Opinion: Why Chris Christie has a plausible path to 2024 victory

Editor’s note: David Mark is a political journalist, author and public speaker. He is the author of “Going Dirty: The Art of Negative Campaigning” and co-author of “Dog Whistles, Walk-Backs, and Washington Handshakes: Decoding the Jargon Slang and Bluster of American Political Speech.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.

As Chris Christie files his presidential paperwork, joining the 2024 Republican primary field, he does so as a candidate with nothing to lose. And for former President Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner, that’s the most dangerous kind of rival.

The pugilistic Christie is casting himself as the one moderate GOP primary candidate willing to confront Trump head-on. Along with a relatively bipartisan record as New Jersey’s governor from 2010 to 2018, this approach makes Christie the most distinctive non-Trump GOP candidate — one with a narrow but plausible path to victory.

Trump’s closest GOP rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has taken some verbal shots at the Republican front-runner. But DeSantis’ comments are nothing like the sustained rhetorical campaign that Christie promises, which would inform voters of Trump’s mounting legal troubles, his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden and his broad unfitness for high (or any) office.

Trump’s GOP rivals have largely taken pains to avoid criticizing the former president, who aims to become the first return White House resident since Grover Cleveland in 1893. Such reticence on their parts likely will bolster Trump, since why would GOP voters choose a pale imitation when they can have the real thing?

To be sure, Christie faces long odds. Trump dominates primary news coverage despite a modest campaign schedule. Moreover, Trump’s populist-nationalist approach clearly has a hold over the Republican primary electorate. Trump has consolidated the support of a little more than half of his party, a recent CNN poll conducted by SSRS found. Christie, too, seems, particularly out of step with the current GOP primary electorate, representing its pre-2015 incarnation. The CNN poll found that 60% of Republicans would not support Christie under any circumstances.

Nor does Christie exactly have a stellar track record as a presidential candidate. His 2016 presidential campaign is best remembered for Christie’s debate takedown of Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, when he called out the then-freshman senator’s repetition of memorized talking points. It helped seal Rubio’s doom in the still-crowded GOP field but didn’t help Christie much. He finished a dismal sixth in the New Hampshire primary, dropped out shortly afterward and then endorsed Trump.

That Trump link may have hurt Christie during his final nearly two years as governor. Christie scored the lowest approval rating of any New Jersey governor in recorded history in June 2017 (15% approval among the state’s voters), a Quinnipiac University poll found. Christie at that point couldn’t catch a break. Days after leaving office, he even was denied entry to a special entrance at Newark Liberty International Airport that he once enjoyed as governor.

Now Christie is betting his blustery personality that twice won over voters in blue New Jersey will appeal to GOP primary voters. And, taking Christie at his word, he’ll deliver a direct confrontation with Trump in a way that never happened during the 17-candidate primary mashup in 2016. Back then, Trump rivals such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rubio effectively pulled their punches against Trump early on, before turning on each other and providing a clear path for the billionaire businessman and celebrity television show host to claim the GOP nomination.

Christie’s position as the leading 2024 anti-Trump Republican is a remarkable turn of events, given that his endorsement of Trump in 2016 gave the rookie candidate an imprimatur of GOP establishment legitimacy. Trump didn’t do much to return the favor, dropping Christie as director of his presidential transition team after the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the general election. Still, Christie continued to defend Trump in public.

But he renounced his support for Trump after supporters of the defeated president stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Now, he promises he’ll go after Trump directly.

“You’d better have somebody on that stage who can do to (Trump) what I did to Marco (Rubio) because that’s the only thing that’s going to defeat Donald Trump,” Christie said at a New Hampshire town hall event in March.

After Trump’s May 10 CNN town hall, Christie called the former president a “coward” and a “puppet of (Vladimir) Putin” for refusing to take a clear side in Russia’s war of aggression against neighboring Ukraine.

Christie’s chances of wresting the GOP nomination from Trump also rest on hopes that there’s an appetite among primary voters for some measure of bipartisanship. That has long been part of the former governor’s public persona, balanced with the confrontational sound bites that made him famous. In October 2012, Christie alienated many Republicans by warmly welcoming then-President Barack Obama to New Jersey after Hurricane Sandy.

Christie can also point to bipartisan accomplishments as New Jersey governor despite facing Democratic majorities in both legislative chambers. These included a reorganization of New Jersey’s higher education system, an expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and pension overhaul.

Christie flamed out in New Hampshire the last time, but there’s reason to think a more bipartisan image could resonate in 2024 in the Granite State, which is politically split. The state has a Republican governor, a nearly evenly divided legislature and a Democratic congressional delegation. And it doesn’t hurt that New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu told CNN on Monday that he won’t seek the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, so Christie won’t have to compete against a popular home-state contender who’s also a frequent Trump critic.

Despite the odds, Christie has one thing going for him — he’s the most distinctive non-Trump candidate in the field. And he is unafraid of going after Trump directly, which is necessary to have any hope of blocking the former president’s comeback bid.