A crash course on Chris Christie ahead of his presidential run (in case you forgot)

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is set to announce his entrance into the 2024 presidential GOP primary on Tuesday. The last time he was prominently in the public eye was seven years ago, when he ended his 2016 campaign after a poor finish in the New Hampshire primary.

Christie, 60, has had a long and colorful political career as a two-term governor of New Jersey and failed presidential hopeful.

Here’s a refresher on his time in office, his last run, and why this one looks to be a bit different.

Christie first ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. When he entered the race, there were 14 other Republican contenders. He pitched himself as a straight-talking, experienced governor and former federal prosecutor who’d worked on both sides of the aisle.

He was the first New Jersey politician to run for president since Democrat Bill Bradley in 2000. He was nearly drafted to run in 2012 by party elders who took note of his first-term gubernatorial battles with unions and unabashed speaking style, seeing him as a potential contender against then-President Barack Obama. But Christie ran in 2016 instead.

He poured most of his campaign resources into New Hampshire and tried to establish himself as the establishment candidate over U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. He made headlines when he tripped up Rubio at the GOP debates, but in the New Hampshire primary Christie finished a disappointing sixth out of the eight Republican candidates remaining in the race.

Last time around, Christie’s tell-it-like-it-is style was somewhat drowned out by former President Donald Trump. Christie, longtime friends with Trump, endorsed him after suspending his own campaign and advised his 2020 campaign before falling out with him when Trump denied the results of the 2020 presidential election.

Since then, Christie has been a frequent critic — and a quote machine — blasting Trump on cable news shows and vowing never to support him again. Christie’s campaign has indicated he will go after Trump and the media attention that follows.

Christie’s known for being a good messenger. His early town halls as governor showcased his off-the-cuff nature, and he did well on the debate stage in 2016. He’s also very quotable.

But Christie has been largely out of the spotlight for seven years, lost badly in his first attempt, and faces both Trump and a growing field of challengers who want to be the alternative to Trump.

Christie allies launched the Tell It Like It Is PAC to support his campaign last month. It’s led by longtime Christie ally and Republican National Committee member Bill Palatucci, former U.S. Sen. Jeff Chiesa, and former U.S. Rep. Susan Brooks.

“Governor Christie has proven he’s unafraid to tell it like it is and is willing to confront the hard truths that currently threaten the future of the Republican Party,” said Brian Jones, the PAC’s executive director. “Now more than ever, we need leaders that have the courage to say not what we want to hear, but what we need to hear.”

In the past, Christie’s been a formidable fundraiser for Republicans. Now he’ll need resources to advance his early bid.

“There’s nobody who doesn’t want him to come to an event — he’s still the leader of the Republican Party in New Jersey,” said New Jersey state Sen. Jon Bramnick, who is backing him.

Bobbie Kilberg, a prominent GOP fundraiser who supported Christie’s last presidential bid, said she’s with him again and predicted “strong donor support.”

“Somebody has to directly take on Trump and make it clear that he’s a danger to the future of democracy and that we cannot have him as our nominee,” Kilberg said. “Chris is running to do that directly and forcibly. Only time can tell whether he can succeed, but it’s exceedingly important to put yourself out there.”

As a Republican governor in a Democratic-leaning New Jersey, Christie had no choice but to work with Democrats, and he successfully did so on many occasions, earning him recognition for forging compromise amid sometimes brutal disagreements.

He really catapulted to national attention, though, when he became the face of the recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy. The storm knocked out power to two-thirds of the state and damaged or destroyed some 365,000 homes in New Jersey. Photos of him hugging devastated homeowners made national news. He pushed back on GOP critics who slammed his friendly relationship with Obama during the recovery from the storm and slammed former House Speaker John Boehner for holding up Sandy relief.

(Rubio’s team would later use images of Christie affably greeting Obama after Sandy in a 2016 ad to portray him as too cozy with Democrats).

The Bridgegate scandal further tarnished his reputation and he left office with some of the lowest approval ratings for an outgoing governor in recent New Jersey history.

Within months of Christie’s reelection as governor, New Jersey Democrats made public emails obtained via subpoena that linked Christie’s office to bizarre lane closures at the George Washington bridge in September 2013.

Federal prosecutors said three Christie allies closed the lanes to punish a local Democratic mayor for refusing to endorse the governor’s reelection. One pleaded guilty and two others, Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly, were convicted and sentenced to 18 and 13 months respectively for their role in the scandal.

In 2020, the Supreme Court reversed the convictions of Baroni and Kelly.

While Christie wasn’t accused of wrongdoing, the scandal was a major blow to his career, as it raised questions about his judgement and the extent of his brash style. He forged ahead with his presidential ambitions anyway, announcing his candidacy about two months after a federal grand jury indicted Baroni and Kelly.

Shortly after they were convicted in 2016, Christie was dropped as the head of Trump’s White House transition team.

When Christie’s presidential bid failed, he had about a year left as governor of New Jersey. His approval among residents had fallen to about 26%, in part due to him campaigning for so many months out of state.

Then Christie provoked widespread ridicule when a Star-Ledger photographer captured him and his family relaxing on a Jersey Shore beach during a government shutdown. All state beaches had been closed during the July Fourth holiday weekend because of a state government shutdown, but Christie was captured sunning on an empty part of Island State Park outside of the governor’s summer residence.

He defended the move at the time. “That’s just the way it goes,” Christie said. “Run for governor, and you can have a residence.”

In his final address after eight years as governor, Christie said he ran “to “be different” and “talk bluntly.”

“We needed to care less about being loved and more about being respected,” Christie said then.

After leaving the New Jersey governor’s mansion in January 2018, he went back into law and became a cable news commentator for ABC. His name popped up in a strange federal investigation in 2018 into whether a fugitive financier from Malaysia used laundered money to pay a legal team that included Christie.

He wrote a memoir in 2019, Let Me Finish, described by a book critic for NPR as “a big, loud book by a man with a full head of steam, stories to tell and scores to settle.”

An avid baseball fan, Christie joined the board of directors of the New York Mets front office in March 2021.