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Is Chris Sununu Joe Biden’s favorite Republican?

It sounded that way during the Democratic president’s press conference on Wednesday when he invoked Gov. Sununu’s words to make the case that he has been the victim of Republican obstruction.

Biden took to the lectern facing yet another loss on the legislative front as federal election laws he supports were preparing to go down to defeat in the U.S. Senate. His $5 trillion Build Back Better bill also remains stalled. Meanwhile, his poll numbers have fallen more in his first year in office than any modern president, and 70 percent of Americans say the country is on the wrong track.

Biden said he did not believe polls showing his support among independent voters had fallen to 25 percent, but he does believe he is doing a great job.

“I didn’t overpromise. I probably outperformed what most people thought would happen,” Biden said. In fact, he later added he plans to travel across America in the coming months and talk to the voters face to face, “now that the big problems are fixed.”

As for his high-profile legislative failures on Build Back Better and the federal voting laws, Biden said the blame belongs to the Republicans in the Senate. And he used Sununu’s words to make his case against the GOP.

“I did not anticipate that there would be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was that President Biden didn’t get anything done,” Biden said. He then read an excerpt from an interview Sununu recently gave The Washington Examiner about why the New Hampshire governor decided not to run for Senate.

“They were all, for the most part, content with the speed at which they weren’t doing anything. It was very clear that we just have to hold the line for two years. OK, so I’m just going to be a roadblock for two years. That’s not what I do,” Sununu said, noting Republicans were trying to wait until they would hopefully win the presidency in 2024. “It bothered me that they were OK with that,” Sununu said.

“I said, ‘OK, so if we’re going to get stuff done if we win the White House back, why didn’t you do it in 2017 and 2018?’” Sununu asked, saying there were “Crickets. Yeah, crickets,” and that “They had no answer.”

It showed that the most important thing for the GOP was to make sure Joe Biden didn’t get anything done, the president concluded, demanding, “What are Republicans for? Name me one thing they’re for?”

In fact, Democrats control the Senate and they have the votes to pass Build Back Better, as well as the votes to break the filibuster and pass any legislation they choose. Republicans don’t have the votes by themselves to stop either measure.

But having a prominent Republican like Sununu making the case the GOP is the problem is a political gift to Biden.

Sununu declined to respond to requests for comment after the speech, but GOP strategists and activists in both New Hampshire and D.C. agreed it was a problem Sununu created for himself.

“Attacking Washington is fine,” one Republican strategist said. “Everybody hates Washington. But attacking Republicans in Washington, particularly Republicans in the Senate? Not smart.”

Sununu’s comments aren’t news in New Hampshire, echoing attacks he has repeatedly made on D.C. and the Congress. In fact, earlier in the day, Sununu expressed similar sentiments during an online video event with The Washington Post.

Explaining that he preferred to serve as a governor because you can “get things done,” Sununu said:

“You don’t do that in Washington. That’s not my gig. Nobody does it. Democrats don’t do it. Republicans don’t do it. They are often all too satisfied with just stopping a process. They’re all too satisfied with just being the party of no if they’re in the minority or being a roadblock.

“I think there’s no higher ground there,” Sununu added. “I think Democrats and Republicans are equally to blame for that.”

Music to Democrats’ ears, Republicans say.

“Sununu is myopic,” one D.C,-based GOP strategist told NHJournal. “He’s just thinking about triangulating and not about what he’s handing the Democrats.

“I know he believes he is such a brilliant campaigner, but he just got outmaneuvered by a 79-year-old with a 30 [percent] approval rating.”

Longtime Democratic strategist Terry Shumaker was pleased with Biden’s performance, and Sununu’s role in it.

“I thought he was terrific in a way regular Americans can relate to, especially saying several times in different ways, when you find out what Republicans stand for, please let me know,” he told NHJournal. “Quoting Gov. Sununu saying that all GOP senators want to do is obstruct Biden was a high point too.”

