Chris Christie speaks on Tuesday in New Hampshire.Dennis Van Tine/Zuma
After a disappointing sixth-place finish in the New Hampshire Republican primary Tuesday night, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will suspend his campaign for president, multiple outlets are reporting. CNN reported Wednesday morning that Christie is “a realist” who realized that he probably wouldn’t qualify for the main stage in Saturday’s GOP debate, and “also realized that the fundraising was going to dry up.”
After the results came in Tuesday night, Christie told a crowd of supporters that his message was “stood for by a lot of folks in New Hampshire, just not enough. Not enough tonight. And that’s okay.” Christie said that after speaking with his wife, they’d decided to go back home to New Jersey on Wednesday to “take a deep breath, see what the final results are…and make a decision about how we move from here in this race.”
Christie had a strong showing in the Republican debate in New Hampshire on Saturday, and he may have dealt a mortal blow to Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign by harping on the freshman senator’s lack of executive experience and his reliance on a “memorized 25-second speech,” which Rubio then made the mistake of repeating almost verbatim. Rubio, who had momentum after a strong third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, fell to fifth in New Hampshire.
But if Christie helped bring Rubio down, he may not have done much to lift himself up as his campaign draws its final breaths.
