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Amid endorsement speculation, Sununu to join Nikki Haley at Tuesday town hall [1]

['Hadley Barndollar', 'More From Author', '- December']

Date: 2023-12-12  

Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire is scheduled to join Nikki Haley at a McIntyre Ski Area town hall event Tuesday night, amid increasing speculation about his endorsement.

Sununu’s office announced he will deliver remarks at the former South Carolina governor’s stump speech at 6 p.m. at the Manchester ski area.

Haley has seen a recent climb in Granite State polling, but former President Donald Trump maintains a commanding lead. According to polling released Nov. 16 by the Washington Post and Monmouth University, Haley is on the rise in the first-in-the-nation primary state, claiming second place in the poll with 18 percent of registered Republican or undeclared voters saying they would vote for her. Forty-six percent of voters in the poll said they would vote for Trump.

Trump’s lead appeared to widen this week in Iowa, according to a new Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll that showed 51 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers pick Trump as their first choice. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was tied with Haley at 16 percent in October, moved ahead by three percentage points into second place.

When Sununu announced in a July Washington Post op-ed that he would not be seeking the Republican nomination for president, he warned that if Trump is the nominee, “Republicans will lose again. … This is indisputable, and I am not willing to let it happen without a fight.”

As a result, his endorsement has been long-awaited, and he spent the past several months vetting candidates as they visited New Hampshire.

Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, speculated that Sununu would endorse Haley on Tuesday night, adding to the “blizzard” of information that voters will receive over the next six weeks until the Jan. 23 primary.

“This endorsement, it’s a piece of information to voters, but it’s wrong to exaggerate the importance of any one snowflake in the blizzard,” Scala said.

That being said, Scala expects Sununu’s endorsement will hold weight for the voting bloc of moderate, anti-Trump Republicans who might be split between Haley and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

“If you could put that bloc behind a single candidate, that’s probably a third of the vote,” Scala said. “I think in terms of the primary, (Sununu) would be especially influential among just that bloc of voters.”

That wouldn’t be enough for a Haley win, Scala said, but it would ensure her second place finish in the New Hampshire primary and put her “in striking distance of Trump.”

In the meantime, Scala is interested to watch what Sununu will do over the next six weeks as an “effective advocate and surrogate” for Haley. He doesn’t expect Sununu’s campaigning will stop with the Tuesday night endorsement.

“He seems very intent on trying to stop Trump.”

This story was published earlier by the New Hampshire Bulletin, an affiliate of the nonprofit States Newsroom network, which includes the Florida Phoenix.

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[1] Url: https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/12/12/amid-endorsement-speculation-sununu-to-join-nikki-haley-at-tuesday-town-hall/

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