Criticism of Trump on the menu at N.H. campaign stop
GOP candidates serve up reasons for voters to ditch 2024 front-runner
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Most of the seats were empty inside the Red Arrow Diner when former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and his wife, Mary Pat, arrived for a late-morning breakfast Thursday.
New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary is still seven months away, but Christie was already the eighth Republican presidential hopeful to make the obligatory pit stop here to shake hands and chat up voters as he tries to break out of an ever-larger pack of candidates seeking the party’s nomination.
Yet Christie and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson — who became the ninth GOP candidate to visit the diner when he stopped by about an hour later — differ from the others in one key respect: the directness with which they criticize former president Donald Trump, the Republican contest’s overwhelming front-runner.
“I think people are hearing what I’m saying, and they’re relieved that someone is finally willing to say it,” Christie said, as reporters and photographers swarmed him inside the diner.
“I am going to be the alternative to Donald Trump,” he added.
His message seemed to hit home with Pam Poggi of Jacksonville, Fla., who said she came to the diner to have breakfast with her father, Jim Poggi, of Pembroke, N.H., not knowing that her “favorite candidate” would be there.
“What I love about you is you speak your mind and say what all the other candidates are not willing to do,” Pam Poggi told Christie.
Some political insiders are skeptical that Christie or others can make much headway with Republican voters this way.
Greg Moore, director of the New Hampshire conservative and libertarian
political advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, said Christie is clearly aiming to consolidate support from the state’s “Never Trump” voters.
“While there’s an audience for that, it’s also putting a ceiling on how much he can grow,” he said.
Several factors will influence the outcome of the GOP primary in New Hampshire, but it’s tough to see a scenario where Christie could emerge with any more than 20 percent of the vote, Moore said. That could make it extremely difficult for Christie to hang on as the GOP field narrows around the eventual nominee.
Christie is polling in third place among likely GOP primary voters in New Hampshire. He’s four to five points behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and well ahead of Hutchinson.
“I’ve been in this race for two weeks, and the attention I’m getting because of the way I’m saying things is different than Asa, who’s been in the race for three months and hasn’t gotten that kind of attention from the voters or from the media,” Christie said.
Another vocal Trump critic, former US representative Will Hurd of Texas, announced his presidential candidacy Thursday, calling the former president “a lawless, selfish, failed politician.”
Christie, who learned of Hurd’s campaign announcement while at the Red Arrow, said Hurd and Hutchinson are less compelling messengers than he is.
“I wish Will and Asa luck — not too much luck, but some — and we’ll see how it turns out,” he said. “But I think my message is different, too, because I’ve known Donald Trump for 22 years. I chaired his transition. I played Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden in debate prep for him.
“I’m not a ‘Never Trumper,’ but I just look at what he did to this party and to our country, and I said to myself on election night 2020, when he said the election was stolen, when I knew he had no evidence to prove that it was, that that was enough,” Christie said. “I could no longer be supportive of somebody who would so denigrate the presidency as to lie to the American people to preserve his own ego.”
But the very credentials that Christie cites to prove he’s no “Never Trumper” are among the things his opponents hold against him — as Hutchinson demonstrated during his diner visit Thursday.
“I wasn’t a key part of the Trump team, as Chris Christie was. I mean, he was right in the middle of everything,” Hutchinson said.
Alex Rodriguez, a marketing professional from Massachusetts, said he had considered himself a lifelong Republican before Trump won the GOP nomination in 2016, but he hasn’t voted for a Republican since then. He said he came to the Red Arrow Diner to ask Hutchinson about Trump, since so many GOP presidential hopefuls seem to be mincing their words.
“I want someone to make the argument in a public setting to shame the other candidates,” he said.
Rodriguez said he asked Christie the same question during a campaign event the night before. After hearing both their answers, he said Christie is the more effective communicator.
Hutchinson said his message on Trump has been “crystal clear from the beginning.”
“Whenever I’ve agreed with Donald Trump and what he’s tried to do, I’ve said so. I’ve also spoken out when I’ve disagreed with him or whenever he has gone too far in his conduct as president. … I am second to none in terms of the clarity of my message in reference to Donald Trump.”
Hutchinson noted, in particular, how quickly and clearly he called for the public to recognize the seriousness of Trump’s legal troubles.
Trump’s federal indictment over his handling of classified documents hasn’t deterred most Republican-aligned voters in New Hampshire. A poll from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center found that nearly half of them said they are more likely to vote for Trump as a result of the indictment.
“Trump has actually been fundraising off the indictment, so he feels that this indictment will strengthen his hand against other Republicans in the primary and even in the general election,” said UNH Survey Center director Andrew Smith.
Trump name-dropped Christie, Hutchinson, and New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu in a video Thursday on his social media platform, calling them “bad people” and suggesting that they are “very destructive” for criticizing him.
Christie is leading the threeway contest for the title of Trump’s top Republican critic among 2024 presidential candidates. But he’s still a long way from inspiring enough support from New Hampshire voters to carry the state.
“I was a bigger fan of him earlier in his career, when he was governor of New Jersey,” said Tim Slyne, a registered Republican from Londonderry, as he left the Red Arrow Diner to head to work. “He kind of, I don’t know, drifted away from what he used to do. He used to be very fiscally conservative.”
Slyne said he’d like to hear Christie talk more about curbing spending, reducing the national debt, and “fixing” the US Department of Justice.
“There seems to be bias, pretty flagrant bias,” he said. “Some people get charged heavily and other people get off. I just want it to be evenhanded.”