WEARE, New Hampshire — As New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie paces in front of the numerous town halls his presidential campaign holds across New Hampshire, he looks prospective voters straight in the eye and makes his point clear: For the country — but also for — the stakes in this first-in-the-nation primary state couldn’t be higher.
“It’s game time,” he declares for his audiences in dramatic fashion. “The TV show is over. Entertainment time is over. It’s now time to decide who is the person to sit behind that desk.”
“You’re it,” he states. “America is counting on you. See, you and Iowa. You all get to take this field from 14 probably down to 4 or 5, and it’s happening in 7 weeks.”
Christie is embarking on a three and a half day bus tour through New Hampshire this weekend, returning once again to the state where he’s devoted considerable time and banked his presidential hopes.
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Less than two months before this state’s critical first-in-the-nation primary, the Republican candidate still has serious ground to gain if he wants to claim victory, and he’s looking to capitalize on a string of recent local support in a way that some of his predecessors in past primaries could not.
Over Thanksgiving weekend, Christie received a high-profile endorsement from the New Hampshire Union-Leader, the state’s largest newspaper with an influential editorial board.
Within the span of a few days, he announced the support of well-known New Hampshire Republican activists Dan and Renee Plummer, former New Hampshire Speaker of the House Donna Sytek, former New Hampshire Congressman Bill Zeliff, and more. A week later, Christie nabbed the support of State Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, a key local figure multiple other candidates were courting.
Sytek told NBC News she was also considering Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, and Carly Fiorina, but ultimately picked Christie for his focus on addiction, reforming social security, the national debt. “I like Christie,” she said. “He’s right on the issues I care about and has a wonderful way of being plain spoken and not simplistic.”
“Everybody was competing for these endorsements and we are the ones who got them,” Christie told NBC News on the last day of November as he spoke to reporters while announcing the support of local law enforcement leaders. “These are all important because they are a validation to the people of New Hampshire from the folks that they respect and know, that these folks believe that I’m the best person to be the Republican nominee for president of the United States. But in the end, I gotta close the sale. It’s my job.”
The Numbers Game
Though circulation of the Union-Leader has dropped in recent years along with newspaper circulation nation-wide, the endorsement naturally came with an uptick in positive national media coverage, with some declaring a “comeback” moment for Christie. “Momentum. He has it,” Bradley declared while introducing him at a recent town hall in Wolfeboro, predicting that the race for the Republican presidential nomination will ultimately come down to Christie and Donald Trump.
The numbers do indicate a shift, but there’s still substantial room to improve. The most recent Real Clear Politics Average of polls has Christie in 3rd place in New Hampshire at 10.7 points, behind Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, but essentially doubling his position from a month ago. Perhaps more importantly for Christie, his favorability ratings have improved – he’s at 64 percent favorable, 30 percent unfavorable in the most recent Boston Herald/Franklin Pierce poll, up from 49 percent favorable, 41 percent unfavorable in August.
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Historically, candidates have gotten a bump after receiving the Union-Leader endorsement but it hasn’t always proven enough for candidates to win the state. The paper backed Newt Gingrich in 2012 and he went on to finish in fourth place, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Jon Huntsman. The Union-Leader news added some life to John McCain’s 2008 campaign, but didn’t bode as well for candidates like Steve Forbes and Pete du Pont when they got the nod in earlier elections.
Christie’s intense time focus on New Hampshire surpasses almost all of the other 2016 Republican candidates, except Sen. Lindsey Graham. He has logged more than 50 days in the state this year with 38 town halls under his belt.
However, he has one of the smallest full-time teams here, with currently only four paid staffers, which is minimal compared to some of his more similar rivals. Marco Rubio currently has a team of seven, John Kasich with a team of 11, and Jeb Bush now employs 20. Christie’s campaign points instead to a base of volunteers taking on many campaign duties.
After Paris and San Bernardino, invoking 9/11
At restaurants, bars, and community centers across the state for the last several months, Christie has been spending more than two hours at a time using his famous charisma to both crack jokes with the audience, and, more recently, speak solemnly about the national security risks he sees. Since the attacks in Paris, he sharpened his focus squarely on terrorism and intently recalls the hour-by-hour panic he felt on September 11, 2001.









