New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu says he will make a decision whether or not he will get into the 2024 Republican presidential primary in a week or two. He has been flirting with the idea publicly for months. Will he or won’t he?

The problem for Sununu, a very popular governor in his home state, is that top endorsements and donors are already going on record for either Trump or DeSantis and it leaves Sununu in the wilderness. The New Hampshire Republican Party’s former executive director, Ross Berry, was named state director of Never Back Down PAC, the super PAC supporting DeSantis. He will run the ground game operation for DeSantis in the state and help secure endorsements he needs for a presidential campaign. New Hampshire is a retail politics kind of state and endorsements matter, as do such campaign basics as door knocking and visits with the candidate.

State legislators are choosing candidates to support in the primary and some who supported Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections are switching to DeSantis. Sununu has his own circle of advisers and supporters if he enters the race but he will do so without Ross Berry, a key adviser. At this point, if Sununu gets in, things will be, well, weird.

“I will say if he gets in the race, it’s going to be really freaking weird for everybody,” said New Hampshire Republican House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, who endorsed DeSantis earlier this month and is a close personal friend of Berry. “I don’t know what that’s going to look like.”

The weirdness, at least for Sununu, is that people who work just down the hall from him in New Hampshire’s small statehouse are already making other plans. In 2016, Berry helped orchestrate Sununu’s win – the first time a Republican won the New Hampshire governor’s race in 13 years.

“Ross was responsible for the only GOP pickup in 2018, was instrumental in 2020 in taking back the New Hampshire House, and has a penchant for winning primaries,” Osborne said. “Having him on the Never Back Down team will make him a key resource for their efforts as well as electing New Hampshire House Republicans in 2024.”

The plan is for DeSantis to win the early states and capture the momentum in the primary. The campaign plans to win Iowa and then sprint to New Hampshire to win the next early race. There have not been any polls conducted since DeSantis entered the race last week. Polls currently show Trump leads by double digits in New Hampshire. DeSantis comes in second and statistically tied with Sununu in recent surveys.

Despite big spending by the super PAC on television ads and mailers, DeSantis is actually losing support. That is not good news. Can the campaign turn things around, find its footing and close the big lead held by Trump?

“Despite the super PAC supporting DeSantis spending significant funds on both television and in the mail, the governor’s numbers have declined,” said Neil Levesque, director of the Saint Anselm College Survey Center, based in New Hampshire. “In recent weeks the PAC supporting Trump has purchased even larger amounts of television in an effort to permanently disable DeSantis. The big question so far in the 2024 race is what is the special formula for chipping away at Trump’s lead, and to date, no candidate has found it.”

If Sununu doesn’t enter the race, he said he will endorse a candidate. We know that he is not a Trump supporter so he would likely support DeSantis, a fellow governor, if I was to make a guess. My guess at this stage is not any better than anyone else’s guess. I think Sununu will take a pass, when all is said and done, and continue to enjoy raising his national profile on the regular media appearances he makes. He is a favorite of legacy media and cable networks because he is an anti-Trump Republican. Sununu is young – he’s 48. He has a day job as governor and is a popular governor. He can easily wait until 2028. Who knows? Sununu may wait until 2028 and run against DeSantis if Trump gets the nomination in 2024.

Money is not a problem for DeSantis. His campaign raised $8.2 Million in the first 24 hours. The DeSantis super PAC is spending big bucks in New Hampshire. There are five paid staffers in the state. Ethan Zorfas, another Republican operative who served as chief of staff for the state’s last Republican member of its congressional delegation more than six years ago.

Would DeSantis endorsers switch back to Sununu if he runs? We don’t know. New Hampshire voters are fickle and are known to change their minds back and forth before votes are cast. A good example is the group of state legislators who switched to DeSantis from Trump this cycle.

Here’s the thing. Sununu is a realist and that’s good. He is on record saying that candidates who enter the Republican primary have to know when to get back out if they aren’t gaining ground in the race. A large primary field helps Trump. The field needs to be down to two or three candidates for primary voters to choose from.

“Everyone says, there are going to be too many folks getting in. There could be 12 people that get in. The key, the discipline, is getting out,” Sununu (R-N.H.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“The discipline is come November, late December, if you’re sitting in low single digits, get your butt out of the race, let’s narrow this thing down to two or three candidates and really figure out where the party is going to go.

“What we’ve all learned is, you can’t prevent candidates from getting in,” Sununu said.

Would Sununu take his own advice? Sununu is a moderate Republican. Does he see a lane for himself in the current field of primary candidates? That’s the question. Is there a desire for a moderate to liberal Republican from the Northeast? I don’t see it in this cycle but maybe he can justify a run if he decides to jump in. I’ll listen to any of them and hear them out at this stage. There is already some dead weight in the race, in my opinion, and I’m curious as to how long they last.

Sununu says he’ll make the decision in a week or two. We’ll know more then.