Can a Moderate Abortion-Rights Supporter Be the Republican Presidential Nominee? Chris Sununu Wants

BEDFORD, N.H.—Gov. Chris Sununu says abortion should remain legal in New Hampshire well into the second trimester of pregnancy. He opposed Republican legislation that could have forced schools to reveal a student’s sexual orientation to parents. He killed a GOP plan to redraw a House district boundary in the party’s favor.

It is an unusual record for a Republican, particularly one now testing whether he can win the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination. Mr. Sununu, who has started raising money to assess support for a possible presidential campaign, is not trying to win over the Republican Party’s most ardent and ideologically driven voters, or those focused on battles over racial diversity or gender identity. Rather, the governor is offering his party the prospect of winning back the more centrist Republicans and independents who dislike the GOP’s turn under former President Donald Trump and want a calmer tone in politics. He is banking that his brand of small-government, socially moderate politics can regain support from voters who turned against Mr. Trump’s bid for re-election and then rejected many of the former president’s endorsed candidates in the 2022 midterm elections.

Mr. Sununu says that Mr. Trump and other Republicans, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are making a mistake by pursuing the battles of the moment over cultural issues. In his view, they betray the conservative value of limited government when they move to tell businesses and schools how to shape their policies on race and sexuality. Mr. DeSantis has proposed ending funding for diversity programs in the state’s higher-education system and has stripped Walt Disney Co. of a special self-governing arrangement for speaking out against a DeSantis-backed law limiting classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation. These fights obscure the party’s message of promoting small government and low taxes, Mr. Sununu said. “We don’t do a very good job selling that, because too many folks in leadership are all about headlines and political stunts and, you know, culture wars,” he said.

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Mr. Sununu likely would not need to win a majority of GOP voters in the early state-by-state nominating contests next spring, but he would need a substantial minority. In the crowded 2016 field, Mr. Trump won some of the early primaries, including in New Hampshire, with 35% of the vote or less. “You can put together a nomination for president that allows DeSantis and Trump to go off and fight like hell on the right, and meanwhile he’ll continue to be steady and straightforward for the rest of the Republican Party that doesn’t want to get involved in that catfight,” Tom Rath, a Republican and former state attorney general, said of Mr. Sununu. Other potential GOP candidates, such as former governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, would also likely compete for the same voters as Mr. Sununu if they enter the presidential race.

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The 2022 midterm elections provided some evidence that there is an appetite for Mr. Sununu’s style of politics, including among Republican voters looking for an alternative to Mr. Trump. The governor’s decisive victory came at the same time New Hampshire voters rejected Mr. Trump’s endorsed candidates for the Senate and the state’s two House seats. Democrats won those races by wide margins. The trend was pronounced in towns such as Bedford that are exurbs, communities on the far fringes of metropolitan areas where rural tracts give way to residential development. Mr. Trump lost to President Biden here in 2020 after winning Bedford four years earlier.

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