Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said it was “pretty stupid” for President Biden not to reach out and ask Christie to support his 2024 reelection campaign after Christie suspended his bid for the White House earlier this year.
In a 90-minute conversation hosted at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics on Tuesday night, Christie told The Washington Post’s Leigh Ann Caldwell that Biden has not contacted him since he dropped out of the race for president.
“It’s pretty stupid for him not to,” Christie said, when asked whether Biden should contact him and ask for his support.
With Biden and former President Trump already the presumptive nominees of their respective parties, the 2024 election is all but certain to be a rematch of 2020.
Christie — an ally turned critic of Trump’s — has made clear he would not vote for the former president “under any circumstances” and reiterated that sentiment Tuesday. But he also said he won’t vote for Biden, pointing to Biden’s age as a key reason.
Still, Christie said Biden should still ask him, and he recalled a conversation with former President George W. Bush.
Bush gave Christie the advice years ago, when he ran for governor of New Jersey, to explicitly ask for people’s vote, saying, “People like to be asked,” Christie recounted Tuesday.
“If this were George W. Bush, man, my phone would have rung five minutes after I got out of the race,” Christie said.
“We need to be working together. And it would be a smart thing for Biden to do but so far, no,” Christie later added. “And I know he’s got my number because, right after he was elected, I said some positive things on ABC, and I got in the car to head back to New Jersey, and he called and said, ‘I listened to what you said. Thank you so much. Important for Republicans to be saying that.’”
“So he’s got that number. I haven’t changed it,” Christie added.
Christie said he suspected partisanship had a role to play in not contacting him and wondered whether Biden’s staff could be concerned about losing the far-left flank of the party.
A spokesperson for the Biden campaign pushed back on that suggestion, pointing to the campaign’s ad targeting non-Trump Republican voters and supporters of former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who was the final GOP challenger left standing against Trump in the race this year for the GOP nomination.
As soon as Haley dropped out of the GOP primary, the Biden campaign activated its strategy to try to get her supporters into Biden’s camp.
“Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign,” Biden said in a statement last month.