Former New Jersey governor and 2016 presidential candidate Chris Christie entered the presidential race on Tuesday. Good for him. He is positioning himself as [searches through the glut of clichés out there] a “bare-knuckled brawler best-equipped to make the case against Donald Trump,” as the Washington Post described him last week.
“Beware of the leader in this country who you have handed leadership to,” Christie said while announcing his candidacy at a New Hampshire town hall Tuesday night, “who has never made a mistake, who has never done anything wrong, who, when something goes wrong, it’s somebody else’s fault, and who has never lost.” He warned, further, that a “lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog is not a leader.”
After mocking other Republican candidates who are refusing to criticize the front-runner by name, Christie distinguished himself.
“Well let me be clear, in case I have not been already,” Christie said. “The person I am talking about, who is obsessed with the mirror, who never admits a mistake, who never admits a fault, and who always finds someone else—and something else—to blame for whatever goes wrong but finds every reason to take credit for anything that goes right, is Donald Trump.”
The small crowd was silent.
As Christie teased his bid this year, he expressed regret for the way he campaigned in 2016. He was one of those dozen or so candidates too concerned about winning a “lane” rather than about taking down the wire-to-wire polling leader, Trump, who had been supposed to collapse on his own. (He didn’t.) This time, Trump is once again the polling leader, and Christie’s plan is to go fearlessly after him, a performance he doesn’t believe the various other wusses are up to.
Here’s the problem: What’s the Republican constituency for Chris Christie?
Let’s go through Christie’s last decade or so, real quick.
He was elected governor of New Jersey in 2009 and gained national notoriety for his confrontational style. He turned down repeated entreaties to run for president in 2012—which was, in retrospect, his first, best, and only chance to become president—but cruised to reelection in 2013. That was supposed to be his ticket to the 2016 presidential nomination.
Then, a couple of things happened. He and his administration were engulfed in a dramatic, hilarious scandal in which his aides were accused of creating traffic jams in a town whose mayor wouldn’t endorse him. Then, Trump entered the presidential race in 2016 and took over Christie’s shtick as the combative Tri-State bully. (Christie had also gotten in trouble with the Republican base years before for embracing Barack Obama after a hurricane. Christie denies it was a “hug.”)
Christie never picked up meaningful traction in the 2016 presidential race and, on his way out of the race, did Trump a favor by killing off the candidacy of Sen. Marco Rubio just as Rubio was picking up some steam following a better-than-expected Iowa finish. (This characterization makes Rubio mad! Oh well.) A few weeks later, in late February 2016, Christie delivered Trump his most important endorsement to that point.
How did Trump treat Christie after that? Like a doormat. Despite taking out a rival and lending Trump his first establishment blessing with an endorsement, Christie never got a Cabinet job. What did Christie get from Trump? A case of COVID that nearly killed him.
Christie worked against Trump in the past couple of years, engaging in primary proxy battles during the 2022 midterm elections and pinning the GOP’s poor performance at Trump’s feet.
So. Christie has been a Trump agnostic, then a crucial Trump validator, then a Trump COVID victim, and now wants to be a Trump-seeking missile. What you have is a candidate whom no segment of the Republican Party has much reason to trust, while his latest rebranding (anti-Trumper) is certain to irritate a large part of the Republican Party (people who like Donald Trump).
The numbers bear this out. A Monmouth poll released last week showed that Christie was the only one of 10 polled candidates to receive a negative favorability from Republican voters. Some 77 percent of those polled viewed Trump favorably (to 17 percent who viewed him unfavorably), and 73 percent viewed Ron DeSantis favorably (to 12 percent unfavorably). Even Mike “Refused to Do Treason” Pence was above water by 11 points. Christie, meanwhile, was viewed favorably by 21 percent of Republicans, and unfavorably by 47 percent.
The tersest analysis of Christie’s entry in the race has come from Christie’s target, Trump. “I hear Chris Christie’s coming in,” Trump said on Fox News last week. “What’s the purpose?”
Even if Christie has no chance of winning, he could—could—have some bit role in the game. Having one charismatic figure on the debate stage to consistently attack Trump could drain the front-runner of some support, even if that lost support doesn’t redound to Christie’s column.
What Christie does bring to the race that no other non-Trump candidate has brought in a while is some life. A touch of energy. A little gosh-darn fun around here! Christie is a mountain of a personality, a colorful interview who puts on the best town hall in New Hampshire. He’s not stupid, and knows his political window is likely shut. That will loosen him up even further. At his announcement, in his riff about a certain candidate who’ll never admit he’s lost, Christie, for example, said, “I’ve lost.”
“You people,” he said to the assembled New Hampshirites, “did that to me in 2016.”
Consider some of our other recent entrants. Ron DeSantis is not fun and is infamous for not enjoying having fun with other people. Tim Scott is pitching happiness, and we all know that misery is the wellspring of fun. Mike Pence is American politics’ side of steamed vegetables. Maybe North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is fun? Probably not.
Who knows whether Christie’s efforts to fight Trump—or really anyone who asks him a question—will be a meaningful variable in the Republican primary. But it adds a bit of salt. I’ll bite.
