By Matt Rooney
He’s back, Save Jerseyans. Sort of.
Fatty McThunderbiscuits is making noise and agitating for a restored role in New Jersey Republican politics. InsiderNJ ran an article threatening his return to the fundraising circuit, and Christie himself appeared on NYC radio to warn the state party he once led that its alliance with MAGA was largely responsible for soul-crushing 2025 losses.
Let’s put a pin in Chris’s analysis for a moment.
The practical problem for the roundest man to ever rule in Trenton is that he’s also one of the country’s most infamous Never Trumpers and, here at home, more toxic than President Trump on his worst day in the Garden State. That’s because the president has a large and loyal base in New Jersey notwithstanding the fact that he’s loathed by legions of TDS-afflicted Karens. Christie, on the other hand, isn’t loved or missed by anyone save for a small, extinction-threatened crew of Country Club Republicans in the state’s rapidly purpling LD21/LD25 region.
MAGA hates him. The Left doesn’t trust him. He’s a man without a country.
But let’s get back to Christie’s prescription for an NJGOP renewal: himself. The former Governor and his allies argue that Christie is the last Republican to win statewide in New Jersey and, accurately, the only Republican to win statewide this century (the last was Christine Todd Whitman in the early 1990s). So shouldn’t we listen to the last guy to win regarding… well, how to win?
No. And a brief history of Christie’s two statewide victories can help explain why. I was there and chronicled the entire thing as thoroughly as anyone active at the time it all went down:
- 2009
Chris Christie entered to the 2009 General Election cycle with a stiff wind at his back. As U.S. Attorney, Christie waged lawfare before it was cool. He targeted big name politicians – mostly Democrats – and earned a reputation as a corruption buster while never stepping foot in the courtroom. Whether Christie’s prosecutions – and decisions NOT to pursue certain potential defendants – were dictated by legal realities or political calculus remain a subject of debate among those of us who nerd out about such things.
Christie also derived quite a bit of help from the national environment (despite recently complaining that the GOP lost in 2025 because it permitted state races to be nationalized). The first official year of the Obama presidency saw the beginnings of the Tea Party revolt against Washington Democrat control and the Obamacare experiment. Moreover, the country was still very much attempting the shake off the impact of the “Great Recession,” a psychologically wounding experience for millions of Americans.
Coupled with the fact that the statewide registration gap for Republicans was approximately 150,000 smaller at the time? And Christie ultimately triumphed by roughly half that margin? Sure, give the Devil his due for being a talented communicator, but Chris Christie frankly SHOULD have beaten the charisma-challenged incumbent Jon Corzine. Anyone who says otherwise isn’t being honest or, charitably, forgets what the political environment looked like heading into the 2010 Midterm cycle.
- 2013
Pre-Bridgegate Christie was a popular figure four years later at both home and nationally. His image was more or less cultivated by the Media who ate up his fleece-adorned performance in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy’s assault on the Jersey Shore. His press conferences and sound bite-ready encounters with everyone from reporters to Snookie were also irresistible click bait.
But 2013 wasn’t won on a conservative record. Christie waged a principled war against bossism, the NJEA, and the causes of stubborn unaffordability in New Jersey, but the former federal prosecutor made a conscious decision to play it safe, win by as large a margin as possible, and then use said margin as a justification to take the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.
So actual issues rarely surfaced in that campaign. Christie-Guadagno 2013 relied upon storm imagery and platitudinal slogans to cruise to victory against the hapless State Senator Barbara Buono who found herself completely abandoned by the Democrat bosses. George Norcross III openly embraced Christie while Brian Stack of Union City held a pre-Election Day rally with the Republican incumbent. Deals were made. GOP legislative hopefuls in winnable districts were casualties, but on Election Day the state’s blue urban centers either laid down or threw their support to the Republican.
Little good that it did him. Ironically, Christie’s strong-arm tactics and obsession with cultivating Democrat institutional support directly resulted in the Bridgegate affair and, ultimately, the political collapse of what was once the most promising political career since Bill Clinton crawled out of an Arkansas brothel. The Media – as James Carville’s character in Primary Colors famously observed – often “giveth, then go f*ck yourself.”
2009: a perfect storm working against Democrats.
2013: a campaign not carried by a record or persuasion but backroom deals and a fickle media which ultimately blew up in the Republican’s face.
Which part of any of this would the governor’s few remaining defenders like today’s New Jersey GOP to replicate? The Bridgegate part? Can anyone point to a last policy legacy that left New Jersey more affordable? Everything was statutory or accomplished via executive order, so Democrats have wasted little time in taking it all back.
That’s not to say that Chris Christie’s 2009 run doesn’t offer up lessons worth internalizing.
The same could be said of any successful campaign. A little additional irony: Christie got embarrassed in 2016 not only because of Bridgegate, of course, but primarily because Trump 2016 was an improved version of Christie 2009. Authentic populist conservatism delivered directly to the bloodstream! Christie looked like the damaged, knock-off generic alternative of a genuine article.
There is no place for Chris Christie in today’s NJGOP because Christie himself has nothing to offer OTHER THAN, perhaps, his example as a cautionary tale of where ambition, malice, disloyalty, and malleable principles will ultimately take a promising career if unrestrained by the basic protections of a conscience.
Learn. Be warned. Listening is a different story.
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MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com’s founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of ‘The Matt Rooney Show’ on 1210 WPHT every Saturday evening from 7-9 PM EST.
