New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu (R) warned on Sunday that growing enthusiasm for Vice President Harris among Democrats should be a concern for the Trump campaign, and urged the former president to focus on policy rather than personal attacks.
Sununu, a moderate who previously supported Democratic presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s primary campaign against former President Trump, told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz on “This Week” that Harris’ rise will change the race.
“This is the honeymoon period,” Sununu said of the race. “The media is flattering. Everybody’s excited. This is a brand new race. All of that is true. And it’s going to last about 30 days.”
The governor predicted the campaign would really focus just after Labor Day, once the “honeymoon” period is over.
“It’s going to come back to other issues,” he said. “The border issue, the inflation issue, these are very real issues. It’s not going to be, ‘Vice President Harris is a woman, so we need to vote for her.'”
He predicted that once the election campaign returns to normal, the polls would return to their pre-debate averages, giving former President Trump a slight lead.
Sununu added that the Trump campaign should focus on the issues and “avoid insults” when discussing Harris.
He said Trump missed that opportunity in his recent campaign but “hopefully he can get back on track. I think he was on track for a few months. I think the changes in the campaign have personally motivated me to take on Trump.”
But the governor also acknowledged that “nobody can make Donald Trump do anything, but hopefully the numbers, the polls, will help Donald Trump realise what’s worked and what’s not worked.”
Democrats have quickly rallied around Harris, whose campaign has already amassed enough enthusiastic delegates to virtually guarantee the party’s nomination. With no other candidates challenging her for the nomination, her campaign has been breaking fundraising records in an attempt to make up for a late start.
“Vice President Harris’s momentum and energy are real, and so are the fundamentals of this race: this election will be very close and will be decided by a small number of voters in just a few states,” Harris spokesman Michael Tyler wrote in a memo reported by The Associated Press.