GOP U.S. Senate candidate, state Senate President Chuck Morse, responded to Biden’s comments by mocking the president’s attempt to push the blame onto the GOP.

“It wasn’t Republicans that have caused inflation to be the highest it’s been in 40 years. It wasn’t the Republicans that shut down the Keystone Pipeline and made us dependent on Russia and OPEC nations for our energy. It wasn’t Republicans that opened up our borders to anyone that wants to get into the country, including murderers and drug dealers,” Morse said in a statement. “Joe Biden, Maggie Hassan and the Democrats did that, and maybe instead of pointing the fingers at everyone else, they should fix the mess they’ve made of this country.”

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu today praised the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling shutting the Biden administration’s attempts to use a workplace regulatory agency to enforce a COVID vaccine mandate on private businesses.

However, the court permitted the vaccine rule to be imposed on healthcare workers at institutions that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding, unless those employees have medical or religious exemptions.

“I would like to thank the Supreme Court for listening to the countless businesses across our state that would have faced catastrophic workforce shortages had this mandate gone through,” said Sununu. “I am as pro-vaccine as they come, but today’s decision to halt the president’s overreaching vaccine mandate is good news for employees and the businesses that keep our supply chains running and economy open.”

New Hampshire was one of 27 states that sued the Biden administration in various venues over its attempts to use the Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration (OSHA) to impose mandates on employers with 100 or more workers. The mandates, which required employees to either be vaccinated or undergo regular testing, would have affected 84 million workers.

OSHA issued its mandate in November, parts of which– including a mask mandate for unvaccinated workers — were scheduled to take effect this week.

Biden’s Chief of Staff Ron Klain re-tweeted a statement calling the OSHA rule “the ultimate workaround for the federal government to require vaccination,” a point noted by the court during its oral arguments last week. Klain’s attitude fed suspicions among some legal observers that the White House’s decision to issue the OSHA order is just the latest example of the Biden administration issuing a policy they know is unlikely to survive legal scrutiny for the sake of political messaging.

For example, when Biden issued a federal moratorium on evictions last August, he admitted, “The bulk of the constitutional scholars say it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster.” The Supreme Court swiftly struck it down.

It only took a week for the Supreme Court to do the same with the OSHA mandate, once it reached the high court. “Under the law as it stands today, that power [to regulate the pandemic] rests with the states and Congress, not OSHA,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said Thursday.

“By blocking the OSHA mandate, the Supreme Court showed that it’s possible to take statutory limits on federal power seriously, not just constitutional ones,” said Ilya Shapiro, director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. “After all, even if we accept federal regulation of workplace safety as constitutional, there’s a difference between occupational risk and the general risk of living in a pandemic.”

Democrats are celebrating the latest Granite State Poll, conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which found Gov. Chris Sununu’s approval rating continues to decline.

“Passing an unpopular abortion ban and failing to lead during COVID is coming back to haunt Gov. Chris Sununu,” the NH. Democratic Party tweeted. “Lowest approval since taking office. 1st time since 2003 that voters think NH is moving in the wrong direction. Record low approval of his handling of COVID.”

And it’s true Sununu’s numbers have been slumping for months — though he’s still got a 52-47 percent job approval.

The more fascinating finding is the change in Sen. Maggie Hassan’s standing over the past two months. Simply put, her numbers have soared.

In October, Hassan’s approval/disapproval was a dismal 33 percent approve, 51 percent disapprove, leaving her underwater by -18 points. Two months later, that number in the UNH Survey is +3 points, at 43/40. That’s a dramatic, 21-point swing.

So, what happened?

The new poll was taken before Hassan announced she was abandoning the filibuster in order to back a new federal election law. That was by far the most high-profile political move she had made in months.

And while millions of dollars have been spent promoting Hassan and her support for Biden’s spending packages, a similar amount has been spent attacking her on issues like rising inflation and deficit spending.

What makes the Sununu v Hassan divide interesting isn’t the net number, but the trends. Sununu’s seem to make sense. Hassan’s don’t.

