Former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are planning to announce that they will enter the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Pence and Christie will formally announce their campaigns next week, according to people with knowledge of their plans.
Maria Comella, who worked on Christie’s 2016 presidential bid and also was chief of staff for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, will run his upcoming campaign, a strategist with knowledge of Christie’s plans told The Epoch Times on May 31.
In addition, Mike DuHaime, CEO of MAD Global Strategy Group, will be an adviser to Christie, the strategist told The Epoch Times. DuHaime also previously worked for Christie and various other Republican politicians, including as the head of Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential run and in a regional role for President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign.
Pence and Christie join former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, conservative radio host Larry Elder, and a range of other candidates, many of whom have been touring Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and other critical early states for weeks.
Former President Donald Trump, who threw his hat into the ring in November 2022, is the frontrunner among Republican caucus and primary voters.
Ramaswamy and DeSantis have sought to reach relatively conservative voters and other Americans who are concerned about the size and power of the federal government.
Christie, by contrast, could seek to position himself as an aggressively anti-Trump centrist.
“We need to have someone on the [debate] stage who’s going to challenge the president [Trump] frontally, directly,” Christie said.
“If I decide to get into the race, I will not shrink from that challenge, and I won’t try to play cute with it, because playing cute with it, I think, will lead to a bad result.”
Christie’s possible role as the 2024 anti-Trump candidate gained the approval of Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin.
“Christie has the verbal skills and chutzpah that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lacks to attack Trump in ways that could do real damage,” she wrote on Twitter on June 1.
Conservative Political Action Conference Chairman Matt Schlapp sounded skeptical about the Christie bid on a recent NewsMax panel.
“In America, we have the freedom to do anything we want. And donors can write him checks, I suppose,” Schlapp said.
“I don’t understand his point of view now. He was all for Trump, and now he seems to be always against Trump, and so, what’s his lane?”
In his Hewitt interview, Christie disputed the notion that prosecutions related to Jan. 6, 2021, are political.
“The idea that somehow this is a political action is just, to me, wrong,” he told Hewitt.
In a May 31 post on Twitter, the born-again Christian condemned the Los Angeles Dodgers’ decision to welcome an anti-Catholic LGBT drag group to its “Pride Night” event.
“Having been raised in a Catholic family, the Dodgers’ decision to invite the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a hateful group that blatantly mocks Catholicism, to their event next month is deeply offensive,” he wrote.
“The MLB should not be apologizing to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, they should be apologizing to Catholics across America. America’s pastime should respect the faith of every American, no matter what,” he added.
Unsurprisingly, Pence’s decision to run has met with criticism from Trump backers.
“Mike Pence is the definition of milquetoast,” Ryan Fournier of Students for Trump wrote on Twitter on May 31.
