Chris Christie enters presidential race as chief Trump antagonist

The former New Jersey governor, once an ally, is a top critic of former president.

Chris Christie launches his presidential bid in Goffstown, New Hampshire, on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is a long shot to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but his entry into the race is certain to deliver a much more combative primary.

The moderate, who in 2016 failed in his first nomination ­attempt, is known for his willingness to throw a political punch. Former president Donald Trump, who leads in national polls of ­Republicans, will be his principal target.

Mr Christie filed his paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) establishing his candidacy and made his formal announcement at St Anselm College. He plans to focus on New Hampshire, as he did in 2016, where independents can vote in primaries and more centrist Republicans are ­rewarded compared with Iowa, which is dominated by social conservatives. Iowa and New Hampshire will start the GOP nom­inating process early next year, followed by South Carolina and Nevada.

A gifted retail politician and debater who served as a US attorney in New Jersey before being governor, Mr Christie endorsed Mr Trump shortly after dropping out of the 2016 primary. He was the first truly high-profile establishment Republican to do so. While the two have a long personal relationship, it deteriorated fast once Mr Christie became critical of Mr Trump after he lost the 2020 election and refused to concede.

At his announcement, Mr Christie depicted Mr Trump as self-obsessed and dishonest. The former president, Mr Christie said, “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”.

Mr Christie has assailed Mr Trump on all manner of issues, highlighting the escalating criminal probes targeting the billionaire, trashing his false claims of election fraud and dubbing him “Putin’s puppet” over his isolationist stance on Russia’s ­invasion of Ukraine. He has also accused Mr Trump of being “afraid to get on the debate stage”. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Mr Trump’s closest competitor in the polls, has also stepped up his criticism of the former president.

The former president has said other candidates are jumping into the race because they are unafraid of Mr DeSantis as the main Trump challenger, but he also said at a Fox News town hall last week that Mr Christie’s run didn’t make sense. “What’s the purpose? And he’s polling at zero,” he said. Polls of the field of current and potential primary candidates have shown Mr Christie in the low single digits.

In his previous attempt, Mr Christie dropped out of the primary race after a sixth-place finish in New Hampshire, but not before inflicting damage to Marco Rubio in a debate exchange where he chided the Florida senator for never having made “a consequential decision” and for reciting a “memorised 30-second speech”.

Mr Christie angered conservatives ahead of his 2016 bid with a decision to end a legal effort to stop same-sex marriages in New Jersey. He was also criticised from the right for judicial appointments and for praising Barack Obama’s handling of Hurricane Sandy ­recovery efforts one week before the 2012 presidential election.

His entry adds to an already crowded field that includes former UN envoy and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson.

Former vice-president Mike Pence filed paperwork with the FEC on Monday ahead of an announcement speech on Wednesday, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum is expected to launch his bid the same day.

Mr Christie has been supportive of US assistance to Ukraine, taking a similar stance as Ms Haley, Mr Pence and Senator Scott. That contrasts with the scepticism over US involvement expressed by Mr Trump and Mr DeSantis.

New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, another centrist, said on Monday that he wouldn’t run for president. In an opinion column in the Washington Post, Mr Sununu said he didn’t want to further fracture the vote and hand the nomination to Mr Trump, who he said would lose the election. Mr Trump has encouraged a crowded field in hopes that it will do what Mr Sununu is warning.

Before Mr Trump altered the contours of the Republican Party, Mr Christie was viewed as a rising star in the GOP because of his ability to win in a heavily Democratic state and his success as the head of the Republican Governors Association.

The Wall Street Journal