The story of Sununu is the story of COVID-19. He was one of the country’s most popular governors, according to polling, before the pandemic hit. Then, as he dealt with the public health emergency, his numbers shot through the roof. From April 2020 until February 2021, he was essentially at 70 percent job approval or higher in the UNH Survey. In May 2020, he hit a jaw-dropping 82 percent approval rating.

But COVID-19 has lingered. The economy has been a troubling mix of rising inflation, disappearing workers, and an unsteady supply chain. Despite having one of the lowest rates of unvaccinated citizens, the state hit the number one spot for COVID-19 cases. And then there are the millions of dollars in attack ads accusing him of banning abortions in New Hampshire (only abortions after six months are prohibited).

Put all that together and the steady decline of Sununu’s polls is hardly a surprise. When the state’s COVID-19 numbers improve, it is likely Sununu’s will, too.

But Hassan? For months, her approval has hovered in the low to mid-30s. Her current 43 percent approval is the highest it has been since February 2020. There is no storyline, just a sudden surge. Why?

Some veteran New Hampshire politicos refused to discuss the UNH numbers, rejecting the “panel” system Dr. Andrew Smith and the UNH Survey Center use as unreliable.

However, its findings are wildly off from the recent Trafalgar Group poll — one of the most accurate pollsters since 2016 — which showed a 46-40 percent Hassan lead in a match-up against Gen. Don Bolduc. And an October St. Anselm Survey Center poll put her at 44 percent approve, 50 percent disapprove, not too far from the UNH Survey number that month.

One theory several strategists suggested to NHJournal is Democrats are rallying around Hassan as their party’s fortunes appear to be fading.

“Partisanship is back,” said GOP strategist Dave Carney. “The [political] team jerseys are back down from the attic. They might have been under the Christmas decorations.”

It may seem an odd time for a Democrat’s poll numbers to rise. The party has been plagued by in-fighting for months over the Build Back Better bill. There is a split between the progressives and the rest of the party. And the issues Americans say are their top priorities — inflation, spending, jobs, even COVID — aren’t breaking their way. Plus, President Joe Biden’s approval dropped to a new record low of 41 percent just last week.

That partisanship gets Hassan to the mid-40s. If there’s not a third-party candidate splitting the anti-Hassan vote (in 2016 there were two), that’s not enough to win.

More bad news: According to the UNH survey, she is underwater with independent voters 26 to 49 percent. In the St. A’s poll in October, that number was 27 to 64 percent.

There aren’t enough Democrats to make up that gap, particularly in a “red wave” midterm election when, it appears, Republicans are likely to be highly motivated voters.

Still, the poll is a reminder that the Democratic Party is very strong in New Hampshire. It is no coincidence the entire delegation is Democratic, or that Republicans have only won the presidential election here once since 1988.

The UNH Survey adds more evidence to back up the theory that Hassan is viewed by the public as “Generic Democrat,” and her fortunes will closely follow those of her party.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu announced a new executive order during his weekly COVID-19 press conference Wednesday allowing the Department of Health and Human Services to assist hospitals in setting up COVID surge sites within the hospital’s campus. It is part of the state’s attempt to address surging numbers of COVID-19 cases as temperatures keep falling.

“We are seeing record levels of cases, and record levels of hospitalizations,” he said. “The winter surge is rearing its ugly head as expected.”

Sununu said the idea for an in-house surge site came from the Labor Day trip New Hampshire officials took to Kentucky to see winter preparations there. 

And Sununu also had some good news: New Hampshire is getting 1 million COVID-19 at-home rapid tests through the National Institutes of Health and Amazon, the first state to take part in the new program.

“At-home tests are going to be a valuable tool,” Sununu said.

As more people will be required to take tests, especially school children, families in New Hampshire will be able to order rapid tests through the state and have them delivered to their homes via Amazon, Sununu said. New Hampshire schools are also getting tests they can hand to families in case a student comes down with symptoms and needs to be sent home. 

