Election Day will ‘end the Trump era,’ says former N.J. Gov. Chris Christie, who may be mulling a White House run
“The only person who doesn’t know that is President Trump,” the former Republican governor said, predicting a Democratic wave this election.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie predicted the Nov. 3 election will mark “the official end of the Donald Trump era” when Democrats are expected to win control of the U.S. House, but warned the final two years of his presidency will not result in the stability the public craves.
The country needs leadership to “give people a view beyond the next crisis point” and “feel better about who we are as Americans and what we can do for each other and the world,” the former two-term Republican governor told 200 business leaders gathered Friday at a Southern New Jersey Development Council conference in Mount Laurel.
Trump cannot provide that kind of leadership, Christie said.
“We have a president now who markets every day in anger, in hate, in vengeance and self-dealing,” he said.
Polls universally showing Democrats are poised to win control of the House — with pickups in Pennsylvania and New Jersey likely — and the Senate looks in play as the party has gone on offense in traditionally GOP states.
“We are ending an era, everybody ... I suspect it will officially be over Nov. 3. The only person who doesn’t know that is President Trump,” Christie said.
Christie was one of the first elected officials to endorse Trump after ending his own 2016 campaign, but he broke with the president after Trump claimed the 2020 election was stolen from him. When Christie briefly ran for president again in 2024, he released an ad admitting backing Trump was a mistake.
“What we are in for are the most tumultuous two years,” as Trump will try “with every bit of his strength to hold on to attention and power,” Christie added.
His remarks at times sounded like a stump speech for his own potential candidacy in 2028, which he said last month he would consider after the election.
Christie said he would remain a loud voice for leadership and building back the country’s economy and standing in the world.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
He also praised Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill and offered advice to corporate leaders on how to weather more economic and political upheaval.
Christie said he expected that Democrats will open numerous investigations into the Trump administration’s conduct when the new Congress convenes in January. He also said he hoped they would not put the country through another impeachment process, which would only result in giving Trump more attention.
“Attention to him is like oxygen to everyone else in this room,” he said.
‘Rooting for Sherrill’
Christie described the fruitful partnerships he forged with Democrats, including his collaboration with former state Senate President Steve Sweeney (D., Gloucester) in 2011 to force workers to pay more for their pensions and benefits to avert a collapse. But it was immensely unpopular with public union workers.
With Camden Mayor Dana Redd, they opened charter and Renaissance schools that outperformed the public schools.
He said governors and elected officials in general need more courage and collaboration to take on the tough issues. Sherrill showed promise in this regard for keeping spending in check with her $60.7 state budget, Christie said.
He criticized her immediate predecessor, former Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, for allowing the budget to balloon from $34 billion to $60 billion. (Murphy has criticized Christie for spending down the surplus to about $600 million.)
“If you want to be governor of this state, and this is a cautionary tale to our current governor, who, by the way, I like and I am rooting for, you can’t be governor part-time,” Christie said. “What I hope we now do is encourage the current governor to have some courage.”
Earlier in the day, South Jersey elected leaders of both parties discussed how to strengthen the region’s economy and rebuild after Trump.
U.S. Rep. Herb Conaway, a Burlington County Democrat, said House Democrats are committed to making “a case against the rampant corruption of the Trump administration” and to restoring cuts to the Medicaid slated to take effect next year under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which will threaten the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of low-income New Jerseyans.
“The American people expect it and we are going to give it to them,” he said.
