Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is reportedly announcing a second presidential race next week, seeking to lead the political fight over the 2024 Republican nomination of Donald Trump.
News site Axios said Christie, 60, will launch her campaign in Manchester, New Hampshire on Tuesday.
Trump is leading Republican primary polls, leading his closest challenger, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, by more than 30 points in most polling averages.
Related: Chris Christie mocks Ron DeSantis for being passed over by Disney
DeSantis, who suffered a glitches-filled campaign launch on Twitter last week, is suing the same far-right supporters as Trump.
Other candidates, including former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and South Carolina senator Tim Scott, sought to distance themselves from the two men but did not impact the polls.
Quoting members of Christie’s campaign team, Axios said it plans to offer Republicans “a happy warrior who speaks his mind, takes risks and is happy to punch Donald Trump in the nose.” .
The former governor aimed to organize “a national race … a non-traditional campaign that is heavily focused on earned media, mixing it into the news cycle and engaging Trump,” the site said quoting an adviser from Christy.
The adviser added: “Will not be geographically dependent, but agile.”
A political heavyweight with a brawling style from New Jersey, Christie rose to national prominence after winning the 2009 election, but suffered in the eyes of Republicans after he was photographed happily working with Barack Obama following Superstorm Sandy. , during the 2012 presidential election. In 2015, he left office under a cloud, amid the Bridgegate scandal over an alleged political revenge.
Christie ran for the Republican nomination in 2016, but aside from brutally knocking down Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on the debate stage, he failed to make an impression.
He quickly endorsed Trump and was by his side when he won the nomination and then the White House. But Christie lost his role in Trump’s transition planning, he said, because Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, resented Christie’s role in jailing Kushner’s father.
Christie proved unable to leave Trump, advising him until the 2020 election. He eventually broke with him after the deadly Jan. 6 assault on Congress.
According to Axios, Christie now hopes to be “cheerful” on the campaign trail, aiming to strike “a more optimistic note aimed at America’s ‘worn out majority’.”
Assessing Christie’s hopes, Washington Post writer Aaron Blake said, “Say what you want about Chris Christie; he is an intelligent man… He must know that he has very little chance in 2024.
“…Yet there are signs that Christie will again decide to run for president at what is decidedly the wrong time – even more so than in 2016. And although he insisted that it wasn’t just a kamikaze mission to take out Donald Trump, it’s hard to see how that could mean anything else.
Bill Kristol, conservative commentator and critic of Trump, said: “Chris Christie has behaved in a reprehensible manner from 2016 to 2020. Also, I wish him well in his efforts to prevent Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis from being the Republican nominee in 2024.”