Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will formally enter the 2024 presidential race next week, Fox News has confirmed.
Christie, 60, will announce his candidacy for president next week in New Hampshire, the state that holds the first primary and second overall contest in the Republican presidential nomination race.
Sources familiar with Christie's thinking say that Christie will formally launch his campaign at a town hall at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics, next Tuesday, June 6.
The news, which was first reported Wednesday morning by Axios, comes a day after Christie allies launched a super PAC to support the former governor's 2024 presidential campaign.
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The formation of the group, Tell It Like It Is, was considered a key step ahead of Christie's expected entry into the White House race. Christie said on May 4 that he would make a 2024 decision in next two weeks, but has yet to announce his intentions.
Christie, who is considered one of the best communicators in the GOP, was once a strong ally of then-President Trump but has become one of the former president's most vocal GOP critics.
Christie, who held New Jersey's highest office from 2010-2018 and was the deep-blue state's last Republican governor, first ran for president in the 2016 cycle.
He placed all his chips in New Hampshire, but his campaign crashed and burned after a disappointing and distant sixth-place finish in New Hampshire, far behind Trump, who crushed the competition in the primary, boosting him towards the nomination and eventually the White House.
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Christie became the first among the other GOP 2016 contenders to endorse Trump and for years was a top outside adviser to the then-president and chaired Trump’s high-profile commission on opioids. However, the two had a falling out after Trump’s unsuccessful attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Biden. The past two years Christie has become one of the most vocal Trump critics in the GOP.
Christie has been publicly mulling a 2024 presidential run for over a year and a half, and recently has repeatedly chimed in on his dissatisfaction with the state of the race. He's expressed discontent with the Republican field, accusing candidates of not being willing to take on the front-runner directly.
Christie, who is considered one of the best communicators in the GOP and was known during his tenure for the kind of in-your-face politics that Trump has also mastered, has argued that he’s got the debate chops to potentially take down Trump should he face off with the former president.
Trump, who in November launched his third straight White House run, remains the overwhelming front-runner in the early GOP presidential nomination polls.
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"I know what I’m good at. I know how to articulate an argument. I know how to make it. I know how to land it. And I feel like I have the ideas that people are genuinely attracted to. So if you have those things, you have a good chance to be able to do it. No guarantees, but a good chance," Christie told Fox News Digital during a April stop in New Hampshire.
Pointing to his potential rivals, Christie said "as to the others, you guys will have to judge the others. I just know who I am, and I think you all know who I am and what I’ve been able to do before under the brightest of lights… lots of people can do things when the lights aren’t the brightest. But when those lights get really bright and everybody’s watching, can you perform or can’t you? And that’s a lot about what these races have to do with."
Christie also recently lashed out at Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, another rival who declared his candidacy last week, over the Florida governor's attacks on Disney and it's "woke" antics.
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Since leaving office, Christie has worked for ABC News as a contributor and as a lobbyist.
It's likely that going forward Christie will once again spend much of his time campaigning in New Hampshire, which holds the first primary and second overall contest in the GOP nominating calendar.
When asked in April if he would concentrate a 2024 campaign in New Hampshire, at the expense of the other early voting states of Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada, Christie told Fox News Digital "I don’t know. I haven’t thought that all the way through yet. But I like New Hampshire."
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Christie joins a field that also includes former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former two-term Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, multimillionaire entrepreneur and conservative commentator Vivek Ramaswamy, and Michigan businessman Perry Johnson. Former Vice President Mike Pence and South Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum are expected to enter the race in the coming weeks, and Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire is also seriously mulling a 2024 bid.
