New Hampshire voters have a comparatively conventional choice for the United States Senate between Democratic Congressman Chris Pappas and former Republican Senator John E. Sununu.
Both candidates have substantial records in public office. Pappas has represented New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District since 2019 and previously served on the state Executive Council. Sununu served three terms in the U.S. House and one term in the Senate before losing reelection in 2008. Both won their September 8 primaries decisively, Pappas with about 65 percent of the Democratic vote and Sununu with about 69 percent of the Republican vote.
The differences between them are real. But unlike some Senate contests CIVPAC has examined this year, neither candidate begins with a policy program that requires fundamentally reconstructing major American economic institutions, nor does either present an obvious initial question about acceptance of election results.
Pappas is broadly a center-left Democrat who favors a larger federal role in health care, labor protection, clean energy and reproductive rights, but generally works through existing public and private institutions. Sununu is a traditional conservative who emphasizes lower taxes, competition, deregulation, fiscal discipline and a more limited federal role. He also enters this race with a history of political independence from Donald Trump that distinguishes him from a number of Republican candidates CIVPAC has evaluated.
That makes the New Hampshire race less a contest over political red lines than a comparison of competing governing philosophies.
Trump, Congress and Institutional Independence
Pappas makes opposition to what he regards as excessive presidential power an important part of his campaign. He has argued that Congress needs to restore checks and balances and has criticized President Trump on tariffs, military action in Iran and immigration enforcement. He also points to occasions on which he challenged Democratic leadership, including his effort to force action on congressional stock trading. His campaign makes congressional independence and anti-corruption measures a prominent part of its case.
Sununu presents a more unusual case.
He was never a natural Trump Republican. He endorsed John Kasich rather than Trump in 2016 and Nikki Haley rather than Trump in the 2024 Republican primary. In a January 2024 opinion piece, Sununu bluntly described Trump as a “loser” and argued that Republicans needed a different nominee. He also rejected Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen.
Trump nevertheless endorsed Sununu in 2026, and Sununu accepted that endorsement.
That has not eliminated Sununu’s willingness to disagree with him. Sununu opposed Trump’s decision to begin the war with Iran, has criticized tariffs on Canada and building materials, and has argued that Congress has surrendered too much constitutional authority over spending and tariffs to presidents of both parties.
But Sununu’s independence should not be overstated. He says he would have voted for Trump’s 2025 tax-and-spending legislation. Whatever one may think of this giant bundle of legislation, it was not fiscally conservative to support it. While he criticized the decision to enter the Iran war, he has taken a relatively expansive view of presidential authority to initiate military action. He told The Dartmouth that the War Powers Act is “appropriately structured” and cited the Clinton administration’s Kosovo intervention and the Obama administration’s Libya intervention as precedents for presidential action without prior congressional authorization. This does not suggest that he is likely to be protective of Congress’s institutional control over war-making powers.
The resulting picture is neither that of a Trump loyalist nor that of a Republican routinely prepared to oppose the administration. Sununu has an identifiable political philosophy of his own and a demonstrated history of disagreement with Trump, while remaining broadly supportive of significant portions of the Republican domestic agenda.
Foreign Policy: Ukraine, China and American Leadership
Pappas is an internationalist. His foreign-policy platform supports continued American leadership abroad, military assistance to Ukraine, sanctions against Russia and cooperation with American allies. He describes Russia, China and Iran as authoritarian threats and supported the CHIPS and Science Act in part as a means of reducing American technological dependence on China.
On Israel, Pappas continues to support Israel’s security and right to exist, Palestinian self-determination and a two-state solution. But his position has evolved substantially during 2026. He has become sharply critical of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, settlement activity and the civilian toll in Gaza and has said the U.S.-Israel relationship is at a “turning point.” As the current ten-year security-assistance agreement approaches expiration, he believes the United States should reconsider how future assistance is structured.
Sununu’s current foreign-policy record is less complete.
His position on China is clear. He describes China as America’s largest national-security threat, supports continued military assistance to Taiwan, favors reducing supply-chain dependence on China and supports targeted tariffs responding to Chinese trade practices.
