WHILE WE’RE COOLING our jets waiting for Gov. Chris Sununu to announce if he’ll run for the U.S. Senate in 2022 — he says a decision is months away — he continues to bring talented campaign operatives into his office orbit.

WHAT A difference an election makes.

A HIGH-POWERED national consulting firm has completed a $1.5 million assessment of how to make New Hampshire’s largest state agency more efficient and take the most advantage of federal grants to support its operations.

WELL UNDER THE RADAR so far, proponents of expanded gambling are making a big push in 2021.

DEMOCRATIC CRITICS hammered Gov. Chris Sununu last fall for giving “flexibility” to school district administrators and school boards to decide how they would conduct public schools in the face of risks from COVID-19.

A MAJOR TO-DO on the New Hampshire Legislature’s priority list just got shoved to a back burner.

NOW THAT GOV. Chris Sununu has his Supreme Court chief justice, who’s going to be the next attorney general?

GOV. CHRIS SUNUNU said he knows that not everyone is going to be happy with his decisions about who gets the COVID-19 vaccine now and who must wait longer.

STATE REP. Michael Yakubovich, R-Hooksett, said 2021 will not be the year of an end to a New Hampshire ban on “armed civilian groups.”

IT’S BEGINNING TO look a lot like New Hampshire state revenues will recover.

GOV. CHRIS SUNUNU had his eye on Congress last week.

GOV. CHRIS SUNUNU began what he hopes will be a more cohesive relationship with the newly elected Executive Council by hosting a private luncheon last Friday at the Bridges House in Concord.

MERRIMACK HAS ALWAYS been a civically engaged town where citizens across the political and ideological spectrums get involved.

GOV. CHRIS SUNUNU has been publicly critical of large gatherings that he believes didn’t include proper COVID-19 precautions.

HOUSE MEMBERS’ SELECTIONS of their new leaders last week bodes well for cooperation between the parties over the next two years.

THERE IS NO evidence of widespread voter fraud in New Hampshire.

ALONG WITH AN annual salary of $100, a state senator gets a nice parking place in the Legislative Office Building, an office, an aide or an intern, and some handsome nameplates.

GOV. CHRIS SUNUNU is the only Republican governor in the country who has refused to weigh in on whether the U.S. Senate should vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.

STATE AUDITORS HAD good news this week for businesses, confirming the profits and enterprise taxes will not increase in January.

State health officials this week reported some people in New Hampshire have exhibited “quarantine fatigue” in their dealings with the state team tracing COVID-19 contacts.

THROUGHOUT THIS STRESSFUL pandemic, Gov. Chris Sununu generally has come across as positive and supportive rather than combative and dismissive.

NOT ONLY DID Gov. Chris Sununu collect nearly 90% of the Republican primary vote last Tuesday, he didn’t do badly among Democrats.

ALTHOUGH COVID-19 has kept us all indoors more than we would like, the Democratic primary race for governor could well be won at the grass-roots level Tuesday.

A polarizing presidential race, a blue midterm-election tidal wave and the falling dominoes of a duel for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination combine to give voters more choices than usual in the Sept. 8 primary.

THE CROWDED PRIMARY campaign to replace gubernatorial candidate Andru Volinsky as the Democratic nominee for the Executive Council District 2 seat erupted into a bitter back-and-forth last week.

WHEN THE DEPARTMENT of Public Health and Gov. Chris Sununu’s office rewrote the “Universal Guidance” for dealing with COVID-19, the goal was to make the document easier to read and understand.

GOV. CHRIS SUNUNU said he learned “very recently” that the state of Massachusetts Department of Revenue had issued a rule requiring New Hampshire residents with jobs in Massachusetts to pay income taxes while working remotely from home during the pandemic.

U.S. DISTRICT COURT Judge Joseph Laplante holds in his hands the fate of the New Hampshire Libertarian Party’s presence on the 2020 ballot.

THE SAUSAGE-MAKING that went into the 56-page report on rules for reopening New Hampshire public schools sparked plenty of controversy last week.