Christie tries to close in on New Hampshire

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2016/01/27/christie-tries-to-close-in-on-new-hampshire/

BOSTON –Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie is doubling down on New Hampshire, the New Jersey Governor told Boston Herald Radio Wednesday.

“I’ve committed to New Hampshire,” Christie said, adding that he has campaigned in the Granite State four of the past six days and will return Feb. 1 through Feb. 9 after spending a few days in Iowa.

Although he was endorsed by two major New England newspapers – the New Hampshire Union Leader and the Boston Herald – Christie still has to win over New Hampshire voters. A Jan. 24 Fox News poll put the governor’s support in the Granite state  at just 7 percent. A Jan. 25 Boston Herald-Franklin Pierce study also pinned Christie at 7 percent, but shows him down four points from last month.

Christie’s father, Wilbur “Bill” Christie, and wife, Mary Pat are currently campaigning for him, knocking on more than 30,000 doors in New Hampshire over the past three weekends, he said.

But as Christie pointed out in his Wednesday interview, a strong majority of the voters they encountered in New Hampshire are undecided, and he believes they will garner many of those votes.

“In a poll like that, it’s really statistically insignificant, you know, the difference,” Christie said about polls with candidates lumped closely together. “This thing is very fluid right now.”

University of New Hampshire political science professor Andy Smith agrees.

“Anyone who has watched New Hampshire’s presidential primaries for any length of time knows that the polls are largely meaningless,” Smith, who leads the university’s polling group, told the Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. “Even the polls done the week before the election are wrong more often than they are right.”

In his interview with Boston Herald Radio, Christie slammed Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s decision not to participate in the next Republican debate Thursday, saying it makes people call into question Trump’s judgment.

“America wants a fighter who’s not going to walk away from a fight but will walk into one,” he added on the morning radio segment. “How will that affect his ability to be the president?”

Christie slammed him in an earlier Tuesday interview with Fox News host Megyn Kelly: “The American people should wonder, you know, if you’re not willing to show up when everything isn’t going your way,” he said.

This week, Christie was criticized for leaving the state while it was hit over the weekend by a blizzard, adding a joking jab – “You want me to go down there with a mop?” he said. Insulted citizens launched a GoFundMe page to ship “as many mops as possible” to the governor.

Contact Kara Bettis at [email protected] or on Twitter @karabettis