His position on Ukraine is not clear. We have not found a sufficiently specific 2026 statement explaining whether he supports continued military assistance to Ukraine, what settlement terms he would regard as acceptable or how he defines American obligations under NATO. Citizens Count continues to record no response from Sununu to its current question about military aid to Ukraine.
Given the importance CIVPAC attaches to deterring Russian aggression and maintaining NATO, this is a question worth answering. Our broader position is set out in CIVPAC’s Russia and Ukraine policy.
Iran and Presidential War Powers
Both candidates have criticized aspects of President Trump’s war with Iran, but they approach presidential war powers differently.
Pappas opposed the war and has argued that Congress has failed to exercise its constitutional responsibility over continuing hostilities. He supported congressional efforts to restrict unauthorized military action.
Sununu says he would not have initiated the Iran war as Trump did and has criticized the failure to protect the Strait of Hormuz and the possibility of an open-ended ground commitment. But his constitutional interpretation gives presidents substantially more latitude.
Sununu told The Dartmouth that he believes the War Powers Act is “appropriately structured” because presidents must be able to respond to imminent threats while Congress retains authority afterward. He cited the Clinton administration’s Kosovo intervention and the Obama administration’s Libya intervention as relevant precedents and said the Iran actions were consistent with that tradition.
That creates an interesting distinction within Sununu’s broader concern about executive power. He favors Congress reclaiming authority over tariffs and spending but appears more accepting of substantial presidential initiative in the use of military force.
CIVPAC has generally taken a stronger view of Congress’s constitutional responsibility for sustained military hostilities. That disagreement is worth making explicit.
Trade, Tariffs and the Economy
Neither candidate offers an entirely doctrinaire economic program.
Pappas strongly opposes Trump’s broad tariff policies, arguing that they increase consumer and business costs. His campaign has particularly emphasized the effect of tariffs on Canada and on construction and energy costs in New Hampshire.
Sununu also favors removing tariffs on building materials and has been critical of aspects of Trump’s tariff strategy. At the same time, he supports targeted measures against China when responding to subsidies, dumping, market barriers or national-security concerns.
That places both candidates closer to a selective rather than blanket use of trade restrictions, although Pappas is more broadly critical of the Trump tariff program and Sununu is more receptive to targeted tariffs as an instrument of economic and strategic policy.
On taxes and spending, the philosophical difference is more familiar.
Sununu emphasizes lower taxes, spending restraint, deregulation and competition. His campaign highlights his earlier opposition to tax increases and promises to oppose middle-class tax increases. Sununu campaign biography
Pappas favors a more active federal role. His campaign proposes or supports tax benefits and spending programs addressing child care, energy, housing and health care and opposes recent reductions in Medicaid and food assistance.
Neither candidate, however, has yet presented a comprehensive plan reconciling his spending and tax priorities with the long-term federal fiscal imbalance.
That is not unusual in American politics. It is still a deficiency.
Social Security
Social Security produces one of the clearer philosophical differences between the candidates in this race.
Pappas opposes benefit reductions, increases in the retirement age and privatization. He says the program should be strengthened and made solvent for future generations. His campaign’s Social Security position is emphatic about what he will not do. He does not say it, but that leaves little else besides higher taxes to accomplish that objective.
Sununu has a long record of supporting individual investment accounts as part of Social Security reform. His principal proposal would have allowed younger workers voluntarily to divert part of their payroll taxes into individually owned investment accounts while retaining a guaranteed benefit. PolitiFact’s review of his record concluded that describing him as a leading advocate of Social Security privatization was largely accurate, while noting that his proposals were voluntary, age-limited or both.
He continues to argue that, had the proposal been enacted, Social Security would be in stronger financial condition today and many retirees would have accumulated greater benefits. With the benefit of hindsight that may be true, but that does not establish that it was sound public policy at the time or now.
He has neither clearly recommitted to that proposal nor repudiated it. Asked what he would do now, Sununu has instead emphasized the need for a bipartisan solution.
What he has not yet provided is the specific plan he would support today.
Similarly, Pappas has been clearer about what he would not do than about how he would close Social Security’s long-term financing gap.
This is an area in which both candidates could usefully become more specific.
