Chris Christie to launch second US presidential campaign

Eight years after first announcing he was running for president, Chris Christie is ready to return to the national stage.

The former New Jersey governor is expected to launch his second presidential campaign on Tuesday with a town hall-style event in Manchester, New Hampshire, about 300 miles north of his home state.

New Hampshire is a key early voting state, a fact Christie knows firsthand – in 2016, he suspended his presidential campaign after finishing sixth in the primary there.

But people close to Christie — who in the intervening years has gone from Donald Trump’s closest adviser to one of the former president’s fiercest critics — infuse the New England state with a reputation for independent-minded voters who talk hard. Perfect place for doers. The former governor to launch his long-shot bid for the presidency.

“There’s a reason these candidates do it a second time,” said a senior advisor to “Tell It Like It Is,” a Christie’s affiliated super PAC fundraising vehicle. “You learn, you get better, you hone your skills. It’s a craft.

Christie will be the latest in a growing list of candidates challenging Trump for the Republican Party nomination in 2024, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who last month ended months of speculation when he entered the race.

Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president, filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Monday to make his campaign official and will kick off his effort on Wednesday with an event in Iowa, another key early voting state.

At the same time, others have dropped plans to run, saying anti-Trump Republicans need to unite around a candidate rather than risk a repeat of 2016, when a fractured field allowed Trump to shore up his base of support and Delegates allowed to secure. To win the party’s nomination.

“We shouldn’t be complacent, and candidates shouldn’t enter the race to push vanity campaigns, sell books or serve as Donald Trump’s vice president,” said Chris Sununu, the Republican governor of New Hampshire. ” messing with his own run, wrote Monday in an op-ed in The Washington Post.

Critics question whether Christie, Pence and other challengers – including Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, and Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina – have a plan to win the party’s nomination.

The latest average of national opinion polls from RealClearPolitics shows Trump has the support of more than half of Republican voters, followed by DeSantis at just over 22 percent. Rest of the candidates are in single digit.

“Whenever a candidate enters the race, he needs to have a clear idea of ​​who his constituency is and how he’s going to win,” said Kevin Madden, a senior partner at the Washington consultancy Penta. , “I just haven’t heard anything from any of them.”

Nonpartisan analysts say Christie, who is no stranger to controversy, may have the most difficult task. When he was governor in 2013, his aides were accused of planning to create traffic jams to punish a political opponent in a scandal known as “Bridgegate”.

A University of New Hampshire poll this year found that just 10 percent of Republican primary voters in the state hold a favorable opinion of Christie. By comparison, 63 percent had a favorable view of DeSantis, and 59 percent had a favorable view of Trump.

“The numbers speak for themselves: Too many Republicans don’t like them,” said Dante Scala, political science professor at the University of New Hampshire.

Christie’s divisiveness with the Republican grassroots is part of her thorny relationship with Trump. He was one of the first national Republicans to endorse Trump after being dropped from the primary field in 2016 and subsequently vetoed as a potential running mate.

He was tapped to lead Trump’s transition team, only to be fired from that role shortly before inauguration day after conflicts with the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. He continued to advise Trump throughout his presidency, but dropped out of his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

“Is there still a Chris Christie voter left in this Republican Party, the kind of people who want to vote for a moderate, centrist, northeastern Republican governor?” asked a longtime Republican strategist who knows Christie well. “Does he run in the Republican primary now? Or is he now either an independent or a Democrat? Is he still in the party but not a voter?”

Some anti-Trump Republicans are excited by the prospect of a Christie candidacy, hoping the combative former governor will be willing to attack Trump directly in a way the other candidates will not.

Christie, who helped Trump prepare for debates in 2016 and 2020, is widely seen as having destroyed the 2016 campaign of Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida with a disastrous primary debate performance.

The first televised debate for 2024, organized by the Republican National Committee, is scheduled for late August. Trump has not committed to attend.

Christie insists he is not a “paid killer” with a candidacy designed to oust Trump. He told Politico in an interview this year: “When you’re waking up on the morning of your 45th at the Hilton Garden Inn in Manchester, you better think you can win, as he walks from bed to shower If you don’t think you can win, it’s tough.

Mike Duhaime, a veteran Republican strategist and longtime Christie ally, said the former governor is not on a “kamikaze mission”, adding that “more than half” of Republican voters “were looking for an alternative, someone who Who can take it with Trump.” A better vision for the future of the country”.

“It doesn’t seem like any other candidate has the guts to take on Trump as directly as Christie,” Duhaime said.

Still, others remain skeptical.

“The idea of ​​seeing Christie on stage with Donald Trump is appealing to a lot of people, and it will appeal to cable television,” said Scala of the University of New Hampshire. “But I struggle to see what, beyond that, is her path. It’s a path to a niche audience, not nominations.