WASHINGTON — He mused volubly and frequently about running. He swore he had a path to victory. And he decided, in the end, that he could most help his Republican Party — his country even — by not running at all.
“Given where the polls are right now, every candidate needs to understand the responsibility of getting out, and getting out quickly, if it’s not working,” said Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire in a Monday interview on CNN.
That includes, apparently, getting out before one is even in.
It was a showy ending to months of self-generated speculation about the future of a political figure who is barely known outside his home state, despite his best efforts. But Sununu’s decision not to run for president in 2024 reflects the growing fear among some in his party that an increasingly crowded primary ballot will fracture the support for any candidate not named Donald J. Trump. That, Sununu warned, will hand the GOP nomination to the beleaguered former president in much the same way he triumphed over the teeming field in 2016.
“If we do what we did in 2016, you’re going to have somebody win this nomination with 35 percent of the Republican support,” Sununu said. “That’s not where we should be as a party. That’s not where anybody wants to be.”
The solidifying field shows that not everyone is so concerned about the specter of 2016. Just before Sununu’s announcement on Monday, Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, filed paperwork formalizing his intention to run against his old boss and everybody else. Pence is expected to announce his candidacy on Wednesday in Des Moines, in hopes of appealing to Iowa’s large population of white evangelical conservatives.
Also on Wednesday, the little-known Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota is expected to make his own candidacy official. On Monday, he posted a campaign-style video to Twitter that showed horses galloping and cows grazing and declares “woke” to be “what you did at 5 AM to start the day.”
And, in the clearest throwback to 2016 yet, former governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who ran in that crowded field, crumpled in New Hampshire, and dropped out immediately after, is expected to throw his hat in the ring with a town hall event at St. Anselm College on Tuesday night. He is even bringing back the same political advisers from that doomed run, according to The New York Times.
They will enter a field that is dominated by Trump, who currently holds a double-digit polling lead over Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, who officially entered the race last week. Once seen as the most formidable opponent to Trump, DeSantis has been off to a wobbly start, leading numerous potential candidates to believe there might be an opening for them to win the GOP nomination and take on President Biden. Yet, every new entrant will dilute the anti-Trump vote, making it easier for the former president to triumph.
“No question,” said Fergus Cullen, a former head of the New Hampshire GOP, “the more candidates, the better for Trump.”
Trump, for his part, has mocked his growing competition from afar.
“I don’t know why people are doing it. They’re at 1 percent. Some are at zero. I hear Chris Christie’s coming in,” Trump said during an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News last week.
That dynamic has deeply alarmed some Republicans who believe that Trump, a broadly unpopular figure who faces criminal charges in New York and multiple other investigations, could cost their party the White House in 2024.
“If [Trump] is the nominee, Republicans will lose again. Just as we did in 2018, 2020 and 2022. This is indisputable, and I am not willing to let it happen without a fight,” Sununu wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post.
All in all, there will likely be no fewer than 10 declared Republican candidates by the end of this week. Previously announced candidates include former governor Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott, both of South Carolina. There are lesser-known candidates in the race, too, and still more governors in the offing who seem to be keeping their options open, such as Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Brian Kemp of Georgia.
Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, who announced his presidential bid earlier this year, explicitly dismissed the notion the race of 2016 would repeat itself during an April interview with The Hill newspaper.
“I think it’s totally different,” Hutchinson said. “One, we’re not going to have as many candidates in the field as 2016. Secondly, Donald Trump is a known quantity today.”
In 2016, 12 candidates made it to the primaries. Another 5 had dropped out before those contests began.
Sununu joins the ranks of former Maryland governor Larry Hogan and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, as prominent Republicans who also ruled out presidential bids. In deciding not to run, he offered himself up as a kind of referee for the first-in-the nation primary, promising he will endorse and campaign for a contender he thinks will win while strongly suggesting he will urge others to get out by Christmas if their campaigns aren’t catching fire.
“Too many other candidates who have entered this race are simply running to be Trump’s vice president. That’s not leadership; that’s weakness,” he wrote.
David Kochel, a Republican operative who was a senior strategist for former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s campaign in 2016, predicted some candidates would drop out before the first contest in Iowa, but cautioned that “very quickly” the remaining contenders would need to get down to two people in order to remain a competitive contest for the nomination.
“People understand that if you have ten candidates go all the way through to South Carolina, Donald Trump is going to be the nominee,” Kochel said.
Sununu’s decision also underscores another dilemma for the GOP: He has handily won general elections in politically purple New Hampshire by depicting himself as a moderate, consensus-building Republican who does not support banning abortions before 24 weeks, and who has avoided the culture war battles over education and transgender that have come to define his party.
That could make him a strong contender in a general election, but those qualities are not rewarded by the GOP base. The scattering of polls that included his name showed him trailing the likes of Trump and DeSantis, even in New Hampshire.
Still, in his op-ed, he urged Republicans to be a little more like him if they want to win in 2024, urging them to abandon issues like book bans.
“Instead of pushing deeply unpopular and restrictive nationwide abortion bans,” he added, “Republicans should recognize that every time they open their mouths to talk about banning abortion, an independent voter joins the Democrats.”
The loquacious governor promised that, by not being a candidate, his voice would be “unleashed.” He apparently could not resist spurring further speculation about his future.
“Look, I’m young,” Sununu, 48, said on CNN. “Maybe I could run in the future or something like that.”
Jackie Kucinich of the Globe staff contributed reporting.
Jess Bidgood can be reached at Jess.Bidgood@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @jessbidgood.
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