The state’s infection rate has soared in recent weeks, with a 7-day average of 1,014 daily cases and new 3,121 cases on Monday alone. Democrats are laying the blame at Sununu’s feet.

“It is disheartening to hear New Hampshire’s State Epidemiologist acknowledge that the Granite State is currently experiencing the highest levels of COVID since the inception of the pandemic,” House Democratic Leader Rep. Renny Cushing (D-Hampton) said in a statement released after Sununu’s presser. “Plain and simple, Gov. Sununu is failing our vaccination effort in New Hampshire.  New Hampshire has the lowest vaccination rate in New England and currently has the second-highest per-capita COVID cases in the United States, behind Michigan.

“We are in crisis,” Cushing added.

At the same time, New Hampshire still ranks number 11 in the nation for percent of its age 12+ population that is fully vaccinated — 64 percent, above the national average of 59 percent. And while cases are rising in New Hampshire, they have also shot up next door in Vermont, the state with the nation’s highest vaccination rate (73 percent fully vaccinated.)

November began with a seven-day average of 194 cases in the Green Mountain State. As of Monday, that number was up to 369 — an increase of 90 percent. And while the New England region has by far the highest rate of vaccinations, it’s also the second-highest region for new cases over the past two weeks.

Clearly, stopping the spread of COVID-19 is going to be more complicated than just urging more vaccinations.

Sununu acknowledged it’s likely the state will call up the National Guard to assist hospitals and other facilities suffering shortages in the face of rising demand for health services. “We could do it right now, and at some point, I think that need will likely be there,” Sununu said.

At the same time, Sununu doesn’t see enacting another state of emergency, or another statewide mask mandate, to deal with the pandemic. In the early days, the state did not have the resources or knowledge to fight COVID-19, and the state of emergency was necessary.

“We couldn’t even get masks and gloves, let alone testing materials,” he said. “Now, we know what to do.”

During a conspiracy-spinning interview with radio host Jack Heath Tuesday retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc called fellow Republican Chris Sununu a “Chinese Communist sympathizer” whose family business “supports terrorism,” and claimed he drove the governor from the U.S. Senate race.

“I derailed Gov. Sununu from running for Senate,” Bolduc said. “Let’s face it — the most powerful political family in New Hampshire made a decision not to run against a political outsider for the United States Senate.

“We ran a Sun Tzu-like campaign that brought to the forefront all of his flaws for serving at the national level as a U.S. Senator. And he surprised all of his supporters because in the 11th hour, he looked at the polls and there was no guarantee could beat Bolduc. And he can’t afford a loss based on his future ambitions in the political arena.”

A UNH Survey Center poll released in October found that while Sununu led Sen. Maggie Hassan 45-42 percent, Bolduc trails her 47-42 percent.

Bolduc also called Sununu a “Chinese Communist sympathizer” who’s “in business with Saudi Arabian companies that give money to terrorists. He’s a globalist world-government guy.”

While some of Bolduc’s rhetoric appears to be motivated by personal anger at Sununu’s unwillingness to back him in last year’s Senate primary, the retired general has embraced conspiracy theories as a central part of his campaign.

Bolduc is touting Trump’s fact-free claims about the Biden campaign stealing the 2020 presidential campaign.

Bolduc was also one of 124 retired generals and admirals who released a letter in May claiming the election was rigged in Biden’s favor. And his most recent campaign event headlined disgraced former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

“He was a lousy candidate when he was sane,” one NHGOP insider told NHJournal. “Running as a lunatic isn’t much of an improvement.”

Gov. Chris Sununu’s decision to ditch Washington and run for a fourth term in the Granite State has political Twitter buzzing. Some tweeters are trying to figure out why, some are looking at the impact of Sununu’s bow out, and others are looking at what could happen next.

The New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher said Sununu’s decision not to run could be one of the biggest stories for the upcoming mid-term elections.

