Chris Christie may not end up being the next president—but he won’t end up as a spoiler, either.
On Wednesday, the former New Jersey governor suspended his longshot, anti-Trump White House bid after facing significant pressure to drop out and allow Nikki Haley to consolidate the non-Trump vote in key early states.
“It’s clear there isn’t a path for me to winning the nomination,” Christie told supporters in Windham, New Hampshire. “I am going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to be president of the United States again, and that is more important than my own personal ambitions.”
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News of Christie’s plans was reported ahead of the event by multiple news outlets, including Bloomberg and NBC News. The move comes just two weeks shy of that state’s crucial early primary and days before Iowa’s first in the nation caucus.
For Haley—who is surging in New Hampshire—any path to seriously competing with Donald Trump had to include Christie’s withdrawal from the race, and his decision instantly increases her chances of pulling off an upset in the Jan. 23 election primary.
For months, Christie had camped out in New Hampshire and bet it all on wooing Trump-skeptical primary voters. Although his polling numbers maxed out in the low double digits, he was seen as siphoning crucial support that could put Haley ahead of Trump in the state.
In recent weeks, an increasingly stark choice began to emerge for the only remaining candidate with a truly anti-Trump message: hope for a miracle and risk handing New Hampshire to Trump, or endorse Haley and at least take a shot at stopping the man he described as a threat to democracy.
But in lengthy remarks on Wednesday, Christie proudly defended the mission of his campaign and continued to frame himself as the only candidate with the integrity to stand up to Trump.
Not only did Christie decline to endorse Haley, he undermined her. Caught on an apparent hot mic at the beginning of the livestream of his event, he discounted her ability to win, telling a friend, “she's gonna get smoked.”
In his formal remarks, Christie continued to take shots at Haley, making a quip to the crowd about her recent gaffe about slavery and the Civil War.
Christie also suggested a clear litmus test for his own support: “Anyone who is unwilling to say that [Trump] is unfit to be president of the United States is unfit themselves to be president of the United States,” he said, while noting that no other major GOP candidate has said as much.
As his campaign stalled out, Christie had rejected public calls for his withdrawal, which came almost daily from top Republicans like New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who endorsed Haley over Christie.
Christie pushed back hard barely 24 hours before he decided to drop out. “Let’s say I dropped out of the race right now and I supported Nikki Haley,” he said 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?”
Before that, Christie used a TV ad to defiantly hit back at the “some people” who were telling him to drop out.
“Really?” Christie said in the ad. “I’m the only one saying Donald Trump is a liar… Every Republican leader says that in private. I’m the only one saying it in public.”
On Tuesday, when Sununu floated on CNN that Christie was considering ending his campaign, Christie flatly called him a “liar.” He also dismissed the idea that him remaining in the race helped Trump and expressed doubt over Haley’s willingness to go after the former president.
But privately, multiple news outlets reported Christie was facing pressure from donors and supporters to get out of the race. According to National Review, anti-Trump Republicans were “pleading” with Christie this week to do so.
His decision is a clear boon for Haley, who has emerged as the favorite among the Trump alternatives to actually present a challenge to the former president for the GOP nomination. With Christie’s exit, the conventional wisdom is that Haley will pick up the majority of his voters.
While Haley trails Trump in Iowa by about 35 points, according to the 538 polling average, Trump’s lead in New Hampshire appears to be in the single digits—with Christie’s roughly 10 percent share potentially upending the results of the first-in-the-nation primary and possibly providing a significant boon for Haley at a critical time.
Just as Christie dropping out and endorsing Trump in 2016 was a critical moment in that campaign, Christie’s exit eight years later could be just as pivotal. Haley is quickly emerging as a real contender for the nomination as non-Trump voters coalesce behind her—even if Christie himself apparently has not.
As for Christie, his announcement caps the latest chapter of what has been a colorful, consequential political career with no shortage of twists and turns. After passing on a presidential run at the height of his popularity and power in 2012, Christie ran in 2016 as a fierce rival and harsh critic of Trump’s.
Like many Republicans, Christie morphed into an ally of Trump’s, even briefly chairing his presidential transition. But he swung back and launched his 2024 campaign as an unequivocal effort to stop Trump from a second term after he attempted to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election.
At a series of primary debates—none of which were attended by Trump—Christie was the only candidate articulating the dangers of the GOP re-nominating someone he called a “dictator” and a “bully.”
“It’s often very difficult to be the only person on the stage who’s telling the truth,” he said at the December debate, “and the only person who’s taking on [Trump].”
