Over the weekend, Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire, appeared with Chuck
Todd on NBC's Meet the Press.
And during that interview, Chuck Todd asked, uh uh, Sununu about how Donald Trump has been
affecting all of these special elections that we've seen this year.
All the school board races, right?
Remember, 'cause Republicans were gonna take over the school boards across the country
and remake them in their own image.
And Chris Sununu pointed out a sad reality that he admits the rest of his party is not
taking very seriously.
Here's how that exchange went down.
Chris Sununu said, Republican school board members have lost their seats because they
felt like they had to constantly answer for being a Trump Republican.
To which Chuck Todd responded.
I've looked at the special elections this year.
Democrats are overperforming anywhere you've seen in your home state where some Democrats
have won special elections that normally Republicans win.
Is this due to abortion?
Is this due to Trump?
What do you think it's about?
And this is where Chris Sununu dropped that truth bomb, not necessarily for Chuck Todd,
but as a warning to the entire Republican Party.
It's about the former President more than anything.
And I can tell you, I, I've had Republican school board members that have lost their
seats because they felt like they had to constantly answer for being a Trump Republican and all
of that.
It's a negative brand.
It puts a lot of hesitation.
So it isn't just the federal seats, it's the governorships, the school boards, the congressional
seats, all of them, especially here at a place like New Hampshire where we can kind of go
back and forth.
We're very independent minded.
The Trump brand just doesn't work.
It really doesn't.
And so to kind of clear that off the table once and for all is a huge opportunity for
Republicans to get back elected officials where the policy matters most.
And that's at the local level.
Chuck Todd then of course asked him like, what about these polls that actually show
that Biden and Trump are kind of tied nationally?
And Sununu said, I'm surprised by those numbers.
I am.
Look, nationally, the polls are very different than what we are seeing where the conversation's
really happening.
I appreciate, we've had one debate nationally.
I think that's a very important step, but it's a bad brand.
The Trump brand doesn't work for the Republican Party, which of course, by the way, is why
I'm not putting much stock in those polls that say, oh, Biden and Trump are tied.
Eh, I think once we get down to Brass Tack, we're gonna see that it's not really gonna
be a close election at all.
But I do think Sununu is right about the Trump brand.
And it's not just because of the elections we've seen this year.
I mean, you look back at last year's election, last May, may of 2022 Republicans were predicting,
I think it was actually Kevin McCarthy.
May have been April.
But anyway, they predicted they were gonna have a 70
Seat advantage in the House of Representatives.
A red wave was gonna sweep over all of us.
They have a 10 seat advantage, which means you get five Republicans that don't vote with
their party.
You got a stalemate there.
So they went from a 70 seat advantage that they'd predicted down to only 10 seats.
That's rather pathetic.
Go back a year after that.
2020 Republicans lost states they had not lost in decades.
In some instances, Georgia, not only did Georgia go blue, but both of Georgia's Republican
held Senate seats are now filled with Democrats.
Arizona, same thing.
New Mexico.
Yeah.
So you've got red states turning blue in 2020.
Go back to the midterms of 2018.
What happened then?
That was the blue wave.
So all of these things, all of these elections that have happened since Donald Trump burst
onto the national stage have not been good for Republicans.
And that's what Chris Sununu is warning the Republican Party and the voters about, because
it's not just the national ones.
He's like, look at what's happening to us locally.
We are getting crushed.
We are getting pummeled because that man who's gonna be your nominee is bringing the entire
party down.
Everything from the run for the presidency down to your local dog catcher.
If they identify as a Trump Republican, that's gonna hurt them in their elections.
And he's absolutely right about that.