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Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has ended his campaign for president, in a move that was expected to consolidate support for Nikki Haley and the remaining Republicans challenging Donald Trump for the party’s nomination for the White House.
“It’s clear to me that there isn’t a path for me to win the nomination,” Christie said at a town hall event on Wednesday in Windham, New Hampshire. “I know it’s the right thing to do,” he added, vowing that he was “going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again”.
Christie’s withdrawal comes just days ahead of the Iowa caucuses, the official start of the presidential primary on January 15.
While his decision should send some of his supporters to Haley, Christie’s announcement was overshadowed by a hot mic incident, when he was heard saying in a campaign livestream before taking the stage in New Hampshire that she would get “smoked” in the coming primaries and that Ron DeSantis was “petrified”.
Trump later referenced the remarks in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform, calling Christie’s comments about Haley “a very truthful statement”. DeSantis on the X social media site weighed in too: “I agree with Christie that Nikki Haley is ‘going to get smoked’,” he wrote.
Bobbie Kilberg, a Christie donor, told the Financial Times that the former governor did not intend to support another Republican candidate.
Christie tore into his opponents at the town hall on Wednesday, saying that if Trump became the party’s nominee, it was because the other Republican candidates had raised their hand on a debate stage last summer to say they would vote for Trump even if he were convicted of a crime.
“Anybody unwilling to say Trump is unfit to be president is unfit themselves to be president,” Christie said.
A tough-talking and talented debater, Christie had positioned himself as the candidate willing to criticise Trump directly. The tagline for his campaign was “because the truth matters”.
“I’m saddened by it,” Kilberg said of his withdrawal. “I really believe the message he was carrying was the right message, and that people needed to hear it, and they needed to listen. And they obviously didn’t. Not enough listened.”
Despite Christie’s hot-mic comments about Haley, the most recent FT-Michigan Ross poll showed that she was the second choice of a plurality of Christie supporters. The former South Carolina governor on Wednesday night appeared to be seeking his endorsement, calling him “a friend for many years” who waged “a hard-fought campaign”.
Christie had focused his campaigning efforts almost exclusively on independent-minded voters in New Hampshire, the New England state that will hold its primary on January 23. A significant share of primary voters in the state are expected to be undeclared, or unaffiliated with either big political party.
But while he outlasted several other competitors, including former vice-president Mike Pence and South Carolina senator Tim Scott, his polling numbers languished in single digits, undermining his claim to be the only alternative to Trump.
According to the latest FiveThirtyEight polling average in New Hampshire, Trump leads with the support of roughly 42 per cent of Republican voters, followed by Haley on just under 30 per cent. Christie trailed in third, on close to 12 per cent.
Christie had faced growing calls to step aside from anti-Trump Republicans who argued that if his voters threw their weight behind Haley, she would consolidate enough support to overtake Trump.
Chris Sununu, New Hampshire’s Republican governor who has endorsed Haley, had publicly floated the idea of Christie suspending his campaign in recent days. But as recently as Tuesday, Christie rejected the idea, telling a local New Hampshire radio station that Sununu was a “liar”.
In the autumn, Christie’s campaign struggled to raise money after Haley began to win over his supporters among well-educated, non-Trump Republicans, including influential Wall Street donors. She also earned the support of the libertarian Koch network.
By the end of September, Christie’s campaign had on hand only $3.9mn, compared with more than $11mn for Haley, over $12mn for DeSantis and more than $37mn for Trump.
Christie’s withdrawal from the race is the latest chapter in a tumultuous career that has been marked in recent years by a thorny relationship with Trump.
He was among the first national Republicans to endorse Trump after suspending his first presidential campaign in 2016. Christie was subsequently appointed to head Trump’s transition team, but was fired from the position before inauguration day amid a conflict with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law.
He remained close to Trump, even preparing him for the 2020 presidential debates. But the two men fell out over Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of that year’s election, which he lost to Joe Biden.