Let Me Finish: Trump, the Kushners, Bannon, New Jersey, and the Power of In-Your-Face Politics by Chris Christie

Author:Chris Christie
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Non-Fiction, Politics, Autobiography, Memoir, United States
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2019-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

The final four days before New Hampshire voted, our crowds were enormous. People wanted to come out and see the guy who had decimated Marco Rubio. So many people showed up for our Sunday-brunch town hall, the Hampton fire marshal wouldn’t let everyone inside. I turned to Mary Pat as I was being introduced and whispered to her, “Maybe we have one more comeback left.”

Both of us were hoping, but we knew it was a long shot. We were buoyed again over the weekend when we won the endorsement of Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker. Our rally with Charlie was one of the most memorable of the campaign.

Monday night in Manchester, I told the story about my last conversation with my mother. It was a story I had told many times on the campaign trail and at our New Jersey town halls. “If you wonder who I am and why I am the way I am,” I said to the people, “that’s why. Because of her.”

It’s an intensely personal story, though months of repetition had drained some of its spontaneity. Not this time. As I looked across the crowded room, I wasn’t talking to persuadable strangers anymore. I was talking to people I cared about and loved. My father was there. So were all four of my children and several members of Mary Pat’s family. Most of my campaign staffers were also in the room. People weren’t scattered between Iowa and New Hampshire anymore. All of us knew, depending on how the vote came in, this could be my last night running for president.

That was the one time in the whole campaign that I almost lost it. I looked out at Wayne McDonald, my New Hampshire chairman. Wayne had heard the story of my mother probably sixty or seventy times. But this time, Wayne was tearing up. I looked at Jeb Bradley, the state senate majority leader who had traveled with me for months and had introduced me that night. He was reaching for his handkerchief.

I did my very best that night, just as I had through the whole campaign. If I had to go out somehow, this was how I wanted it to be. There was nothing else I could have done. The political atmosphere that was so welcoming to me in 2012 was blocked in 2016. It was blocked by Donald Trump. If he hadn’t been there, I had no doubt I would have won New Hampshire. But he was, and I didn’t. That was the tough reality.

“We love your husband,” people had been telling Mary Pat for months. “He’s blunt. He’s smart. He’s real. But we’re voting for Trump.”

Rubio was clearly hurt by my debate-night pounding. But I didn’t get enough of the votes that he shed. They ended up split among Jeb Bush, John Kasich, and me. Since no one had been attacking Kasich, he was the dark horse who managed to sneak up at the end.

Trump finished first at 35 percent when the New Hampshire votes were counted on Tuesday night.

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