for the party who could take on the elites in Washington and move the nation past the “nonsense and drama” of former President Donald J. Trump.“We are all in for Nikki Haley,” Mr. Sununu said to loud cheers at a ski area in Manchester, adding that her momentum was “real” and “tangible” and that her poll numbers and ground game have been “absolutely unbelievable.”Pacing in the middle of the audience, Ms. Haley called it “a great night in New Hampshire.” “It doesn’t get any better than this — to go and get endorsed by the ‘Live Free or Die’ governor is about as rock-solid of an endorsement as we could hope for.”The endorsement is a significant victory for Ms. Haley, who is trying to establish herself over Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida as the main alternative to Mr. Trump and has gained ground in New Hampshire polling in the past month.Mr. Sununu, a Trump critic who is serving his fourth and last two-year term as governor, was re-elected last year by more than 15 percentage points and is popular in the state. He was seen as a top recruit for the Senate last year but declined to run, and he also chose not to run for the Republican presidential nomination himself — saying at the time that he thought he could have more influence as an external voice than as a candidate.On the 2024 presidential campaign trail, Mr. Sununu stumped with Ms. Haley, Mr. DeSantis and former Gov. Chris Christie, as he weighed which of the three to back. In an interview last month, he said he would talk over his decision with friends and family over the Thanksgiving break. He said he was looking for someone who could beat Mr. Trump and who could connect with voters on “a very retail level.”Before the raucous crowd in Manchester, Mr. Sununu lauded Ms. Haley as a traditional Republican with the executive experience to secure the border, tackle mental health needs and ensure low taxes and limited government. He urged New Hampshire voters to turn the page on this era’s politics, taking shots at both President Biden and Mr. Trump. “We have a president who is more concerned about nap time,” he said. “We have a president who is worried about jail time.”In a news conference after the event, Mr. Sununu and Ms. Haley shot down suggestions that Ms. Haley might choose Mr. Sununu as her vice president should she win the nomination. “I think he is fantastic, but he has told me he doesn’t want anything to do with V.P.,” she said.Ms. Haley told reporters she had been more focused on winning over voters than scoring endorsements from elected officials, but she nevertheless called Mr. Sununu’s support a huge win for her bid. Mr. Sununu argued the race had now become a contest between only two people — “Nikki Haley and Donald Trump.”“There’s differences with us,” Ms. Haley said when Mr. Sununu was asked if he believed Ms. Haley had sufficiently confronted the former president. “Anti-Trumpers don’t think I hate him enough. Pro-Trumpers don’t think I love him enough. The end of the day, I put my truths out there and let the chips fall were they may.”Given his popularity and his proven ability to win as a Republican in a state that leans Democratic, Mr. Sununu could help sway the moderate Republicans and independents whom Ms. Haley is counting on to give her a strong showing in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary on Jan. 23.Undeclared voters, who can participate in the Republican primary, now make up roughly 39 percent of voters in the state, a greater slice of the electorate than either Democrats or Republicans. And with no competitive Democratic presidential primary next year, they are expected to play an even larger role in the Republican contest.“It is really a big move,” Matthew Bartlett, a former Trump appointee and Republican strategist who is unaligned in the race, said of Mr. Sununu’s backing. “It is really the last chess piece to fall in line before Election Day, and it is not to be underestimated.”But just how much weight it will carry is an open question in a primary in which nothing — not endorsements, not debates, not 91 felony charges — has changed the basic dynamic: Mr. Trump is the overwhelming favorite, and everybody else is fighting for second place.The Sununu endorsement was first reported by WMUR earlier on Tuesday.Mr. DeSantis received two of the biggest endorsements available in Iowa — those of Gov. Kim Reynolds and the evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats — but has yet to make significant gains on Mr. Trump there. Still, campaign officials for Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Christie downplayed the impact of Mr. Sununu’s backing.“This puts us down one vote in New Hampshire and when Governor Christie is back in Londonderry tomorrow, he’ll continue to tell the unvarnished truth about Donald Trump and earn that one missing vote and thousands more,” said Karl Rickett, campaign spokesman for Mr. Christie, who has made New Hampshire his do-or-die state.Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, criticized both Ms. Haley and Mr. Sununu in a statement. “No matter how much Nikki Haley or Chris Sununu try to spin Granite Staters, the reality is they’re both MAGA extremists who spent years cozying up to Donald Trump,” he said.At the ski area in Manchester, a prospective voter solicited a low exclamation of “oohs” from the crowd when she asked if Ms. Haley would ever consider the vice presidency given Mr. Trump’s dominance in national and state polls.“It is not that big of a deal,” Ms. Haley responded, calming the crowd and prompting some laughter, “because what you have to know is I don’t play for second.”In the audience, Dan Silverman, 53, an undeclared voter who leans Republican, said he wasn’t particularly keen on any of the contenders in the Republican primary and was concerned about some of Ms. Haley’s “bombastic language” on foreign policy. But after watching her speak, Mr. Silverman, who teaches information systems courses at the University of New Hampshire, said he enjoyed her remarks. “I am coming around,” he said.Nearby, Bruce LaRiviere, 65, a retail salesman, said he was set on voting for Ms. Haley, whom he admired for her calls for term limits and competency tests for elected officials. He hoped Mr. Sununu’s endorsement would provide her the boost she needed to beat Mr. Trump, who he said was a force of a “noise and aggression.”“She’s very conservative,” he said. “I like the way she is going to try to change Washington.” More