Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is considering a third campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, saying the results of November’s midterm elections could help determine whether he has a path in a Republican Party still dominated by President Donald Trump.
Christie, speaking at the Granite State Summit on Responsible Gaming, acknowledged he is considering another White House bid during an appearance in New Hampshire, according to WMUR Political Director Adam Sexton, but said he wants to see what happens in the midterms six weeks from now.
The former two-term governor, who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2016 and 2024, suggested that significant Republican losses in November could prompt the party to reconsider its direction.
“I came up here in ’23 and in ’24 as, like, the skunk at the garden party,” Christie said. “I came up here and said Donald Trump is not good for our party and not good for our country. And it’s going to hurt our country both here and around the world if we send him back to the White House.”
Christie said the midterms could indicate whether Republican voters are ready for a different approach.
“For our party’s sake, if we do a lot of losing six weeks from today, I wonder whether we’re going to say, ‘Okay, we need to change this approach and change this kind of wing of the party from being the dominant wing and having a different discussion within our party, which could lead to a different conversation with the country,’” Christie stated.
Asked whether he was considering another presidential run, Christie was candid.
“Anybody who comes up here and has ever run for president and not won and told you they’re not looking at it again is lying,” he said. “Let me just promise you they are lying.”
Christie said the belief that led him to run for president twice before has not disappeared.
“Once you go through the thought process of convincing yourself that you can be president, and then the next step that you should be president, that doesn’t leave your brain,” said Christie.
But Christie indicated that a third campaign would require something he concluded was missing from his last one: a credible path to the Republican nomination.
“If I’m going to go back home to my wife and say, ‘I know you may not believe this, but third time is the charm,’ like, I better have a real theory,” Christie said. “And what she has said to me is, ‘Chris, I want to see the path.’”
Christie ended his 2024 presidential campaign five days before the Iowa caucuses and 13 days before the New Hampshire primary, conceding that he could no longer see a route to the nomination.
“It’s clear to me tonight that there isn’t a path for me to win the nomination, which is why I’m suspending my campaign tonight for president of the United States,” Christie said at a town hall in Windham, New Hampshire.
His second presidential campaign was built largely around his opposition to Trump, a significant reversal from 2016, when Christie dropped out after finishing sixth in the New Hampshire primary with 7.4% of the vote and quickly endorsed Trump.
By 2024, Christie repeatedly said that endorsement had been a mistake and made confronting Trump the central rationale for his candidacy.
When he dropped out, Christie vowed that opposing Trump remained more important than his own political future.
“I want to promise you this: I am going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again, and that’s more important than my own personal ambition,” he said.
Trump went on to win the Republican nomination and the presidency.
Christie, 64, served as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey from 2002 to 2008 and as governor from 2010 to 2018.
If he wins in 2028, he would not be the first person to win a major party presidential nomination on his third try: Ronald Reagan ran in 1968 and 1976 before winning in 1980; Bob Dole sought the nomination in 1980 and 1988, then became the Republican nominee in 1996 but lost the general election; and Joe Biden was unsuccessful in 1988 and 2008 and was elected in 2020.