(NewsNation) — New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu isn’t running for president in 2024, but he would consider running as vice president if it were with the right presidential candidate.
“It’s got to be the right team, and it’s got to be, you know, the right formula,” Sununu said Monday on “CUOMO.” “You want someone that, you know, with my skill set, hopefully would complement someone else’s.”
He added the caveat that it’s “nothing I’m thinking about right now.”
Instead, the New Hampshire governor says he is focused on making sure former President Donald Trump isn’t the 2024 Republican nominee. Sununu announced Monday he isn’t seeking the nomination because “beating Trump is more important.”
He called on other Republican contenders to clear a crowded field and coalesce around one or two candidates that can beat Trump in the primaries.
“Hopefully all these candidates have the discipline to get out of the race when it’s time. Come November, December, the candidates that aren’t doing well, they’ve got to get out,” Sununu said. “Otherwise, we’re gonna be stuck with a former President Trump at 35% of Republican support running away with the nomination.”
Sununu is one of of several Republicans signaling it’s time for the party to move on from a candidate who is currently the front-runner, according to polling averages. They argue Trump is a drag on the party who is the reason for poor performances in the 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections.
“This guy cost us school board seats,” Sununu said.
Trump is running about 30 points ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who announced his candidacy last month in a Twitter Spaces conversation with Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Both DeSantis and Trump were campaigning in Iowa last week courting the evangelical vote ahead of the 2024 caucus next year.
Both candidates are stepping up their attacks on each other.
In Iowa on Saturday, DeSantis hit back at Trump for saying he didn’t like the term “woke” because people have a hard time defining it. “Woke is an existential threat to our society,” DeSantis said. “To say it’s not a big deal, that just shows you don’t understand what a lot of these issues are right now.”
Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly attacked DeSantis from the left. He has suggested that even anti-abortion activists consider Florida’s new six-week abortion ban “too harsh” and argued that DeSantis has made himself unelectable on a national level with his votes as a congressman to cut Social Security and Medicare — even though Trump’s proposed budgets also repeatedly called for major entitlement cuts.
Other Republican candidates include former United Nations Ambassador and South Carolina Nikki Haley; South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott; and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are expected to announce their candidacies this week.
While Sununu didn’t back any one candidate, he said the party must consolidate its support for one.
“If it’s a one-on-one race, Trump cannot win in the Republican Party (primary),” Sununu said. “He cannot get more than 50% of the vote, so it’s incumbent upon on all of us to figure out who that individual is and get behind them.”
For his part, Sununu said not entering the race allows him to speak more candidly about Trump and court independents and younger generations to grow the party.
“I want more senators, I want more governors, I want more school board members, I want more congressmen,” Sununu said. “I just think there’s a huge opportunity to get away from that Donald Trump message that has kind of plagued the party for so long.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.