MANCHESTER, N.H. — After months of political courtship evenly spread between all of the non-Trump presidential candidates touring the state, New Hampshire’s governor has finally broken his silence on the matter and announced he’s all in on Nikki Haley.

Since the start of the 2024 election cycle, Gov. Chris Sununu has played coy over who he might eventually endorse for the party’s nomination, often making appearances at campaign stops alongside Haley, or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, or ex-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and then prevaricating when asked if his presence at any particular event was indicative of his endorsement.

On Tuesday, the governor removed all doubt.

“You bet your ass I am, we are all in on Nikki Haley,” he said. “When you look at her poll numbers, when you look at the ground game that Nikki has laid, it’s been absolutely unbelievable.”

Sununu’s vote of confidence comes as Haley surges in early-state polls, pulling past both DeSantis and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy in New Hampshire and South Carolina to claim a very distant second-place spot behind former President Donald Trump.

Haley has a lot of work to do if she wants to catch up to her former boss. Trump, according to polling averages, leads her by 27 points in the Granite State, where the first primary of the election will be held on January 23. She trails him by nearly 50 points nationally.

Sununu and Trump do not have a great relationship, and so it was no surprise that, after endorsing Haley, he said part of his reason for doing so is that it’s time to move on from the past. Haley, unlike Trump, doesn’t come with the “nonsense and drama” that the former president brings to the table, Sununu said.

The former South Caroline governor, Sununu said, “looks people in the eye and answers their questions.”

“Are we going to settle for the same old thing?” he said. “Thanks you for your service, Mr. President, but we’re moving forward.”

Haley spoke for about an hour to a standing room only crowd packed into the McIntyre Ski Area lodge, delivered a fairly standard stump speech before taking questions. Most of the audience, when asked, indicated it was the first time they’d seen her in person.

It didn’t take long for them to start nodding their heads in agreement.

“I’ve always spoken in hard truths, and I’m going to do that for you today,” she said.

Haley told the audience that the deficit has not been helped by President Joe Biden’s policies, but also said that, “our Republicans did that too.”

“I will veto any budget that does not return us to pre-COVID spending levels,” she said. “No more whining, no more complaining, now we get to work. Let’s fix it.”

On national security, unlike some Republican candidates who have come out against funding for foreign conflicts, Haley has been clear the U.S. needs to support the war effort in Ukraine as the conflict there enters its second year.

“Dictators, thugs, and terrorists always tell you what they are going to do,” she said. “Russia said once they take Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next. Those are NATO countries, that would mean war,” she said. “We’re trying to prevent war.”

“If Russia wins, China wins,” she said.

Events in Israel, Haley said, are playing out exactly how Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted them to, now that the conflict there is pulling the world’s attention away from Ukraine, she said.

“He invited Hamas to Russia,” she said. “We have to see the connection.”

On Trump, she said “chaos follows him.”

“And we won’t survive it,” she said.

Haley’s Tuesday night stop in Manchester is the first of four planned townhall-style events scheduled this week in New Hampshire.

According to her campaign, on Wednesday she’ll be at the Newport Recreation Center at 1 p.m., followed by another event at Tempesta’s Ballroom at the Best Western Plus- Keene Hotel at 5:30 p.m. Thursday she’s scheduled to appear at the Atkinson Country Club and Resort at 10 a.m.