MIT Alumnus Elected Governor of New Hampshire
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Chris Sununu ’98 (pictured above) is a Course 1E graduate and was a member of rugby team at MIT.
Christopher T. Sununu ’98 was elected governor of New Hampshire on Nov. 8, and in January will become the nation’s youngest governor at age 42.
Sununu graduated from MIT with an environmental engineering degree and spent the next eight years working to clean up hazardous waste sites before running Sununu Enterprises, a strategic consulting group. In 2010, he led a group of investors in the buyout of Waterville Valley Resort where he became general manager and CEO, and was also elected to the New Hampshire Executive Council where he is serving his third term.
“Republican Chris Sununu Elected Governor Of New Hampshire,” CBS Boston, Nov. 8, 2016
(Sununu) frequently described himself as a ‘stakeholder’ in the key issues facing the state and said he’d focus on maintaining the state’s tradition of local control in education, health care and other issues.
A Course 1E graduate, Sununu is the most recent in a line of MIT-educated family members to earn election to public office. His father, John H. Sununu ’61, SM ’63, PhD ’66 served three terms as New Hampshire governor (1975–1989) and was the White House Chief of Staff for President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1991. John H. Sununu also served on MIT’s Advisory Board of the Technology and Policy Program from 1984–1989.
Christopher Sununu’s brother, John E. Sununu ’87, SM ’87, served as member of New Hampshire’s House of Representatives from 1997–2003 and was the state’s senator from 2003–2009.
As a student at MIT, Sununu was a part of Sigma Alpha Epsilon and played men’s rugby, where he served as a team correspondent for The Tech.
As of the 2016 United States elections, Sununu is one of three MIT alumni governors or governors-elect within the United States government. Ricardo “Ricky” Rosselló ’01, a Course 10 graduate, was elected governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and Thomas Wolf PhD ’81, a Course 17 graduate, was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 2014.
Comments
Dan Moriarty
Thu, 01/05/2017 10:16am
Chris will do a great job as governor. The previous governor did not spend enough time focusing on managing the affairs of the state. Chris will bring an engineering approach to decision making that will benefit New Hampshire.
Our state's (and region's) electricity costs are way too high. We need power brought in or generated locally. Fortunately, Sununu's election will aid those seeking to reduce regulation, cut taxes and aid companies like Eversource, which plans new transmission lines from environmentally sustainable Hydro-Quebec from the north. The laws of physics imply that to provide power to 1.2 million residents of New Hampshire that the electricity will have to flow via wires either hanging on towers or buried in the ground.
As a side note, the dominant greenhouse gas is water vapor. Carbon dioxide contributes about 25% of the greenhouse effect in our atmosphere. Natural sources of carbon dioxide are 4 times as large as man-made sources. Thus man-made carbon dioxide contributes about 1/20th the total greenhouse effect of the atmosphere and is approximately equal to the total water vapor variability.
Dan Moriarty
S.B. '90, S.M. '92, Sc.D. '96
Carl Martland
Tue, 12/27/2016 10:02am
Unfortunately, Sununu's election will aid those seeking to reduce regulation, cut taxes and aid companies like Eversource, which plans new transmission lines through the most beautiful portions of the state, including 100-foot + steel lattice towers on a new right-of-way through the untrammeled, exquisite cultural landscapes of the north country. While it is nice to see our grads succeed, let's keep an eye on what he actually does when in office!
Carl Martland
Senior Research Associate and Lecturer (retired), MIT CEE
Retire and living in Sugar Hill, NH
George Carrette
Mon, 12/19/2016 5:07pm
No Brass Rat visible, sigh.
Keith Jackson
Sat, 12/17/2016 10:34am
Concerning Chris Sununu... I poked around on the internet to see where a Republican MIT-trained environmental engineer would land on climate change. Sadly, it seems that "Republican" is more important than "MIT-trained environmental engineer" because what I found was either denial, or, at best, dodging of questions. According to the New York Times, "His views on government, jobs and energy generally seem cogent and reasonable, except for his baffling, classically Republican insistence that there is no scientific consensus about the reality of human-caused climate change. He notes that he runs a ski resort, and that the skiing in New Hampshire has been great for the last five years." This is not leadership. This is cowardice.