“The guy, as a person, is horrific,” said Ballard, a top lobbyist and finance chair of former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Like other Romney insiders, Ballard deeply resents Christie for the way the governor sidled up to, and gushed about, President Barack Obama in the 2012 campaign’s final days just after Tropical Storm Sandy ruined parts of the Northeast’s coastline.

“Charlie Crist got a lot of grief for what was called a hug of Obama. But what Christie did to Obama isn’t suitable to say in a family newspaper,” Ballard said. “I firmly believe he helped swing that election in Obama’s favor just to help himself. I busted my ass for two years raising money and supporting Romney and this guy Christie just wiped his hands of us when we were no longer useful to him.”

Ballard said “90 percent” of other major Romney fundraisers outside of the New Jersey-New York metro area “wouldn’t touch Christie with a 10-foot pole right now.”