Scott Brown to Newsmax: New Hampshire Voters 'Kind of Sick of' Sununus

Scott Brown isn't wrong that New Hampshire has heard the Sununu name enough times to write it in its sleep. John H. Sununu was governor and White House chief of staff back in the Bush 41 days. His son John E. Sununu did a stint in the Senate. And now Chris Sununu, four terms as governor, is weighing whether to run for the seat Jeanne Shaheen is vacating. That's three decades of one family holding court in a small state where everybody actually knows their neighbors and notices when the same surname keeps showing up on the ballot.

Brown's pitch is basically "I've beaten a dynasty before, I can do it again," and he's got a point of reference. He knocked off the Kennedy machine's chosen successor in Massachusetts back in 2010 in a special election nobody saw coming. That was a real upset, not a fluke of low turnout. So when he says voters get tired of political families treating a Senate seat like a family business, he's speaking from experience, not just talking points.

Whether "kind of sick of" translates into votes is the actual question, and it's a fair one. Chris Sununu is popular in a way that a lot of the state's other Republicans simply are not, and popularity built on four terms of actually winning statewide races doesn't evaporate just because a challenger says the name out loud. Name fatigue is real, but so is name recognition that comes with a track record voters have rewarded four times running.

Still, there's something to the instinct behind Brown's line. Voters in New Hampshire pride themselves on picking people, not pedigrees, and a primary that forces the Sununu question into the open is healthier than one where the name just gets assumed into the nomination. If Brown wants the upset, he'll need more than the line about being sick of a surname. But he's not crazy for thinking that line lands somewhere.