Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced on Wednesday that he is dropping his long-shot bid to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. It’s an announcement that was both sudden and long-coming. Christie was on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” just last week insisting that “anyone who thinks I’m getting out of this race, they’re crazy.” And yet he languished in single digits in poll after poll, failing to make the stage for CNN’s final debate before the Iowa caucuses.
With his exit, so goes the most prominent voice in the race willing to directly challenge former President Donald Trump’s grip on the GOP. But there was no hint of altruism or greater purpose in Christie’s lonely crusade. Instead, it’s clear that it was merely the lane the two-time contender for the nomination saw for himself as a means to get on the top of the ballot in November. He was right that the lane was wide open for him — but it’s unsurprising that he has completely stalled out.
When Christie first jumped into the race in June, his persona as the anti-Trump candidate was already fully formed.
When Christie first jumped into the race in June, his persona as the anti-Trump candidate was already fully formed. “The person I am talking about who is obsessed with the mirror, who never admits a mistake, who never admits a fault and will always find 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 at his campaign launch event.
From that moment, there was never any doubt about what Christie’s overarching message would be. There were never any of the shakeups and strategy shifts that we’ve seen from other floundering campaigns, like that of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. He has remained laser-focused on Trump even as his fellow candidates have tried to gingerly step from his shadow while still embracing the former president’s policies and base of support.
He has also been perfectly willing to call out those would-be nominees’ fealty to Trump both on the campaign trail and from the debate stage. While others have blamed Democrats for their supposed “weaponization” of law enforcement, echoing Trump’s claims of innocence, Christie insisted that Trump’s legal troubles would mean that if he’s the nominee, “we’re going to lose the election.”
But it was equally clear since he launched his campaign that there was little chance that Christie’s message would light the GOP electorate on fire. Despite the long list of criminal charges that Trump faces and Christie’s continued hammering of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, that’s not what Republican voters have wanted to hear, as the boos that have followed Christie at conservative events attest. Trump has remained at the top of Republican polling, propelled by the unwavering support of his base — but it’s not like Christie’s history with Trump exactly lent him the automatic support of the anti-Trump crowd.
It would be remiss of me to try summing up the whiplash of pandering transformations that Christie went through better than journalist Hamilton Nolan did ahead of the first GOP debate:
Christie’s problem is not that he is a venal man who stands for nothing; that is common enough among presidential candidates. His problem is that he is unable to pretend to stand for any particular thing long enough to convince a base of people that he can represent them. In a Republican Party defined by Trump, Christie made the fatal error in 2016 of whiplashing from “Never Trumper” to Trump acolyte faster than he could concoct a plausible cover story to explain it. In doing so, he exposed himself to both the pro- and anti-Trump wings of the party as a thirsty hanger-on continually looking to sell out. That Christie has decided to jump back into the race this year, styling himself as a hard-nosed Trump critic once again, is little more than a testament to his infinite appetite for eating crow in exchange for attention.
It was a hard image to shake, especially in New Hampshire, where Christie had gone all in despite languishing at 12% among likely Republican primary voters. Granite State voters place a certain level of pride in their ability to suss out authenticity, and their focus on the nitty-gritty of policy sometimes had him on the defensive. But as late as December, his campaign was willing to spend more than $1 million to put an ad calling Trump a liar on New Hampshire’s airwaves.
While Christie’s campaign was always cast in terms of black and white, it was never really offering a choice between Trump and democracy.
There’s also the little matter of former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s rise in the state; she has managed to fully eclipse Christie in New Hampshire, closing the gap with Trump to single digits in one recent poll. She now stands to benefit the most from Christie’s departure from the race. “If we exclude [former Arkansas Gov. Asa] Hutchinson, 83% of Christie supporters rank Haley as their second choice in the polls,” polling analyst Logan Phillips wrote on X last week.
Christie seems unlikely to be gracious in defeat. Ahead of his announcement, he was caught on a hot mic seemingly predicting that Haley was going to go down in flames against Trump. “She’s gonna get smoked," he said, without naming the former South Carolina governor. "And you and I both know it, she’s not up to this.”
That tracks with his comments the day before he announced his campaign was over, when he was publicly questioning Haley’s willingness to take on Trump. “Let’s say I dropped out of the race right now and I supported Nikki Haley,” he said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Tuesday. “And then three months from now, four months from now, when you’re ready to go to the convention, she comes out as his vice president. What will I look like? What will all the people who supported her at my behest look like?”
That’s honestly pretty rich coming from someone who did just that in 2016. It also undercuts the notion that he’s willing to back anyone who can prevent Trump from becoming the nominee. Because while Christie’s campaign was always cast in terms of black and white, it was never really offering a choice between Trump and democracy. It was about a choice between Trump and Christie — and now that the choice has been made, it’s apparently no longer his problem.