The news did not seem to go over well in Sen. Mitch McConnell’s circle. The Senate minority leader heavily recruited Sununu for months. Here’s McConnell’s former campaign manager, Josh Holmes, shortly after Sununu’s announcement. (Holmes co-hosts the popular “Ruthless” podcast, and Sununu was a featured guest over the summer.)

Fox New’s Laura Ingraham said no one should have been shocked, and blamed McConnell and other establishment Republicans.

The liberal magazine, The New Republic, echoed Sununu’s views on life in the U.S. Senate.

Dave Weigel, a Washington Post reporter, seemed to like Sununu’s path.

Raw Story’s Matthew Chapman blamed McConnell for botching the recruit.

New Hampshire Bulletin’s Annmarie Timmins raised a possible presidential run.

CNN’s Dan Merica took note of how Sununu made the announcement: By going after Washington.

The decision is good for the state Republicans, according to Chaz Nuttycombe with CNalysis.

Kyle Kondik with Sabato’s Crystal Ball sees it ultimately helping Hassan.

Speculation as to who might jump into the race is getting heated up and Drew Nirenberg, the communications director for Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, threw out a new name.

Less than 48 hours after Gov. Chris Sununu announced his support for a legal challenge to President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate on private businesses, a federal court has already stepped forward to rule against Biden’s plan.

The ruling “foreshadows an uphill battle” for the mandate policy, according to the New York Times, and it’s the latest indicator that Sununu has once again put himself in the center of the political bell curve on the politics of COVID-19.

When New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella announced his decision to join an 11-state lawsuit challenging Biden’s federal vaccine mandate, Sununu quickly gave his public endorsement.

“COVID vaccines are the most effective tool we have to protect ourselves and our community from this virus,” Sununu said. “But as the head of state, I recognize the limitations of government in mandating this personal medical decision. President Biden has created a loophole to facilitate this overreach, which is why I fully support the Attorney General’s decision to sign on to this lawsuit.”

New Hampshire Democrats have been criticizing Sununu’s opposition to mandates, in particular his reluctance to impose mandates on local school districts regarding COVID policy, since the pandemic began. Sununu has consistently said that, while he believes the vaccines are safe, effective, and the best way out of the pandemic, he generally opposes mandates as a public policy.

Formella’s office announced Friday that New Hampshire joined with Missouri, Arizona, Nebraska, Montana, Arkansas, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, and Wyoming, along with several private businesses and organizations in a challenge to an “emergency” Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule to force employers to require workers to get vaccinated or undergo regular testing.

Formella also believes that the vaccines are safe, effective, said in a statement on the lawsuit that the mandates are the problem, not the vaccines.

“The new Emergency Temporary Standard issued by OSHA is illegal and would impose significant burdens on New Hampshire businesses and their employees. We are therefore obligated to take action to protect the interests of our state’s citizens and businesses,” Formellla said.

At least 27 states have filed lawsuits challenging the rule in several circuits.

In a separate legal action, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Louisiana temporarily halted the mandate after a conglomeration of businesses groups, religious groups, advocacy organizations and several other states filed a petition on Friday with the court, arguing that the administration had overstepped its authority.

The Fifth Circuit panel said the judges were blocking the regulation “because the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the mandate.”

Some legal experts, like UCLA Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo, call the mandate blatantly unconstitutional.

“It undermines the Constitution’s balance between Congress and the president and between the federal and state governments,” Yoo said. “Congress has not vested the president with the power to govern every aspect of every office and factory in the nation, and even if it had, such a grant of sweeping power would violate the very division of authority between the national and state governments.”

(Yoo is perhaps best known for writing the legal justification for the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation tactics against Al-Qaeda detainees during the George W. Bush administration.)

And attorney Dan McLaughlin, who writes legal analysis for National Review, says the administration’s decision to announce the “emergency” OSHA rules in September, but not have them take effect until January, will hurt their case.

“The Biden administration could have a very hard time explaining to the [SCOTUS] chief justice why it is entitled to assert emergency powers that exist to address ‘immediate’ threats, then do nothing with them for four months.”

