Chris Christie is running for president.
What We Know: The former New Jersey governor, who ran for president in 2016 before endorsing Donald Trump, will announce next week that he is challenging his former ally in 2024.
Here Comes Chris Christie
Does anyone want Chris Christie is to be president? That is not clear.
But the former two-term New Jersey governor will soon announce a second White House bid.
According to Axios, Christie is planning an announcement next Tuesday that he is running for president in 2024. The announcement will be made at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, the same venue where Trump held his CNN town hall in early May.
The 60-year-old Christie, who was elected governor of New Jersey in 2009 and served two terms, previously ran for president in 2016, although he dropped out after a sixth-place finish in New Hampshire and endorsed Trump, becoming the first major establishment Republican to do so.
Over the course of the next several years, Trump and Christie had an up-and-down relationship, with Christie at first in Trump’s favor but eventually falling out of it, and never holding any official position in the Trump Administration. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and adviser, was said to resent Christie after he, as U.S. Attorney, prosecuted Kushner’s father in the early 2000s.
Christie broke with Trump more fully at the end of his presidency, ripping the former president for election lies and January 6, and continuing to do so regularly from his current perch as an ABC News commentator and a regular panelist on the “This Week” Sunday talk show. Christie will likely need to give up that role, for as long as he’s a presidential candidate.
The future candidate’s team gave Axios a peak of what’s expected for the campaign:
“Being joyful… being authentic…” and “running a national race.”
Chris Christie plans to run as a “happy warrior who speaks his mind, takes risks, and is happy to punch Donald Trump in the nose. Christie’s recent interviews and New Hampshire town halls aim to recapture the brio of his 2009 governor’s race.”
That means that Christie is likely to have direct confrontations with Trump, should they end up on the same debate stage at some point. But since Mike Pence is expected to run, and Liz Cheney may enter the race in that same lane as well, Christie won’t be the only candidate running as a never-Trumper.
Christie has often been frequently critical of Gov. Ron DeSantis, especially when it comes to his battle with Disney. Christie, like DeSantis, won a landslide re-election for governor in his state and used that to propel himself to a presidential campaign soon afterward.
The campaign also has the support of Anthony Scaramucci, another New York/New Jersey figure who infamously served as Trump’s White House communications director for 11 days in the summer of 2017, and has also since broken with Trump.
Christie and his team will have their work cut out for them. The Morning Consult tracking poll of the Republican race, released Tuesday, does not list Christie’s name among the 10 candidates named, although “Someone else” earns 1 percent in the poll.
“In American politics, if you want to beat somebody, you’ve got to go get them, and you got to make the case,” Christie said in a recent New Hampshire visit, per ABC News. “So what I’m saying tonight, I think, is the beginning of the case against Donald Trump. And that’s the first task for Republican primary voters — decide who we’re going to nominate. And if we are willing to put up with that level of policy, and character failure, then we’re going to get what we deserve.”
It’s been reported that Steve Cohen, the well-known hedge fund billionaire and the owner of Christie’s favorite baseball team the New York Mets, will serve as the campaign’s major financial backer, after previously doing so in Christie’s 2016 run.
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Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist, and film critic.
