US Presidential campaign 2016: Republican Governor Chris Christie joins race

Christie is gambling that he can reverse a recent narrative of collapsing political fortunes and forge his way to the front of the pack

Chris Christie waves to supporters at the announcement of his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, in Livingston, New Jersey (Getty Images)

Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey has become the latest Republican to jump into the 2016 race for the White House, gambling that he can reverse a recent narrative of collapsing political fortunes and forge his way to the front of the pack by dint of his outsize personality and straight-talk charisma.

After demurring four years ago when Republican grandees were urging him to leap late into the 2012 race amidst concerns that Mitt Romney was floundering, he is now the fourteenth entrant in a field that now seems likely to settle at about sixteen. A social moderate, he will face a particular challenge convincing conservatives he is one of them.

Striding into the gym of his old school to the strains of another New Jersey native, Bruce Springsteen, Mr Christie, 52, showed off his speaking chops, recalling without notes his blue-collar roots and touting his early success as governor grasping the state’s toughest economic nettles. “We have stood against every single person, every cynic, who said, ‘Why are you wasting your time. This state is not governable?’”

As supporters grasped signs with the slogan, ‘Christie 2015, Tell It Like It Is’, he cast himself as a leader with the spine to be president but also the willingness to compromise when needed, a reference to his own record as a Republican leader of a traditionally Democrat state. “If Washington, Jefferson, Adams thought compromise was a dirty word, we’d still be under the Crown of England,” he said.

So steep has his been fall from grace – until just 18 months ago he still seemed like he’d be the candidate to beat – his path forward isn’t clear. Most damaging was ‘Bridgegate’ which led to criminal charges for some of his closest associates accused of deliberately snarling access to the George Washington Bridge as payback against a local mayor who had failed to support the governor’s re-election.

He will be hobbled also by the less than sterling economic record of his state. As of now, he polling so poorly – 55 per cent of Republican voters said in a new Wall Street Journal poll they couldn’t see themselves backing him – that he will struggle to qualify even for the first primary debate set for August where only those in the top ten in polls at the time will be given a spot on stage.

He left for New Hampshire for a series of town hall meetings, playing to his strength communicating energetically – sometimes brusquely – with voters. Winning the New Hampshire primary, the first in the nation, will be the lynchpin of his campaign.