‘Honeymoon period’ of excitement for Harris will last about a month: Sununu

Gov. Chris Sununu (D-NH) predicted that the excitement surrounding Vice President Kamala Harris‘s presidential campaign is a “honeymoon” phase that will last for about a month.

“Well, this is the honeymoon, right, this is the honeymoon period,” Sununu told ABC News’s This Week co-anchor Martha Raddatz. “They had the, if you will, the courage to push [President Joe Biden] off the ballot. Vice President Harris is in there.”

“The media is fawning,” Sununu continued. “Everyone’s excited. It’s a whole new race. That’s all very true. And that’s going to last for about 30 days.”

Within the week since President Joe Biden declared he would not run for reelection and endorsed Harris, the vice president’s campaign has energized voters and congressional Democrats who are ready to put the rhetoric surrounding Biden’s age and health behind them.

Harris’s campaign brought in over $100 million between Sunday and Monday evening last week. Several voting blocs have held Zoom calls that brought thousands of attendees together to raise money for Harris, including “white women for Harris” and black women and men for Harris.

Sununu said he thinks Democrats can take the momentum from Harris’s campaign and carry it with them to the Democratic National Convention in mid-August. However, he thinks early September will be a key indicator of how Harris will fare in November.

“The first poll, I believe, that will actually matter … is the Wednesday after Labor Day, right,” Sununu said. “So you’re gonna have this 30-day honeymoon period, things will settle, folks will get back, talk to their family and friends, come off of summer vacation, put their kids in school, all that sort of stuff. And then they’ll start really thinking about what this race really means.”

“And you’re gonna get back to numbers you saw about a month before the original debate: which is essentially a neck-in-neck race or at least within the margin of error. Probably, Trump up by a little bit nationally, some of the swing states all in play. And it’s going to come back to issues,” Sununu added.

Sununu warned former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), to stay away from personal attacks of Harris and focus on the topics most important to voters heading into the 2024 election.

“The border issue, the inflation issue — these are some very real issues. It isn’t just going to be about, ‘Well, we need to vote for Vice President Harris because she’s a woman’ or ‘We need to vote for her because it’s just a change and it’s not Donald Trump.’ That doesn’t carry.”