Health Care
Pappas’s health-care approach works through the existing mixed public-private system. He supports strengthening the Affordable Care Act, restoring or extending premium assistance, protecting Medicaid and Medicare, expanding telehealth and continuing federal efforts to reduce prescription-drug costs. He is not running on Medicare for All.
Sununu emphasizes competition, deregulation and consumer choice. He has proposed greater interstate competition among health-care providers, expanded access to health savings accounts and reductions in federal regulatory burdens. He also supports Medicaid work requirements and tighter eligibility enforcement.
The unanswered question for Sununu is what these principles mean for the structure created by the Affordable Care Act. His current campaign materials do not clearly explain his positions on guaranteed issue, protections for preexisting conditions, premium subsidies, Medicaid expansion or the basic individual insurance market.
That is a significant omission in a Senate campaign.
Neither candidate maps neatly onto CIVPAC’s own health-care policy, which seeks universal coverage while relying more heavily on competitive private insurance and cost-conscious incentives.
Labor and the Role of Unions
Pappas is strongly supportive of organized labor. He backed the PRO Act, supports expanded collective-bargaining protections and has supported restoring bargaining rights for federal employees. He also favors expanded apprenticeship and vocational-training programs.
The PRO Act goes beyond protecting the right to organize. Among other provisions, it would significantly strengthen union bargaining power and affect state right-to-work arrangements.
CIVPAC supports the ability of private-sector employees to organize and bargain collectively but also places substantial weight on individual worker choice, secret-ballot elections and right-to-work protections. We are also more skeptical of public-sector collective bargaining, where the officials sitting across the bargaining table are themselves elected by taxpayers and workers. Our fuller position is described in CIVPAC’s labor-unions policy.
Pappas therefore presents a real policy disagreement here, not merely a difference in rhetoric about supporting workers.
Sununu’s 2026 labor agenda is considerably less developed. His older record was conventionally Republican, but we would prefer to evaluate his current positions rather than simply import votes cast nearly twenty years ago.
Abortion and Reproductive Rights
Pappas’s position is clear. He supports restoring federal protections associated with Roe v. Wade, backed the Women’s Health Protection Act, supports a federal right to contraception and has supported legislation protecting interstate travel for abortion and access to IVF. Pappas reproductive-freedom platform
CIVPAC’s abortion policy is substantially closer to the Roe/Casey framework: strong protection for abortion rights earlier in pregnancy, with greater permissible regulation later in pregnancy and appropriate medical exceptions.
Sununu’s current position is much less clear.
His earlier congressional record was pro-life, but Citizens Count records no current response from him either on a federal abortion ban or on federal legislation protecting abortion rights before viability.
Given the dramatic change in abortion law since Sununu last served in the Senate, relying on votes from the 2000s is inadequate.
What would Senator Sununu vote for now?
That deserves a direct answer.
LGBTQ Rights, Gender Medicine and Athletics
Pappas strongly supports federal LGBTQ civil-rights protections and same-sex marriage. His campaign highlights his work on the Equality Act and the Respect for Marriage Act. Pappas LGBTQ platform He has opposed federal legislation excluding transgender girls and women from female school athletics. His congressional record includes a vote against federal requirements barring transgender girls and women from female athletic categories.
Sununu takes the opposite position on athletics, saying that transgender girls and women should not compete in female sports and invoking Title IX and competitive fairness.
CIVPAC distinguishes the athletics issue from broader questions of discrimination and medical treatment. We generally believe athletic institutions, leagues and governing associations should establish eligibility rules rather than federal or state legislatures.
Pappas has also opposed broad government restrictions on gender-related medical care, but we have not found a sufficiently detailed position explaining the limits he would place on medical treatment of minors, including differences among puberty blockers, hormones and surgery or questions of professional standards and public financing.
That is another question worth clarifying rather than inferring.
Energy and Climate
Pappas treats climate change as a significant problem and supports federal clean-energy incentives, energy efficiency and domestic clean-energy production. His approach nevertheless uses a broader mix of policies than a simple mandate for 100 percent renewable generation.
