Mike Pence, Chris Christie Set to Enter 2024 Presidential Race

Non-Trump options continue to grow in Republican field

Former Vice President Mike Pence meets with guests at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition in Clive, Iowa, on April 22, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

Former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are planning to announce that they will enter the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Pence and Christie will formally announce their campaigns next week, according to people with knowledge of their plans.

Maria Comella, who worked on Christie’s 2016 presidential bid and also was chief of staff for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, will run his upcoming campaign, a strategist with knowledge of Christie’s plans told The Epoch Times on May 31.

In addition, Mike DuHaime, CEO of MAD Global Strategy Group, will be an adviser to Christie, the strategist told The Epoch Times. DuHaime also previously worked for Christie and various other Republican politicians, including as the head of Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential run and in a regional role for President George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign.

President Donald Trump (L) speaks with Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) after he delivered remarks on combating drug demand and the opioid crisis in the East Room of the White House on Oct. 26, 2017. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

The two men are part of a rush of new entrants to the race, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). Meanwhile, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu told CNN’s Jake Tapper he'll soon decide whether to enter the race, while Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin also may be considering a presidential run.

Pence and Christie join former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, conservative radio host Larry Elder, and a range of other candidates, many of whom have been touring Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and other critical early states for weeks.

Former President Donald Trump, who threw his hat into the ring in November 2022, is the frontrunner among Republican caucus and primary voters.

An Emerson College poll released May 25 showed the former commander-in-chief leading DeSantis by 42 points in Iowa among the state’s Republican caucus electorate. Pence, Haley, Scott, and Ramaswamy came in third, fourth, fifth, and sixth, respectively.

More candidates means more competition for the anti-Trump vote. That ultimately benefits the former president.

Ramaswamy and DeSantis have sought to reach relatively conservative voters and other Americans who are concerned about the size and power of the federal government.

Anti-woke Ramaswamy in April pledged to “shut down [and] replace” both the IRS and the FBI. Just days ago, DeSantis said he too would back a move to defund the tax agency.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to a crowd at the North Charleston Coliseum in North Charleston, S.C., on April 19, 2023. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

Christie, by contrast, could seek to position himself as an aggressively anti-Trump centrist.

America needs “a president who will be very deliberate and smart about what comes out of their mouth,” the former Garden State governor said in an early May appearance on the “Hugh Hewitt Show.”

“We need to have someone on the [debate] stage who’s going to challenge the president [Trump] frontally, directly,” Christie said.

“If I decide to get into the race, I will not shrink from that challenge, and I won’t try to play cute with it, because playing cute with it, I think, will lead to a bad result.”

Christie’s possible role as the 2024 anti-Trump candidate gained the approval of Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin.

“Christie has the verbal skills and chutzpah that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lacks to attack Trump in ways that could do real damage,” she wrote on Twitter on June 1.

Conservative Political Action Conference Chairman Matt Schlapp sounded skeptical about the Christie bid on a recent NewsMax panel.

“In America, we have the freedom to do anything we want. And donors can write him checks, I suppose,” Schlapp said.

“I don’t understand his point of view now. He was all for Trump, and now he seems to be always against Trump, and so, what’s his lane?”

In his Hewitt interview, Christie disputed the notion that prosecutions related to Jan. 6, 2021, are political.

“The idea that somehow this is a political action is just, to me, wrong,” he told Hewitt.

Pence, meanwhile, has played up his bona fides as a tradition-minded religious conservative, including during a recent appearance at the Russell Kirk Center in Michigan.

Former Vice President Mike Pence speaks to a crowd during an event sponsored by the Palmetto Family organization in Columbia, S.C., on April 29, 2021. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

In a May 31 post on Twitter, the born-again Christian condemned the Los Angeles Dodgers’ decision to welcome an anti-Catholic LGBT drag group to its “Pride Night” event.

“Having been raised in a Catholic family, the Dodgers’ decision to invite the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a hateful group that blatantly mocks Catholicism, to their event next month is deeply offensive,” he wrote.

“The MLB should not be apologizing to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, they should be apologizing to Catholics across America. America’s pastime should respect the faith of every American, no matter what,” he added.

“I think Mike Pence is the first (presumed) Republican primary candidate to address [the Dodgers] honoring an anti-Christian drag performers [sic],” conservative commentator Megan Basham wrote on Twitter on June 1.

Unsurprisingly, Pence’s decision to run has met with criticism from Trump backers.

“Mike Pence is the definition of milquetoast,” Ryan Fournier of Students for Trump wrote on Twitter on May 31.