Chris Christie Weighs a Third Presidential Run in 2028

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said Tuesday that he is weighing a third campaign for the White House in 2028, telling an audience in New Hampshire that the outcome of November's midterm elections will decide whether a Republican who has spent years arguing against President Donald Trump's hold on the party has an opening left.

Christie, 64, made the remarks during a responsible-gaming event in the Granite State, where he also called on state attorneys general to rein in prediction markets that he described as unregulated sports betting aimed at young people. Both messages carried the same theme: a two-time presidential candidate is testing whether his party is ready to change direction.

Christie Says He Needs a Path Before He Runs Again

Christie has never hidden how he views the psychology of a losing candidate. Asked directly whether he is considering another campaign, he did not dodge.

"Anybody who comes up here and has ever run for president and not won and told you they're not looking at it again is lying," he said. "Let me just promise you they are lying."

He was equally blunt about the condition attached to a third bid. His wife, Mary Pat, has asked to see a credible route to the Republican nomination before he signs up for another race.

"If I'm going to go back home to my wife and say, 'I know you may not believe this, but third time is the charm,' like, I better have a real theory," Christie said. "And what she has said to me is, 'Chris, I want to see the path.'"

That path has been the central problem of his political life. Christie finished sixth in the 2016 New Hampshire primary with 7.4 percent of the vote and dropped out days later, then endorsed Trump. By his second run, in 2024, he had reversed himself and made opposition to Trump the core of his candidacy. He quit that race five days before the Iowa caucuses.

"It's clear to me tonight that there isn't a path for me to win the nomination, which is why I'm suspending my campaign tonight for president of the United States," he said at a town hall in Windham, New Hampshire, at the time.

A Party Remade by Trump Leaves Little Room for the Old Argument

Christie's case for 2028 rests on a bet about voter behavior. He told the New Hampshire crowd that a rough midterm cycle could force Republicans to rethink which faction leads the party.

"For our party's sake, if we do a lot of losing six weeks from today, I wonder whether we're going to say, 'Okay, we need to change this approach and change this kind of wing of the party from being the dominant wing and having a different discussion within our party, which could lead to a different conversation with the country,'" he said.

The obstacle is that the wing Christie has spent a decade criticizing is the one that keeps winning. Trump's coalition has held through two national cycles, reshaping the party's trade, energy, and immigration priorities along the way, and Republican primary voters have rejected the anti-Trump pitch in back-to-back nomination fights. Christie acknowledged as much by tying his decision to election results rather than to any shift in his own message.

He also framed his earlier warnings in personal terms, recalling his first trip to New Hampshire as a candidate in the 2024 cycle. "I came up here in '23 and in '24 as, like, the skunk at the garden party," he said. "I came up here and said Donald Trump is not good for our party and not good for our country."

His thinking has not changed, and that is precisely what makes a third run complicated. Christie spent four years as U.S. attorney for New Jersey and eight as governor, and he has remained a fixture on the GOP's dissenting flank rather than its governing one. On the betting boards, meanwhile, the odds on the emerging 2028 field already tell a story of their own, with the next generation of the party priced well ahead of its critics.

Republican voters will get their say on the party's direction long before any 2028 filing deadline. The midterm elections are six weeks away and will be read as a verdict on the current White House and on Congress, not on Christie. If Republicans hold their ground, his theory loses its main piece of evidence.

Prediction Markets Draw Christie's Fire

Christie's other message on Tuesday was aimed at an industry he helped legitimize. As governor, he signed the law that brought legal sports betting to New Jersey, and he now argues that prediction market platforms have gone far beyond what anyone imagined.

He urged state attorneys general to treat them as what he says they are: unregulated sports books. Christie described an unregulated prediction market preying on the nation's youth as the most significant cause behind an explosion of addicted gambling, and he argued that the companies are effectively operating as unregulated sports betting businesses.

The complaint is not Christie's alone. Federal regulators have faced mounting pressure over event contracts tied to everything from elections to natural disasters, and senators have pressed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for answers on how it plans to police contracts built on volatile, real-world outcomes.

For a politician shopping a new theory of the case, the two issues fit together neatly. Both are arguments about institutions that operate without clear limits, and both let Christie position himself as the candidate willing to say so out loud.

What to Watch After the Votes Are Counted

History offers Christie a thin reed of encouragement. Ronald Reagan lost nomination fights in 1968 and 1976 before winning in 1980, Bob Dole finally claimed the nomination on his third try in 1996, and Joe Biden lost two campaigns before winning the presidency in 2020. None of them faced a party as thoroughly defined by a single predecessor as today's Republican Party is by Trump.

Christie's own standard is a real theory, not sentiment. A third campaign would require him to argue that the midterms exposed something durable about where Republican voters are heading, and that a message they have rejected twice is suddenly viable.

The timing is the tell. Christie said he wants to see November's results before deciding, which means any announcement would land in a winter and spring shaped by those returns. If the GOP's majorities survive, expect the former governor to stay on television rather than on the ballot. If they do not, expect him to test the theory he has been nursing for a decade.