Nonetheless, the Biden administration says they’re going to keep pushing the mandates.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told ABC’s “This Week” it’s full steam ahead.

“The president and the administration wouldn’t have put these requirements in place if they didn’t think that they were appropriate and necessary, and the administration is certainly prepared to defend them,” Murthy told host Martha Raddatz.

Are they playing politics? They may want to re-read their polls. Since mid-September, polling has shown that Americans are, at best, split on the issue of mandates. A recent Economist-YouGov poll reports that only 52 percent of registered voters back Biden’s mandates, while 43 percent are opposed.

Here in the Granite State, a slim majority oppose the vaccine mandates, 52- 46 percent, according to a New Hampshire Institute of Politics poll.

And a new Rasmussen Research poll found 52 percent of likely voters say they support workers refusing to comply with workplace requirements to get COVID-19 vaccines. Just 38 percent oppose it.

And then there’s the question of whether, after Biden expends the political capital to push them, the mandates will still be needed in January. Many health experts predict COVID-19 is winding down due to the prevalence of vaccines and the Delta wave that largely infects the unvaccinated. With vaccines approved for children aged 5 to 11, and a new Pfizer drug that can prevent 90 percent of hospitalizations of the infected, COVID-19 may be in the rearview in a few months.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the FDA said on Twitter the government has already been successful in rolling out the vaccines, and mandates are not the way to reach the unvaccinated.

“As a fight over the federal OSHA mandate unfolds, we should remember 80.5% of responsible adults 18+ already had at least one dose of Covid vaccine,” Gottlieb wrote. “What level do we need to get to? What will the OSHA provision accomplish? And were there less divisive ways to achieve these goals?”

Gov. Chris Sununu took direct aim at his fellow Republicans on the Executive Committee the day after they voted down federal COVID-19 funding, calling their actions uninformed and irrational.

During a Thursday morning interview on WGIR radio, Sununu singled out Executive Councilors Joseph Kenney and David Wheeler by name, saying they live in a “bizarro world” of conspiracy and misinformation.

“You don’t even know how to argue it at some point because logic has left the building,” Sununu said. “They are listening to social media nonsense and misinformation, and there is zero rational argument.”

Sununu also mocked their claims to be “quote-unquote conservatives” after their proposal the state order private businesses to stop requiring vaccines for their employees.

“That’s what Communist Russia does,” Sununu said.

Sununu also called out Wheeler for claiming the U.S. Constitution guarantees every person a job and for suggesting the state track down every person who has had COVID-19.

“When people start waving the flag and Constitution but clearly have never read the Constitution, it can be a little frustrating,” Sununu said. “These are not conservative values, these are not Constitutional values, it’s emotional nonsense.”

Wheeler did not respond to requests for comment, but Kenney told NHJournal he disputed Sununu’s take on the vote, saying he is concerned about people losing their jobs because of President Joe Biden’s federal vaccine mandate.

“I totally disagree with the governor and I think he is out of touch with working men and women of this state, many who have lost their jobs because of employment vaccine mandates,” Kenney said.

The federal vaccine mandate on private companies, which Sununu has vowed to challenge in court, has not gone into effect. Biden announced on September 9 he was instructing the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to use its emergency powers to force every employer with 100 or more workers to require the vaccine or impose weekly testing. OSHA’s rules still have not been finalized, and many legal experts believe the courts will almost certainly shoot them down.

Still, many private businesses are requiring vaccines on their own, like the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health system where 99 percent of employees are currently in compliance.

Kenney did not have hard figures on how many people have lost their jobs in New Hampshire because of mandates, but he said 16 hospital staffers in the North Country recently walked off the job because of them.

Sununu blames much of the turmoil on anti-government Free Staters who tried to impeach him for using executive orders during the pandemic. The same group now wants him to use executive orders to interfere with private companies over vaccine mandates, he said.

