John Sununu
R · U.S. Senate, New Hampshire · Tier 2
Tier 2, “Mainstream pro-Israel”
Former senator (2003–2009) and three-term NH-1 congressman, now the Trump- and RJC-endorsed nominee. Asked by WMUR in September 2025, before he launched his campaign, whether he would like to see more done to restrain Netanyahu in Gaza, he said “I'm not going to wade into foreign policy as I travel across New Hampshire to listen to people”, adding that “the suffering we're seeing today in the Middle East” would not be solved by a sound bite; in November 2025 his campaign told the Washington Examiner that “Israel has every right to defend itself and remains America’s strongest ally in the region,” and in 2026 he frames the region around Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah. His House record carries rare daylight — Nay on the 1997 Jerusalem resolution (one of 17) and on the 1999 resolution opposing a unilateral Palestinian state (one of 24), Present on the October 2000 violence resolution — though he voted for the 2001 and 2002 Israel-solidarity resolutions, and in 2006 he said the U.S. must “do a better job providing humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians”. At an October 25, 2026 candidates’ forum at Temple Adath Yeshurun in Manchester (aired by C-SPAN), asked whether he would vote to cut aid to Israel, he called Israel “our most important strategic ally in the region” and said “any international assistance, foreign assistance should be reviewed to make sure it’s in our national security interests,” but that a vote to cut assistance “in the middle of the current conflict” was “not when you start manipulating or cutting off aid to an ally.” Asked about his Present vote in 2000, he said the resolution “wasn’t even-handed” because it “took a particular viewpoint with a particular side, and in particular with settlement activity in the West Bank,” said “I’m a Palestinian-American,” and said he has “supported military and even economic assistance to Israel” while recognizing “the importance of a two-state solution” and “self-determination for the Palestinian people”; in Gaza, he said, there is work to do “both to dismantle Hamas’s terrorist network, but also, ultimately, to rebuild capacity … given the scope and the scale of destruction in Gaza.”
A flat 2, on a split record. The current campaign stays inside the pro-Israel frame — Trump- and RJC-endorsed, Iran-centered, with a campaign statement that “Israel has every right to defend itself” and, before his launch, no position on restraining Israel in Gaza — with no step toward limiting weapons, so nothing in it reaches 2/3. What keeps him off 1/2 is concern for Palestinians, in his own words, not paired with Israel's self-defense (the 2006 humanitarian-assistance line) and a House record of daylight on symbolic resolutions that almost no other member shared. In October 2026 he explained his 2000 Present vote on one of those resolutions by its one-sidedness on “settlement activity in the West Bank,” while saying a cut “in the middle of the current conflict” is “not when you start manipulating or cutting off aid to an ally.” The counter-case runs both ways: that daylight is 20–30 years old and his 2025 answer names October 7 first, which argues 1/2; weighting the House Nays could argue 2/3, but none of them touched weapons or aid to Israel, and his 2000 Nay on the Peace Through Negotiations Act (one of 27) was against cutting off non-humanitarian U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority and to West Bank and Gaza programs if a Palestinian state were declared unilaterally.
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elect26 places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum, from 1 (most pro-Israel) to 6 (most critical of Israel).