Gov. Chris Sununu will hold the first of two inaugural balls Saturday night in Manchester. Sununu’s inaugural committee is apparently using these celebrations as a chance to supply the governor with a new nickname: The 2023 Everywhere man.
The governor’s new handle refers to the novelty version of Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere” that Sununu recorded last summer with Concord bandleader Brooks Young.
While Sununu’s nickname is new, the benefactors bankrolling his two balls — one in Manchester, the other at the Mount Washington Hotel later this month — include many familiar names.
Donors who gave $10,000, the maximum allowed by state law, include insurer Anthem, energy company Eversource, developers Brady-Sullivan, and the Delaware North hospitality company.
The Duprey Companies, Novel Iron Works, Crews Holdings, and The Mount Washington Cog Railway also gave at the top level, which Sununu’s Inaugural Committee website calls “Roadmap Sponsors.”
Donors who gave $5,000 each, which Sununu’s inaugural committee is calling “Compass Sponsors,” include Casella Waste Systems, Eli Lilly, and numerous state lobbying firms.
So-called “Canoe Sponsors,” who gave $1,000 each, include Bedford Ambulatory Surgery Centers, the Hospital Corporation of America (which owns Portsmouth Regional Hospital, Frisbie Memorial Hospital in Rochester and Parkland Medical Center in Derry), and Bridge Street Recovery, a Bennington drug treatment facility.
Sununu signed the state law regulating inaugural committee donations in 2019. That same law requires committees to keep receipts for any spending over $1,000 directed to a governor or his immediate family.
Those reforms were in part prompted by the past conduct of Sununu’s inaugural committee. After he first won election in 2016, his committee raised close to half a million dollars and ended up spending more than $165,000 on payments to the governor, members of his family, and close staff members.