State Police arrested nine people Wednesday during the Executive Council meeting for allegedly disrupting the meeting.

When asked, Sununu would not commit to campaigning for Wheeler and Kenney next year.

Did Betsy DeVos write the Sununu administration’s back-to-school plan?

According to Democrats Andru Volinsky and Dan Feltes — absolutely.

“This Sununu-Edelblut-DeVos agenda document abandons the state’s responsibility to ensure a safe return to schooling,” Executive Councilor Volinsky said of the Sununu administration’s guidance document.

“Instead of releasing an education plan by New Hampshire, for New Hampshire, Governor Sununu outsourced New Hampshire’s education reopening plan to be written by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ D.C. consultants,” state Sen. Feltes said in a statement.

But do the facts, and basic logic, back their claims?

THE SET UP:

On Tuesday, Gov. Chris Sununu released his administration’s 56-page guidance document for reopening New Hampshire schools. The key word, Sununu reiterated, is “flexibility.” His plan contains almost no mandates (a key point we’ll come back to later) and instead offers “guideposts,” as Sununu calls them, for schools to use should they choose to have classroom instruction, Zoom learning from home, or some hybrid of both.

Granite State Democrats and the state’s teachers unions immediately expressed their displeasure. “We had hoped for a set of minimum safety standards for all schools to achieve before they were safe to reopen. Instead, we received 56 pages of ‘shoulds’ not ‘shalls,'” said NEA-NH President Megan Tuttle.

“With less than two months before school starts, families and teachers wanted certainty; Sununu just delivered chaos,” Feltes said.

“Let’s call Sununu’s ‘plan’ for what it really is — the state abandoning its responsibility to ensure the health, safety, and well-being of students and teachers,” added Volinsky.

THE STORY:

At Thursday’s presser, a writer from the liberal website InDepthNH asked Sununu, “Why did you let [federal Education Secretary] Betsy DeVos’s people write the guidance document for reopening schools?” The question was based on accusations from Feltes and Volinsky, which were in turn inspired by an exchange between Volinsky and New Hampshire Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut at Wednesday’s Executive Council meeting.

Volinsky asked the commissioner, “Who wrote the document and who approved it?”

In a winding, nine-minute series of questions and answers, much of it in education bureaucracy jargon, Edelblut described the process, beginning with the 60-member School Transition Reopening and Redesign Taskforce (STRRT).

“Based on that input from the STRRT committee… the U.S. Department of Education worked along with a consulting firm, AIR, to take all that content and put it into the framework the STRRT committee had organized,” Edelblut said. “That’s the result you see here. Much of the drafting was done by the Department of Education, then it was weighed in on, and a medical perspective was added by Dr. Chan, resulting in the final product we have now produced.” [emphasis added]

And, Edelblut conceded, the final document did not go back to the STRRT committee for their approval before Gov. Sununu released it.

Therefore, Feltes and Volinsky claim, the Sununu administration’s policy was, “written by Betsy DeVos” and foist upon the people of New Hampshire.

THE FACTS:

The first, and most obvious, fact is, whoever wrote the Sununu guidance, it is certainly not the DeVos plan. President Trump and his education secretary have made it perfectly clear that their plan for America’s schools is: “Send all the kids back to class — now!” Just ask union president Tuttle, who tweeted out this quote from the White House spokesperson:

“The President has said unmistakably that he wants schools to open, and when he says open, he means open in full, kids being able to attend each and every day at their school.”

If DeVos really had written Sununu’s plan, it would mandate classroom instruction whether local schools liked it or not.

The second fact is that a cursory view of the meetings of the STRRT (watch the exciting, edge-of-your-seat taskforce meetings here!) reveals the guidance released by Gov. Sununu reflects the will of the task force. As Edelblut told Volinsky, the STRRT laid out “high-level” general guidance on topics like transporting kids and personal protective equipment in the classroom, and the final product reflects those views.

