Chris Christie: Everything You Need to Know

Christie will speak at the RNC tonight.

By
JORDYN PHELPS
July 19, 2016, 4:11 PM ET
3 min read

— -- Name: Chris Christie

Party: Republican

Date of Birth: September 6, 1962

Age: 53

What He Does Now: Governor of New Jersey; chair of Trump's White House transition team

What He Used to Do: Christie is serving his second term as the governor of New Jersey, having first been elected in 2009. Prior to becoming governor, Christie served as the U.S. attorney for New Jersey. He was named to the post by President George W. Bush in 2002 and served in the role until December 2008. Christie also previously held elected office as freeholder of New Jersey’s Morris County.

Hometown: Christie was born in Newark and raised in Livingston, New Jersey.

Family Tree: Christie was born into a middle class family in Livingston, New Jersey, in 1962 to Wilbur "Bill" and Sondra Christie. His father is now retired but worked as an accountant. His mother passed away in 2004 after a battle with lung cancer. Christie's father was active in his son's presidential campaign, door-knocking and volunteering on his son's behalf in the New Hampshire primary. Christie was raised Catholic and remains active in the faith today. He has been married to wife Mary Pat since 1986. The couple met in college at the University of Delaware. They have four children together: two daughters and two sons.

Key Life/Career Moments:

  • Christie was considered a rising star in the Republican Party in 2012, and was encouraged by many to run for president at the time. Christie said then he wasn't yet ready to be president. He gained political capital coming off the 2012 campaign (when he served as a surrogate to Mitt Romney) and during his 2013 landslide reelection victory for governor of New Jersey.
  • "Bridgegate," also known as the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal, had a considerable effect on his reputation. The incident involved the closure of lanes connecting Fort Lee, New Jersey, to the George Washington Bridge in early September 2013 (just a couple months ahead of Christie's reelection). While the Port Authority said the closures -- which caused hours-long traffic delays -- were part of a traffic study, an investigation traced connections to the governor’s office. Christie has not been directly implicated in the scandal.

    • What You Might Not Know About Him:

  • He's a die-hard Bruce Springsteen fan and has been to at least 137 of The Boss's concerts (Christie’s count).
  • Christie has literally been cozy with Wall Street. His wife Mary Pat held a high-powered Wall Street job before Christie began his presidential campaign, when she stepped down from the position.
  • He had lap-band weight loss surgery in 2013.

    • What He Has Said About Trump:

    Christie was once a huge critic of Trump's. That is, until he endorsed him after he dropped out of the race.

    Christie endorsed Trump in February, saying, "I absolutely believe that Donald Trump is the best person on that stage to be president of the United States."

    But, he has previously said some less flattering things about Trump.

    "He has not the first idea of how to run a government, not the first idea," Christie said of Trump on Feb. 7 in Hampton, New Hampshire, when he urged voters to "get off the Trump train before it's too late."

    As a candidate, Christie ridiculed the Republican front-runner for having a "make-believe" campaign that amounted to little more than reality TV and sought to remind voters that they aren't electing an "entertainer-in-chief."

    "The guy who's running first in the polls. You know it's all make believe, right?" Christie said days ahead of the New Hampshire primary. "It's just not real. It's all for TV."

    "Being president is also nothing like being in a fake boardroom in Manhattan and looking across the room and saying, 'You're fired,'" Christie told a town hall in the days before the Iowa caucuses.

    In what became a tried-and-true crowd-pleaser, Christie would regularly imitate Trump on the campaign trail, specifically picking apart his proposal to build a wall along the border with Mexico.

    "It's gonna be a incredible, beautiful, marvelous wall. An incredible wall," Christie would say, dropping his voice his a couple of octaves to more closely match Trump's tone. "The wall is gonna be unbelievable. The wall is gonna have a door, the door is gonna open and close. The good people come in, the bad people go out."