Gov. Chris Sununu joined a handful of other actual or likely 2024 Republican presidential contenders Friday at a conference in Texas that’s attracting some of the top donors in the GOP.

New Hampshire’s four-term Republican governor will speak and mingle with donors at a gathering in Austin, Texas organized by Karl Rove, the longtime GOP strategist and top political adviser to then-President George W. Bush.

Joining Sununu in speaking at the event, which will help raise money for a registration initiative known as the Texas Voter Engagement Project, will be former South Carolina governor and former ambassador Nikki Haley, who a week and a half ago declared her candidacy for president and visited New Hampshire.

Also addressing the donors are three other well-known Republicans seriously mulling White House runs – former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a 2016 GOP presidential contender.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, another rising star in the party, will also speak at the gathering, which is modeled on similar event Rove held in 2021.

As the race for the GOP presidential nomination heats up, so does the outreach to the donor base by actual or potential candidates. And while Sununu has sky high approval ratings in New Hampshire, he’s not known for his fundraising prowess, so mingling with big bucks contributors isn’t a bad idea.

As the governor seriously mulls a presidential run, his national media tour continues.

In an interview Tuesday, he once again targeted former President Donald Trump, the early front-runner in the 2024 GOP nomination race.

Sununu reiterated that Americans are “moving on” from Trump and that they “want the next generation,” in his appearance on Fox News’ “Special Report.”

Ramaswamy’s New Hampshire ‘conversation’

Health care and tech sector entrepreneur, conservative commentator and author and culture wars crusader Vivek Ramaswamy declared his candidacy for president in a prime-time national cable TV appearance on Fox News on Tuesday night.

Twelve hours later, the 37-year-old first time politician was in New Hampshire – campaigning the Granite State way – with plenty of retail stops and taking lots of questions from voters during a jam-packed day on the trail.

Ramaswamy, the author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” preaches a conservative vision thaT he says is about restoring the “national identity in America.”

The candidate, who’s a regular in corporate boardrooms and television studios, said his first day on the campaign trail was “candid and fluid.”

“I really enjoyed today,” Ramaswamy told this reporter during an interview at the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester. “It’s real-time feedback. It’s a conversation you’re having with people who you are asking to give you the privilege of serving them, and people who are demanding solutions to their problems. I learned a lot more from that today than all the media I’ve done in the last two years.”

Drew Cline, president of the right-leaning Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy and morning talk radio host, noted that New Hampshire is once again living up to its role as “the testing ground” in the White House race.

Cline, who moderated a question-and-answer session with Ramaswamy at a town hall-type event in Manchester on Wednesday evening, argued that the Granite State “is only place where a guy like this can avoid any party gatekeepers and actually take his message right to the voters.”

Cline said voters would be receptive to Ramaswamy’s message, which includes a heavy dose of anti-wokeness, but he’s not the only one making that case.

“Republican voters are very open to a culture warrior message,” Cline said. “The question is do they want a culture warrior in a theoretical sense, or do they want somebody who has governed and fought the culture wars for a couple of years.”

Longtime New Hampshire based conservative activist and leader Fran Wendelboe said she thinks Ramaswamy’s message is going to resonate.

“I think he’s going to be major player,” she saod. “Two weeks ago, people said, “who?” And now people are saying ‘I could vote for this guy.’ I think he’s going to make a serious run.”

A good day for the Democrats

Granite State Democrats are celebrating a double-digit victory Tuesday in a special state House of Representatives election in Rochester.

Democrat Chuck Grassie, the incumbent in the race, topped Republican challenger David Walker by 11 percentage points to represent Rochester’s Ward 4 in the state House.

The race was a rematch of their November contest, which ended dead even, with each candidate winning 970 votes. The second time around, Grassie topped Walker by more than 110 votes.

The special election attracted plenty of spending from state and national political groups, with much of the money dished out on the Democratic side.

The win in New Hampshire was one of three for the Democrats across the country on Tuesday.

Democrat Jennifer McClellan won a landslide victory in a heavily blue Congressional District in Virginia, to replace the late Democratic Rep. Donald McEachin. And in Kentucky, Democratic state Senate candidate Cassie Chambers Armstrong crushed her GOP rival to win a race in a blue leaning district.

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