And then there’s the fact that the Sununu administration’s plan isn’t a “plan” at all. They made the decision, one supported by the STRRT, to avoid mandates and let local officials decide what’s best for local schools.

As Sununu told NHJournal on Thursday, “Local control works.”

“I don’t know why they [Feltes and Volinsky] don’t have faith in teachers, administrators and parents to find solutions for themselves,” Sununu said. “I have all the faith in the world that the teachers, parents and principals know how to manage their classrooms, not a governor sitting in the corner office. I don’t know why they don’t have more faith that folks other than themselves might have the solutions for these problems.”

But what about those federal education consultants? Or the “drafting done by the Department of Education?”

It turns out the private consulting firm AIR has been running federal “Comprehensive Centers” since 2005, under contracts awarded by both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations.

They get federal tax dollars to facilitate meetings and draft documents — things that volunteer organizations do for themselves for free all the time, by the way. But wasting tax dollars on redundant government bureaucrats is hardly unique to the DeVos Department of Education.

And AIR’s role is literally laid out in page one of the documents launching the STRRT process back in May:

“The work will be facilitated by the Region 1 Comprehensive Center from the U.S. Department of Education and facilitated by AIR. The work of the facilitator(s) will include:

• Facilitation of large group discussions
• Support the development of the report.

In other words, hold meetings and write a report. Which they did. No conspiracy here.

THE CONCLUSION:

Whether you love or hate Sununu’s local-control approach to reopening schools, there’s no denying: it’s his plan. DeVos and the feds had nothing to do with it.

It’s also, as Sununu likes to point out, a very “New Hampshire” plan, leaving power at the lowest levels of government.

It didn’t have to go this way. Governors in other states are using their power to push mandates on local schools, and Sununu could certainly follow their example. He chose not to, and the STRRT backed his approach.

The claim that Betsy DeVos “wrote,” or even had a role in, the Sununu back-to-school guidance simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

GRADE:

Only the phrase “drafting done by the Department of Education” keeps Democrats from getting an “F.”

There’s a big debate brewing over local control of schools in the era of COVID-19. There’s no reason for Democrats to invent things to fight about.

Every quarter the polling firm Morning Consult releases a ranking of the most/least popular governors in the U.S.  Today they released their numbers for Q4 of 2018–when the midterm elections took place. And for the third quarter in a row, New Hampshire’s Gov. Chris Sununu is the fourth most popular governor in the country, with an approval rating of 60 percent and a disapproval of just 23 percent.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker also remains the most popular governor in America (72/14 percent) and nine of the 10 most popular governors in the U.S. are Republicans, despite the #BlueWave that crashed over American politics in November.

Gov. Sununu’s 60 percent approval is significantly higher than all four governors considering a 2020 POTUS bid:  Democrats John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Jay Inslee of Washington and Bullock of Montana; and Republican John Kasich of Ohio.

It’s also higher than Sununu’s own 53 percent of the vote in November’s election against a weak Democratic nominee, former state senator Molly Kelly. That’s not necessarily surprising–an approval poll doesn’t ask respondents to pick sides–but it is likely to renew the conversation NH Republicans are having off the record for weeks:

Why didn’t Chris Sununu cruise to victory?

Just south of the border in an even more deeply-blue state, Republican Baker won his re-election bid 67-33 percent–a two-to-one margin. Next door in Vermont, Republican Phil Scott–who upset his GOP base by flip-flopping on a gun-control promise– won re-election by 15 points. Even Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a GOP governor who had to run in a state that’s part of the Washington, DC media market– won handily, 56-44 percent.

“There’s no reason [Molly Kelly] should have been so close. And there’s no excuse for fundraising parity by a weak candidate like Kelly with an incumbent governor,” one longtime NH GOP insider told NHJournal.

Still,  the Democrat-controlled NH legislature has a formidable opponent in an incumbent governor with veto power and one of the highest popularity ratings in the country.  Democrats may want to raise taxes and increase business regulations, but getting that agenda past Gov. Chris Sununu is going to be an uphill battle.