TRENTON, N.J. – Is Chris Christie done with electoral politics?
Maybe not. That’s what the ex-governor and 2016 primary candidate said in a new interview published by The Hill on Monday.
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“Sure, yeah. I mean, you know, Steve, I’m 57 years old,” said Christie. “I’ve had a great career as a U.S. attorney for seven years and eight years as the 55th governor of New Jersey and a job that I absolutely loved. But I was term limited after two terms, so I couldn’t seek reelection. I’m in the private sector now and enjoying that. But once you’ve been a governor, I think you always feel like you’ve got something to contribute.”
“And so, yeah, I would certainly, you know, look at the race in 2024 and I would not back off from that at all,” Christie continued. “I feel like there are a lot of atmospheric things that happened in the lead up to the ’16 race, especially the Bridgegate matter which now has been dismissed by the United States Supreme Court in a 9-0 vote that there was no crime committed there. And yet the media and others convicted people before they even had a trial, and it materially affected my ability to run for president. Now that we’ve had that cleared away and it’s no longer a controversy, you know, from my perspective, maybe 2024 is time to try to go after that job again.”
The Supreme Court’s decision was more complicated than that, of course, with Justice Kagan writing “not every corrupt act by state or local officials is a federal crime.”
Legal corruption (if you accept that’s what this is) – memorialized in a SCOTUS decision – isn’t exactly the most auspicious first impression for a presidential campaign.
Still, Christie emphasized his history “competent executive leadership” in a thinly-veiled attempt to contrast what he believes he offers to Donald Trump’s administration.
“I think I have a lot to contribute, and I think everybody sees that. You know, it’s very, very important to have competent executive leadership as you said in the beginning, at all levels of government and the kind of people that we could pick at the executive level of the federal government has a real impact on people’s day-to-day lives.”
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