Sununu plans to attend a town-hall-style event with Haley on Tuesday night in New Hampshire.
Sununu, a critic of Trump and a popular governor in a purple state, has been looking for a candidate to endorse ahead of the state’s primaries on Jan. 23. The people familiar with his decision to choose Haley spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The governor’s office confirmed that Sununu would attend the event with Haley in Manchester, N.H., on Tuesday, but his office would not say whether he would make the endorsement.
“I look forward to joining Nikki at her town hall this evening — it’s going to be a lot of fun!” Sununu said in a statement.
WMUR, a Manchester television station, was the first to report on Sununu’s endorsement of Haley.
Sununu has been campaigning for a handful of Republican candidates in the primary field. He has indicated that he was looking to endorse one of the governors in race — either Haley, the former governor of South Carolina; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis; or former New Jersey governor Chris Christie.
Sununu is broadly popular among Republicans in his state. A Washington Post-Monmouth University poll last month found that 81 percent of likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire approve of the job he is doing as governor.
But the poll also suggested a Sununu endorsement could have a somewhat limited impact on the presidential race. Fourteen percent of likely Republican primary voters said they would be more likely to vote for a presidential candidate endorsed by Sununu. Eighty percent said it would make no difference, while 5 percent said they would be less likely to vote for a Sununu-backed candidate.
Kicking off the question-and-answer portion of a town hall in New Hampshire last month, Haley placed her hand on Sununu’s back and asked, “Are you ready to endorse me yet?”
As attendees turned from their breakfasts to watch, clapping at Haley’s question, Sununu grabbed the mic: “Getting closer every day.”
At the event, Sununu emphasized how frequently Haley visits the state and praised her as “leading the charge” in the effort to have a winning candidate on the ballot next November instead of Trump. He also said she is at a “more than solid second place here in New Hampshire.”
In an interview with The Washington Post after the event, Sununu said Haley “hits all the right points.”
“There’s really no other candidate out there right now that understands the details operationally of not just how to talk about a policy, but a strategy of how to achieve it. And that connects with folks here. So she’s connected with folks all across Hampshire,” Sununu said. “We’ll see about the whole endorsement thing down the road.”
Sununu said in July that he would not be seeking a fifth term in office. He was also seen as a potential 2024 candidate, but he announced in June that he would not enter the crowded 2024 Republican presidential field.
Writing in The Post about his decision not to run for the GOP nomination, Sununu argued that helping to achieve the primary defeat of Trump was more important than joining the race.
Sununu had also been mentioned as a possibility for a third-party presidential run.
He told reporters at a Haley event earlier this month, “The endorsement itself matters a little bit — the emphasis, the energy you put behind it, the campaign, the messaging — that’s really what matters and what’s gonna get people galvanized.” He also said that if he were to endorse a candidate, he would “help them put together a campaign, a ground game.”
Sununu specifically mentioned helping his selected candidate target independent voters in the state, a group that may play a larger-than-usual role in the primary and that has expressed openness to backing Haley.
While Haley has risen in the polls in recent months, especially in New Hampshire, following well-perceived debate performances, some have raised questions about her team’s ground game and footprint in the early states.
Sununu’s promise to help whomever he endorses with their ground game could help Haley ease those concerns, especially when combined with last month’s endorsement by Americans for Prosperity Action, the Koch network’s flagship political group. It said it would deploy its “unmatched grassroots army” to support Haley.
