Sununu tells Christie that it’s time to end candidacy

Just weeks before New Hampshire holds its Republican presidential primary, the state’s governor, Chris Sununu, said Sunday that Chris Christie’s presidential bid was “at an absolute dead end” and suggested that he drop out to pave the way for Sununu’s preferred candidate, Nikki Haley.

Sununu — who in December endorsed Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador — told CNN that “the only person that wants Chris Christie to stay in the race is Donald Trump.”

He framed the race as a “two-person contest” between Haley and Trump, whom she now trails in New Hampshire by an average of 20 percentage points.

“There’s no doubt that if Christie stays in the race, the risk is that he takes her margin of the win,” Sununu said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

In a campaign ad last week, Christie, former governor of New Jersey, explicitly addressed calls from some in the party for him to drop out to consolidate support around a non-Trump candidate. “Some people say I should drop out of this race,” he said. “Really? I’m the only one saying Donald Trump is a liar.”

In response to Sununu’s remarks, a spokesperson for Christie’s campaign doubled down on that message: “The events of the last few days fully solidifies the point that Christie has been making for six months: that the truth matters, and if you can’t answer the easy questions, you can’t fix the big problems.”

Haley has made headway in New Hampshire in recent weeks, climbing to a solid second place. (Christie is polling third in the state). But securing the nomination remains a daunting task: She continues to battle Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, for second place in Iowa, and remains behind Trump, her former boss, in national polls by around 50 points.