While Gov. Chris Christie is engrossed in his reelection campaign, others are looking ahead to 2016 and wondering if he’ll make a run for president, especially considering his recent decisions that have made national headlines. Chief Correspondent at the Washington Post Dan Balz wrote the book Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America. He spoke with NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider about Christie’s actions and how they might play into a presidential run.
Balz said Christie appears to be thinking about his future as well as the present. “I think they’re interconnected at this point. He’s doing things in New Jersey to try to produce as big a number as he can roll up in the fall in his reelection bid. And he’s taking steps to make sure that he is relatively within the mainstream conservatism in the Republican Party should he decide to run for president. That’s a careful balancing act that he’s going through,” Balz said.
In his book, Balz wrote about a breakfast that Christie attended with several dozen power players who wanted him to seriously consider running for president in 2012. Although Christie said he had an open mind about running then, Balz said he doesn’t believe Christie ever envisioned himself as a presidential candidate then.
“I think he felt he owed it to that group to take a little more serious look at it. I think he, in his own mind, was not intending to run as he had always said,” Balz said. “But I think when he stood up in front of that group of Henry Kissinger and others implored him to run, that he felt that he had to take a more serious look at it and I think he did, but I don’t have the impression from my conversations with him and some of the other people around him that he ever got terribly close to changing his mind.”
Balz explained that Christie told him that when he said he wasn’t ready to run for president, he meant that no one is truly ready to be president. “He said what he meant was he wasn’t ready to go through the rigors of a presidential campaign. Now that may have been an after the fact description of what he meant. But I think a lot of people did take it initially that he didn’t think he was ready to be president. But he assured me that had he run and had he been elected president, he would’ve been as ready as he possibly could’ve been and as ready as most people are,” Balz said.
Part of Balz’s book also delves into an encounter Christie had before taking the stage for the keynote address at the Republican National Convention. “He was very unhappy when they told him they were gonna cut the video that was the introduction to his speech and he made some threats, including one that he was prepared to use some profane language from the stage of the National Convention. It obviously never got to that point,” Balz said. “There was some back and forth, a flurry in the quick minutes as he was getting ready to go on stage. One of the calls went to Russ Schriefer who was the convention manager for Gov. Romney. Schriefer said go ahead, run the video. And all went well at that point.”
This morning Christie told a crowd at a campaign stop in Belleville that, “Compromise is not a dirty word.” Balz described that idea as potentially sell-able to members of the contemporary Republican Party. “I think one of the things that people sometimes misunderstand about Republican presidential primaries is you do not have to win the majority of the votes of the most conservative members of the party of those who vote in the primaries. You’ve got to get a share of them. You’ve got to do better with those that say they are somewhat conservative,” Balz said. “And that’s a bigger share of the electorate than those who say they are very conservative or at least has been in most elections in the past.”
According to Balz, one of the questions in the 2016 presidential election will be the composition of the Republican primary electorate. “He can win the nomination if he doesn’t become the person who there’s a strong resistance to among the most conservative part of the party. If he can get some of those voters, he may be fine,” Balz said of Christie. “It’s a balancing act. And there’s some skepticism about it. Partly because of some of the positions he took. Certainly because of what happened during Hurricane Sandy. And I think that that’s part of the test that he’ll face.”
When asked the likelihood of Christie making a run for president in 2016, Balz said he seems to be leaning toward a run from president, but analysts will have to wait and see what happens after the November election.
“I think people would be surprised if he’s not a candidate,” Balz said. “But people do strange things in this process and I’ve seen some candidates who’ve spent a year and a half tramping around Iowa and New Hampshire who suddenly say, ‘You know what? I’m not going to do this after all.’ But he certainly looks like he’s getting ready to run for president.”