An Iowa GOP donor who tried to draft New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the 2012 presidential race says, this time around, his chances look bleak for winning caucuses in the perennial kickoff state.
Party loyalist Gary Kirke
told U.S. News & World Report "Christie's hurt himself a couple times."
"I don't think Christie can [win the caucuses]," Kirke says. "It's just comments I hear."
Yet U.S. News reports neither Christie nor another possible moderate GOP candidate, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, appear to be writing off the Hawkeye State despite their
poor polling among likely GOP participants in the
Jan. 18, 2016, caucuses.
Christie is plowing ahead, U.S. News reports, having appeared at the conservative Iowa Freedom Summit last month and set to return to Iowa on Monday for a Dallas County GOP event – marking his seventh visit since the start of 2013.
"The opportunity for him to do well is real," an aide to Christie told U.S. News. "There's a hazard in reading too much into one poll."
Bush hasn't been to Iowa in the past two years, though he's brought on Iowa consultant David Kochel to manage a possible national campaign, U.S. News reports.
"Iowans are not going too far with Jeb Bush if he doesn't come into the state, if he doesn't do the networking, the meetings, the eyeball-to-eyeball," Jenifer Bowen, executive director of Iowa Right to Life, told U.S. News. "He just won't be on people's minds."
As for Christie, she said: "It might take him a little more work because he's a Jersey boy," praising him, nevertheless, for making inroads with the pro-life community, U.S. News reports.
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