Taking aim at Donald Trump as a “lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror-hog,” former New Jersey governor Chris Christie launched a long-shot campaign for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday night, declaring that “character matters.”
Speaking in front of a large American flag, Christie, 60, made the announcement during a town hall at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. He promised “some straight talk from New Jersey.”
He argued that our recent presidents — Barack Obama, Trump, and now Joe Biden — have all made the country “smaller in every way” by dividing Americans into smaller and smaller groups. “This is a Right and a Left problem,” Christie said.
Pointing to the leadership of the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and 20th-century presidents — Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan — Christie said America has a long history of going big. “All throughout our history there have been moments when we had to choose between big and small,” he said. “I would tell you, the reason I’m here tonight is because this is one of those moments.”
Unlike other Republican candidates, Christie was clear that his sights are aimed at Trump. “A lonely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror-hog is not a leader,” Christie said.
“Let me be clear, in case I have not been already, 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,” Christie said.
While other Republican candidates have tiptoed around calling out the former president, who is dominating national polls, Christie said it is critical to address Trump.
“If we don’t have that conversation with you, we don’t deserve to ask for your vote, we don’t deserve the mantle of leadership, we don’t deserve to have you think of us as people worthy of leadership,” he said.
He said that “character matters” but acknowledged that he has made plenty of mistakes in his career. “If you are in search of the perfect candidate, it is time to leave. I am not it,” he said.
Christie also took aim at other Republican contenders. He was presumably talking about Florida governor Ron DeSantis when he mentioned candidates talking about issues that are so small “that sometimes it’s hard to even understand them.” DeSantis has been criticized for focusing his campaign on culture-war issues and frequently talking in conservative jargon.
“And now we have pretenders all around us who want to tell you, ‘Pick me, because I’m kind of like what you picked before, but not quite as crazy,’” Christie said.
After announcing his run, Christie took questions from members of the audience. Ahead of the town hall, he filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission to officially launch his bid.
Christie, who served as governor of New Jersey from 2010 to 2018 and previously ran for president in 2016, is pitching himself as an unabashed truth-teller and risk-taker who is uniquely positioned to take on Trump in the Republican debates.
He appears to be running to lead the explicitly anti-Trump lane of the primary, telling Axios earlier this year that he will never support the former president again, even if Trump wins the Republican nomination next year.
“I can’t help him. No way,” Christie said, “When you have the January 6 choir at a rally and you show video of it — I just don’t think that person is appropriate for the presidency.”
But even with his announcement, it’s not clear Christie will ever have the opportunity to debate Trump again. According to new Republican National Committee rules, candidates will need to have at least 1 percent support in several qualifying polls and at least 40,000 donors to get on the debate stage. And Trump has suggested he might skip the primary debates.
It’s also not clear that Republican voters are looking to turn to a pre-Trump-style leader.
Christie, a lawyer and brash former New Jersey state lawmaker, was appointed U.S. attorney for New Jersey by then-president George W. Bush in 2001. He was elected governor in 2009, defeating Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine in the general election.
During his two terms, he became known as a bipartisan negotiator who cut government spending, capped property-tax increases, took on the state’s teachers’ unions, and enacted police and bail reform. But his tenure was also marked by a difficult job market, eleven downgrades of the state’s credit, and some scandal, including what became known as “Bridgegate.”
In 2013, some members of his administration shut down the George Washington Bridge to punish the mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., for not supporting Christie’s reelection campaign. He also faced pushback in 2017 after he and his family enjoyed a day at a beach that had been closed to the public during a state-government shutdown.
Christie’s approval rating, which had topped out at over 70 percent in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, sank to the mid teens by the end of his second term. At one point, his 15-percent approval was the lowest ever recorded for a New Jersey governor.
He ran for president in 2016 as a tough-talking moderate. The highlight of that run came during a February 2016 debate when Christie went after Florida senator Marco Rubio, taunting him and attacking him for robotically answering questions with a “memorized 25-second speech.” Rubio responded to the attack by regurgitating a memorized line he’d already used.
Rubio tanked in the New Hampshire primary, finishing fifth. Christie placed sixth with only 7 percent of the vote. Christie made a joke about that Tuesday night, telling the audience to beware a leader who won’t acknowledge when he or she loses.
“I’ve lost,” Christie said. “You people did that to me in 2016.”
After his poor performance in New Hampshire that year, Christie suspended his campaign and became the first national GOP figure to endorse Trump, facing accusations that he had demeaned himself publicly by doing so.
He went on to head Trump’s transition team, was an ally of Trump during his presidency, and helped prepare Trump for his 2020 debate with Joe Biden.
He eventually broke with Trump after the 2020 election when Trump refused to concede defeat and after he helped to instigate the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“The election wasn’t stolen. He lost,” Christie told the news website Semafor in April. “I understand why he has a hard time coming to terms with losing to Joe Biden.”
Christie has said he would not run in 2024 if didn’t see a path to victory. “If I get into the race, I’ll make it interesting,” he told Semafor. A skilled rhetorical pugilist, Christie has also painted himself as the candidate best positioned to sink Trump in the Republican debates.
“You better have somebody on that stage who can do to him what I did to Marco because that’s the only thing that’s going to defeat Donald Trump,” he said recently. “And that means you’ve got to have the skill to do it. And that means you have to be fearless because he will come right back at you.”
Christie has called the former president a “coward” and a “puppet of Putin.”
In addition to attacking Trump, Christie has also jabbed at Ron DeSantis over his ongoing feud with Disney, saying he doesn’t believe the Florida governor is a real conservative.
“I believe as a conservative the job of government is in the main to stay out of the business of business. I don’t think we should be heavily regulating business. I don’t think we should be telling business what to do, what to say, how to think. I believe that’s what conservatives have believed for as long as I’ve been alive,” Christie told Semafor. “Where are we headed here now? If you express disagreement in this country, the government is allowed to punish you? To me, that’s what I always thought liberals did.”