Sununu’s emphasis is different: expanded domestic production, pipelines, transmission capacity, permitting reform and lower regulatory barriers. His current campaign has emphasized energy affordability and reliability more than an explicit plan for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
CIVPAC approaches climate policy through pricing the externality: a carbon tax with a border adjustment, allowing markets to determine whether the resulting response comes through renewable energy, nuclear power, efficiency, carbon capture or technologies not yet commercially mature.
Neither candidate currently appears to advocate that approach.
Immigration
Pappas combines support for immigration enforcement with broader reform. His record includes support for the Laken Riley Act, while his campaign also favors legal immigration and a broader legislative solution and has called for greater oversight of ICE.
Sununu has supported restricting what he calls “birth tourism” and argues that Congress should act if necessary to limit citizenship obtained through that practice. He also supports stronger restrictions on public benefits for undocumented immigrants.
But his current campaign has not provided a comprehensive immigration position addressing Dreamers, long-established undocumented residents, asylum procedures, employment verification or levels of legal immigration.
Again, this appears to be an area where the absence of detail is largely a consequence of Sununu’s unusually sparse campaign platform.
CIVPAC’s own immigration policy combines stronger enforcement and employment verification with expanded legal immigration and a path to legal residency for long-established undocumented residents.
Where the Evaluation Stands
This is a substantially different kind of Senate race from several CIVPAC has reviewed in 2026.
Pappas has a developed center-left record. He supports Ukraine and American alliances, works within the existing mixed health-care system, supports reproductive rights and favors a substantial federal role in labor, clean energy, health care and social policy. His principal differences with CIVPAC involve the scale of federal intervention, organized labor, aspects of fiscal policy and several cultural-policy questions.
Sununu has a developed historical record but a surprisingly incomplete 2026 policy platform. What is visible suggests a traditional conservative approach emphasizing markets, lower taxes, fiscal restraint, national defense and limited government.
Sununu’s political relationship with Donald Trump deserves careful attention, but the available evidence does not fit comfortably into either of the simplest descriptions. He has a demonstrated record of independent judgment: he opposed Trump in two Republican presidential contests, rejected his 2020 election claims and has publicly disagreed with elements of his tariff and Iran policies. At the same time, he says he would have supported the administration’s major 2025 tax-and-spending legislation and shares much of the conventional Republican domestic agenda.
In addition, as we have mentioned in other evaluations, there is a benefit in divided government. Sununu would be an additional Republican vote in the Senate. Regardless of how he might vote on specific pieces of legislation, that additional vote might give Republicans control of the Senate and all of the powers over committee chairs and the agenda that entails.
Madison believed that Congress would provide an effective check on executive overreach. It now appears that that is true mostly when Congress is held by the party not in control of the executive branch, whether Republican or Democrat. We have overcome that concern before, but mostly on the basis of an established record of good bipartisan governance and policy positions. CIVPAC has discussed this reasoning more fully in Why CIVPAC Sometimes Favors Divided Government.
The difficulty in evaluating Sununu remains information.
Even after winning the Republican nomination, his campaign website offers remarkably little substantive policy detail. Its public material emphasizes affordability, taxes, privacy and Sununu’s previous record, but it still lacks anything resembling the developed issue platform Pappas provides. Sununu campaign website We would still like clear current answers on Ukraine and NATO, abortion, the Affordable Care Act, immigration reform, Social Security solvency and the January 6 pardons. Citizens Count continues to report no response from Sununu on several of these questions, including military assistance to Ukraine and both of its principal federal abortion questions.
Pappas leaves fewer questions about where he stands. The remaining ones are more about the boundaries and costs of policies he already supports: how he would restore long-term fiscal balance, how he would finance Social Security without benefit reductions, how far he would extend federal labor policy and where he would draw lines regarding government intervention.
Those remain useful questions for the campaign to answer.
We plan to revisit this evaluation after the October 29 NHPR/Granite State News Collaborative Senate forum, when both candidates will have another opportunity to address the questions that remain unanswered.
Unless those debates provide a significantly different view of the candidates we are not going to be making an endorsement in this race. That is not a recommendation to voters to stay home. This is a difficult choice and we hope that the evaluation above, and possibly the debate, will help New Hampshire voters decide.