For Christie, winning would be great. Beating Trump would be a close second.
Chris Christie embarks on a mission that even some of his fiercest allies must squeeze to see end in the White House.
But Mr. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, who is now 60 and more than five years away from being elected, was undeterred and expressed an undertaking he believes is almost as important as winning the presidency: freeing the Republican Party from the grip of Donald J. Trump.
“You have to think about who has the skill to do that and who has the guts to do it, because it’s not going to end well either way,” Mr. Christie said in March at the same university in New Hampshire where he plans to announce his long-awaited offer on Tuesday.
“His end,” he said of the former president, “will not be a calm and quiet conclusion.”
As he enters the race, Mr. Christie has established himself as the only candidate unafraid to voice the frustrations of Republicans who have seen Mr. Trump transform the party and have had enough — whether from the ideological direction or of the years of compound electoral losses.
For Mr. Christie — who lent crucial legitimacy to Mr. Trump’s then-celebrity campaign by endorsing him after his own 2016 presidential campaign failed — it’s quite the turnaround. Having fueled the rise of Mr. Trump, Mr. Christie now intends to bring about his downfall.
The question is whether there is a market for what he sells within a Republican Party with whom Trump remains overwhelmingly popular.
“Just saying ‘I’m the kamikaze candidate’ — I’m not sure that’s going to play,” former White House press secretary Sean Spicer told Trump. “For those people who don’t like Trump because of the mean tweets, will they like the guy being mean about Donald Trump?”
Mr. Christie’s shortcomings as an anti-Trump messenger are obvious. For nearly all of Mr. Trump’s four years in the White House, Mr. Christie stood by the president — even contracting a near-fatal Covid-19 infection during preparations for the Fall 2020 debate — and only broke with him about his stolen election lie. and then the violence of January 6, 2021.
The upcoming campaign is therefore expected to be a redemption tour of sorts. Drawn by the allure of the presidency for more than a decade — his decision not to run for election in 2012 at the height of his popularity has been the subject of widespread doubt — he embarks on a new run, unfettered by expectations.
Yes, he’s trying to win. He has said he wouldn’t run unless he saw a way to victory. (“I’m not a paid hitman,” he said Politics.) But he also wants to turn the party away from Mr. Trump.
“He won’t like it, but he’s a loser. It’s as simple as that,” Mr. Christie said of Mr. Trump in an interview last year, shortly after the disappointing Republican midterm elections.
It’s the kind of quotable rule and anti-Trump message that has turned some breakaway Republicans into CNN commentators or MSNBC stars and made them former elected officials as well.
Central to Mr. Christie’s pitch to disgruntled Republicans is his debating skill. The most memorable achievement of his 2016 bid was his removal of Florida Senator Marco Rubio.
“You better have someone on that stage who can do to him what I did to Marco,” he said at his event in March, treating the audience to the story of his confrontation with Mr. Rubio. “Because that’s the only thing that’s going to beat Donald Trump.”
The first challenge for Mr. Christie, however, is not Mr. Trump’s. It qualifies for the debate phase. The Republican National Committee’s threshold of 40,000 donors in 20 states could be particularly difficult for a candidate without a small donor and whose anti-Trump message seems to be more likely to entice Democratic donors than conservatives.
So far, Mr. Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, a self-financed businessman, have announced that they have reached that threshold. (There is also a 1 percent polling requirement.)
Mr Spicer, who later presented a program on Newsmax, the right-wing cable network, noted that Mr Christie “hasn’t exactly been on the conservative media” to maintain a right-wing following. “He hangs out on ABC,” said Mr. Spicer on the mainstream news network where Mr. Christie has been a paid commentator.
Quick with a quote and handy with the media—Mr. Christie made snarling at reporters a selling point for the GOP base a decade before Mr. DeSantis—maybe he’s counting on the news organizations’ thirst for a head-on and colorful fight with Mr. Trump.
After Mr Trump’s recent CNN town hall, when he would not say whether he hoped Ukraine would win the war against Russia, Mr Christie cut him off as “a puppet of Putin”.
But even the relatively small faction of Republicans concerned about the idea of returning Mr. Trump to power may be suspicious of Mr. Christie. Not only did he give a major early endorsement in 2016, he led his presidential transition and was passed over for a number of top positions while serving as an informal adviser and debate coach during the 2020 election.
“Now have you found Jesus?” asked Rick Wilson, who was an outspoken Republican critic of Mr. Trump, before leaving the party entirely. “And now you’re going to be the man to fight Trump?”
“Christie’s credibility factor as a Trump antagonist is somewhere around zero,” Wilson said.
Early polling shows that Mr. Christie may be facing an even steeper climb than other candidates polling with low-single-digit support. He got 2 percent a CNN poll at the end of Mayfor example, tied for fifth place with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.
But of all the Republican candidates in the poll, the highest proportion — 60 percent — said Mr. Christie was someone they would not support under any circumstances. That figure was 15 percent for Mr. DeSantis and 16 percent for Mr. Trump.
“Looking at it objectively, it’s hard to see a clear job for Chris Christie, who was a Trump opponent and then a Trump acolyte and now a Trump opponent again,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster. who is not aligned in the 2024 race. although some partners at his firm work with Mr. DeSantis. “There’s not much room for that in the Republican electorate right now.”
Still, in an increasingly crowded field of Republicans — former Vice President Mike Pence and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum are also expected to run this week — the Christie team sees opportunity in being the only candidate interested is to break so clearly with Mr. Trump.
Other candidates in the lower polls have avoided aggressively criticizing the former president, trying not to scare off his supporters. Some, like Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and governor of South Carolina, have preferred to shoot at Mr. DeSantis, in an effort to become the leading Trump alternative by taking him first . But Mr. Christie’s advisers see the path to the nomination going through Mr. Trump.
His supporters have organized a super PAC, Tell It Like It Is, led by a number of veteran Republican operatives. And Mr. Christie’s decision to start in New Hampshire is a sign of the state’s central role in his political analysis, which he also based much of his 2016 campaign on, when he held more than 100 town halls. . On Tuesday, he is expected to elaborate on his vision for the nation.
But there are widespread doubts about how far Mr. Christie’s designs go beyond bringing down Mr. Trump. In an editorial on the eve of his kickoff, the editors of The Wall Street Journal questioned whether the candidate could have an unintended impact on the race.
“If Mr. Christie is not a guided missile aimed at Mr. Trump, then he is an unguided missile that, say, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis?” wrote the editor.
Sean Hannity, the influential Fox News host, recently wondered if he should give Mr. Christie airtime. “You’re only in this race because you hate Donald Trump and you want to knock Donald Trump down,” Hannity said on the air. “I don’t really see Chris Christie competing and winning the nomination. He sees it as his role to be the enforcer and attack Trump.”
Mr. Trump posted the clip on his social media site, Truth Social.
Maggie Haberman reporting contributed.