Chris Christie Considering Run For President After Trump Leaves Office

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — Chris Christie isn’t done flirting with the idea of becoming president of the United States.

The former Republican governor of New Jersey said he is considering a third run for president in 2028 while speaking at the Granite State Summit on Responsible Gaming in New Hampshire earlier this week.

“Am I looking at it? Look, anybody who comes up here – anybody who comes up here – and has ever run for president and not won and told you they're not looking at it again is lying,” said Christie, 64, who was born in Newark and grew up in Livingston.

Christie added that he wants to see what happens in the midterm elections first, WMUR9 reported.

“For our party's sake, if we do a lot of losing six weeks from today, I wonder whether we're going to say, ‘OK, we need to change this approach,’” he said.

Christie served as governor in New Jersey from 2010 to 2018. He unsuccessfully ran for president twice before – in 2016 and 2024 – failing to make the final cut as the Republican candidate each time.

During his tenure as governor, Christie earned praise for his leadership during Superstorm Sandy, signing a bill on capping local property taxes, and his efforts to battle the state’s opioid epidemic.

However, the controversy-courting politician saw heat over state spending, public worker pensions, teacher tenure reforms, school funding, his extensive political campaigning, and spending hundreds of days away from the Garden State while serving as governor. Christie was also widely criticized over the “Bridgegate” scandal involving alleged political retaliation at the George Washinton Bridge in 2013.

• Related: Protesters Boo Christie On Arrival To Presidential Announcement [WATCH]
• Related: Gov. Christie's Beachgate Fiasco: How It All Went Down
• Related: Chris Christie's 7 Biggest Gaffes

CHRISTIE VS. TRUMP

After his loss in 2016, Christie endorsed Donald Trump after suspending his own campaign and was named head of Trump's transition planning team. However, Christie’s opinions about the president have soured since then – he was one of the only GOP candidates to criticize Trump during the 2024 race.

Christie has been throwing online jabs at Trump over the past month, calling him “childish” and alleging that he “lacks the intellectual curiosity” to take part in the debate over artificial intelligence.

“Just to remind us what it was like to admire the character of the president of the United States,” he posted on social media, sharing a video of another politician who has faced criticism in New Jersey: George W. Bush.

“I’ve admitted I made a mistake,” Christie recently told NJ Advance Media.

“I thought I could go in there and help make him a better politician, a better president,” he said. “I turned out to be wrong.”

Trump hasn’t shied away from hitting back, calling Christie a “slob” and suggesting that the Justice Department should look into the 2013 "Bridgegate" scandal.

• Related: Christie Tells Trump It Is Time To 'Move On' From Election Loss
• Related: Trump's Legal Team 'National Embarrassment,' Ex-Gov. Christie Says
• Related: President Threatens To Revive 'Bridgegate' Case In Feud With Ex-NJ Gov. Christie

MAGA AND NEW JERSEY

Will Christie be able to pick up votes from MAGA supporters in the wake of Trump’s departure from the Oval Office? That remains to be seen, with recent polling showing divergent attitudes about the future of the Republican Party in the Garden State.

In 2025, a Rutgers-Eagleton poll found that 53 percent of Republican voters in the Garden State “strongly support” MAGA. Another 32 percent “somewhat support” MAGA, while 1 percent “somewhat oppose” and 2 percent “strongly oppose” it. About 12 percent of respondents said they don’t support or oppose it.

• Related: NJ Republicans Overwhelmingly Support MAGA Movement, Poll Finds

After Gov. Mikie Sherrill defeated GOP challenger Jack Ciattarelli last year, Fairleigh Dickinson University released the results of another poll, which asked New Jersey voters whether Sherrill should “try and work with President Trump,” or if she should use “lawsuits and other means to defy him.”

Forty-two percent of voters said that she should work with him, and 31 percent said that she should defy him. Another 26 percent said that “it depends” on the situation at hand, and 2 percent weren’t sure.

While MAGA voters almost universally said that Sherrill should work with Trump – a whopping 93 percent, according to the survey – there are a lot fewer of them than there used to be, pollsters reported.

In January of 2024 – during the run up to Trump’s re-election – 27 percent of voters in New Jersey identified as MAGA, including a majority (54 percent) of Republicans, and a sizeable portion of independents (31 percent). Now, only 16 percent of Garden State voters identify as MAGA – including 37 percent of New Jersey Republicans and just 11 percent of independents, the survey found.

“Being a MAGA voter isn’t like being a conservative or a libertarian,” a pollster theorized. “The MAGA coalition is real, but the fact that it’s so tied to an individual means that people move pretty freely in and out of it depending on how they’re feeling about Trump at the moment.”

• Related: Sherrill Shocker: Approval Ratings For NJ Governor Released

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