The New Hampshire Union Leader has endorsed Chris Christie for president. The state’s largest daily newspaper, which has a conservative-leaning editorial board, published the endorsement Saturday. Here’s an excerpt:
We don’t need another fast-talking, well-meaning freshman U.S. senator trying to run the government. We are still seeing the disastrous effects of the last such choice.
Chris Christie is a solid, pro-life conservative who has managed to govern in liberal New Jersey, face down the big public unions, and win a second term. Gov. Christie can work across the aisle, but he won’t get rolled by the bureaucrats. We don’t need as President some well-meaning person from the private sector who has no public experience.
Gov. Christie is right for these dangerous times. He has prosecuted terrorists and dealt admirably with major disasters. But the one reason he may be best-suited to lead during these times is because he tells it like it is and isn’t shy about it.
Other candidates have gained public and media attention by speaking bluntly. But it’s important when you are telling it like it is to actually know what you are talking about. Gov. Christie knows what he is saying because he has experienced it. And unlike some others, he believes in what he says because he has a strong set of conservative values.
The Union Leader has a mixed record in endorsing the winner of the New Hampshire primary as well as the eventual Republican nominee for president. In 2012, the paper endorsed Newt Gingrich, who would lose New Hampshire’s primary but did win a week later in South Carolina. John McCain earned the Union Leader endorsement in 2008, winning the New Hampshire primary and the GOP nomination afterward.
In contested primaries before that, though, the paper frequently endorsed conservative outsiders, including Steve Forbes in 2000 (McCain would win New Hampshire’s primary that year, too), Pat Buchanan in 1996 and 1992 (he won New Hampshire in ’96 but not ’92), Pete duPont in 1988 (George H.W. Bush won the primary), and Ronald Reagan in 1980 (Reagan won that year) and 1976 (Gerald Ford won).
The Christie endorsement may be a boon to the New Jersey governor’s campaign. Christie has invested a lot of time and energy in the Granite State over the primary so far, but he currently comes in seventh place in polls there, behind Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump. His placement in national polls has been so low that he was not invited onto the main stage in the last debate.
But the renewed interest in national security issues after the terrorist attacks in Paris earlier this month seems to have revived some interest in Christie, who touts a hardline position on homeland security and cites his experience as a U.S. attorney prosecuting would-be terrorists after 9/11. He has also defended law enforcement and national security officials against the arguments of some Republicans, chiefly Rand Paul, against the National Security Agency’s metadata surveillance program. Last week in Washington, the Garden State Republican spoke about the threats to the U.S. and its allies in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, and he criticized Hillary Clinton for refusing to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism.”
