Chris Sununu to Republicans: Personal attacks on Harris ‘not helpful at all’

(WASHINGTON) — New Hampshire’s Republican Gov. Chris Sununu said Sunday that Republicans should focus on criticizing Vice President Kamala Harris’ policy record rather than engaging in personal attacks against her in the race for the White House.

On the campaign trail this past week, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, attacked Harris repeatedly, calling her “a lunatic” and a “threat to democracy” who “would be the most radical, far left extremist to ever occupy the White House.”

Sununu, who said in a previous interview that Republicans should “stick to the issues, stick with unity, stick with positivity” during this campaign, told “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz that Trump is “missing” an opportunity, but he is still hopeful the campaign “can get back on track.”

“I think he was on track for a couple months there. I think that the change in the campaign has kind of fired him up to go against — against a person — personally,” Sununu said. “You have to stop the personal attacks. We have too much that we can win on when it comes to issues and policies.”

“The border issue, the inflation issue. These are some very real issues,” he said. “It isn’t just going to be about, well, we need to vote for Vice President Harris because she’s a woman, or we need to vote for her because it’s just a change and it’s not Donald Trump.”

With just 100 days until the election, Republicans have been scrambling to form and coordinate an attack strategy against the vice president. Harris has seen a swell of support in the week since President Joe Biden announced he was stepping down from the 2024 race and endorsed Harris. The vice president has racked up major party endorsements and raked in $200 million for her campaign as of Sunday morning, according to her campaign.

While some Republican leaders have focused on criticisms of her record from her time as a senator and California attorney general, others have opted to hurl attacks based on Harris’ race and gender.

Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., referred to Harris as a “DEI vice president” in a post on X, while Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., in an interview called her “a DEI hire.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in an apparent attempt to rein in such attacks, urged fellow Republicans to stick to policies instead.

“This is not personal with regard to Kamala Harris,” Johnson told reporters after a closed-door meeting with Republicans last week, “and her ethnicity or her gender have nothing to do with this whatsoever.”

Sununu echoed the speaker on Sunday, telling Raddatz that criticisms like that are “not helpful at all.”

“Sticking to the issues is too good of an opportunity for Republicans, both nationally and statewide,” he said. “People want a change. They want some sort of disruption. They’re tired of the — of the elitism, the wokeism and elitism and the liberalism coming out of the — the country.”

As Harris aims to announce her running mate by Aug. 7, resurfaced comments from Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, prompted backlash this week.

“We’re effectively run in this country, via the Democrats via, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies,” said Vance — who specifically named Harris, despite her having two stepchildren — in a 2021 Fox News interview. “How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”

Vance went on the “Megyn Kelly Show” podcast on Friday to defend his past remarks, arguing that the Democratic Party is “anti-family” and that his criticism was not directed at those who don’t have kids. “The simple point that I made is that having children, becoming a father, becoming a mother, I really do think it changes your perspective in a pretty profound way,” Vance told Kelly.

“I explicitly said in my remarks, despite the fact that the media has lied about this, that this is not about criticizing people who, for various reasons, didn’t have kids. This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child,” he added. Vance’s original comments from 2021 mentioned the “choices” those Democrats had made that led them to be “miserable” and “childless cat ladies.”

Raddatz asked Sununu on Sunday whether he had any concerns about Vance as Donald Trump’s VP pick.

“No, I don’t have any concerns over JD directly,” he said.

“I don’t think those comments were helpful,” Sununu said, referring to Vance’s “childless cat ladies” remark. “Again, stick to issues.”

Sununu added that he is worried such personal attacks might alienate part of the independent voter block that Republicans are looking to attract.

“He’s a younger guy. I think this is all very, very new to him. I mean, he’s only been in Washington 18 months. He’s an outsider himself,” Sununu said. “I think he’s surrounding himself, obviously, with a lot of the folks in the campaign that kind of feel an energy off of those personal attacks. But that ain’t what’s going to drive the vote.”