Republican presidential candidate and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Monday that while he’s pretty sure he won’t win the Iowa caucuses, he still wants to beat the other current and former governors in the race.
MSNBC host Willie Guest told Christie during “Morning Joe” that he may not win in the Hawkeye State. “I think it’s pretty safe to say I won’t,” Christie interrupted, before adding that he thinks he will do better than people expect in the Iowa contest. He then began talking about the amount of time he’s spent in New Hampshire.
“We’ll head back this afternoon to New Hampshire,” he said. “We’ll do two events in New Hampshire tonight, and we’ll get on the road to doing very well in New Hampshire, too.”
He said he hopes to beat the other governors in the race, including Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
“We have always thought that what we want to be is the number one governor coming out of these two races,” he said. “That if we beat Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Mike Huckabee, that we’re the number one governor left, then that moves us on to the future races.”
Christie said that unlike other unspecified candidates in the race, he wasn’t running for President as a “vanity exercise.”
“I’ll stay in as long as I think I have a chance to win and if there comes a moment where I think I don’t, I’m going home,” he said.
