New Jersey Republicans Can’t Quit Chris Christie

Chris Christie has a lot to say — and New Jersey Republicans are listening.

They don’t have much of a choice.

President Donald Trump’s 2024 gains in New Jersey gave Republicans in the state hope they could pull off an upset in last year’s race for governor — but the opposite happened. They now have the slimmest legislative majority since Watergate and the Republican gubernatorial candidate they were so bullish about got shellacked by 14 points.

Now, some are looking to Christie, the only statewide Republican officeholder of the last 25 years, for answers. The two-term former governor is hitting the fundraising circuit, giving his theory for why New Jersey Republicans faced a near extinction-level event in the 2025 election and providing his roadmap to win back voters. His message is simple: Stop trying to win on national issues.

It may come as little surprise given Christie’s signature frankness and his writing a book in 2021 called “Republican Rescue: Saving the Party from Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden.”

But at the local level, Christie’s allies say he’s the head of the party as the last GOP governor in the state. Bill Palatucci, a longtime Christie friend and Republican National Committeeman, pushed back on any suggestion that Christie is reemerging or staging a comeback. Palatucci said the former governor is doing what he does best: saying what’s on his mind.

"The gubernatorial campaign is over,” Palatucci told POLITICO. “There's nobody on the stage. And so the former Republican governor is taking his rightful place front and center."

While Christie was once lauded as a model for Republicans in blue-leaning states, he left office with a historically low approval rating and no down-ballot coattails to show for his eight years in office. And he irked some Republicans in anticipation of his 2016 attempt for the White House, when the state party spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on his out-of-state travel for him to flame out against Trump early in the campaign.

Still, Republicans point to Christie’s fundraising chops and communication skills as tools that could help a party at its nadir.

“He’s got gifts that continue to be useful,” said Carlos Cruz, a Republican strategist who worked on a GOP super PAC during the 2025 governor’s race. “The guy knows how to throw a punch against Democrats."

Others admit they don’t have many other options for useful surrogates.

“He has his ups and downs, but you can’t deny he was the last Republican governor. You don’t have to like him,” said Hudson County GOP Chair Jose Arango, who represents one of the bluest parts of the state. “We’re not in a position that we can be choosing here.”

'The guy's a winner'

Christie became a national figure after ousting a Democratic incumbent in the midst of the Great Recession and winning New Jersey by more than 20 points in his reelection bid. But his star quickly fell with the Bridgegate scandal — where his allies shut down access to the world’s busiest bridge in an act of political retribution — and an unsuccessful presidential campaign that left him out of state for long stretches. These days he’s also a national political commentator on ABC News and an adviser to the American Gaming Association.

Closer to home, he’s been dishing out advice to the NJ GOP after the 2025 election.

Christie, who did not respond to an interview request, has been the top guest at fundraisers for state Senate Minority Leader Anthony Bucco and state Sen. Jon Bramnick. He was recently a key speaker at a fundraiser for the Morris County Republicans, which saw its historically ruby-red county vote Democratic in the 2025 governor’s race for the first time in generations.

Brian Bergen, a Republican assemblymember from Morris County who attended the fundraiser with Christie, said the former governor shared “his vision” for how Republicans can win in the state — specifically that Republicans won’t perform well focusing on national issues. Everyone in the room — ranging from the “very far right” to the “middle” of the road Republicans — was captivated, he said.

“I want to hear a lot more from him,” Bergen told POLITICO. “Because the guy's a winner who wins elections.”

It’s a stark contrast to 2025, when Christie was largely absent amid Republicans’ full court press for gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli. The former governor and Ciattarelli have never had a close relationship, and Christie hadn’t been a major supporter of Ciattarelli during his 2021 campaign, either. Last year, New Jersey Republicans counted on MAGA stars like Scott Presler, a “stop the steal” organizer who focused on voter registration, and influencer Jack Posobiec to boost turnout.

Christie has since made the rounds criticizing Ciattarelli’s loss last fall and blaming him for running too close to Trump. Democrats’ strong performance in New Jersey and across the country in 2025 was largely attributed to voter dissatisfaction with the economy and blaming it on Trump, whom Ciattarelli embraced throughout his campaign.

“I think that the Ciattarelli campaign was an ill-advised and ill-devised campaign from the beginning,” Christie said on a recent podcast. “He velcroed himself to Donald Trump in a blue state, and his whole theory was that he was going to turn out the voters who turned out for Trump in ’24, but even more. … The idea that somehow this was going to work for them, I think, was folly.”

Even Ciattarelli’s top primary foe, radio host Bill Spadea, who clashed with the former governor on his drive-time show, is open to Christie’s involvement.

“It’s no secret that Governor Christie and I have sparred over the years,” Spadea told POLITICO in a text message. “But facts are facts: he’s the only Republican to win statewide in three decades and he did it as a pro-life conservative. He made something that’s very hard look very easy. If Republicans want to learn how to win again, I’d spend a lot more time listening to Governor Christie than the guy who just got smoked for a third time.”

Ciattarelli did not respond to a request for comment.

Arguing to stand up to Trump

As Republicans brace for tough midterm elections later this year and Democrats bet on more voters rebuking the Trump administration’s policies at the ballot box, it’s an open question whether Christie’s brand — one of the few vocal anti-Trump Republicans — will be any help.

“He cannot win a Republican primary anywhere outside New Jersey and I doubt he could win one in the Garden State,” Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally who has been critical of Christie, told POLITICO.

Some congressional Republicans in New Jersey are taking a different approach.

Democrats have their eye on New Jersey’s 7th District, an affluent swing seat held by Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. — who Christie will host a fundraiser for Kean on April 8, according to an invitation reviewed by POLITICO. Christie has also fundraised with Randolph Township Councilmember Joe Hathway, a former aide who is running in the April special election to succeed Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill in NJ-11. Though the seat leans Democratic and the national environment does not favor the GOP, some Republicans are hopeful they have a shot because Hathaway will face progressive organizer Analilia Mejia, whose policies are more to the left than moderate Sherrill.

“During the Chris Christie administration, that was the last time that we had really any sort of fiscal control here in the state,” Hathaway said in an interview. “It's the same exact challenges that we faced eight and 12 years ago that Republicans were able to help solve. But we’re right back in the same mess, and the only thing that's going to solve them is that type of common sense, practical, fiscally responsible type of leadership.”

New Jersey GOP leaders are keeping an open mind to listening to Christie, who remains the only Republican to win statewide in New Jersey in the 21st century.

“The only way we can institute real change is if Republicans start winning elections statewide,” Michael Testa, a Republican state senator and chair of the Cumberland County Republicans, told POLITICO. “So I think we should listen to a voice that actually has been there in the arena and won.”

Christie also hasn’t strayed far from national affairs. At a recent summit hosted by Principles First, a group boosting anti-MAGA Republicans, Christie urged attendees to stand their ground, arguing that they have “withstood the worst part of the storm, and it's coming back our way.” He predicted that “if the midterm elections go the way I suspect they will, the Trump brand is gonna be really damaged.” And he said he’d be “completely open” to working with a Democratic presidential contender in 2028, depending on the Republicans' nominee.

That was enough to catch the attention of the White House: “ABC contributor Chris Christie gets slammed by his own network for being an irrelevant Never Trump loser and hobo with no political home,” White House communications director Steven Cheung wrote, linking to an Associated Press story of the event posted by ABC.

Despite the pushback from some of the most vocal Republicans in the party, Christie asserted his relevance.

“I think people, in general, even people who don't like me — and there are a few — they listen, they still listen,” he said at the Principles First event. “If you really don't value what someone says, why would you even spend the time to listen?”