“I think Christie is the odd man out right now. He’s in serious trouble,” said one senior Wall Street executive, echoing remarks made by a dozen others who requested anonymity as not to anger Christie. Wall Street executives also are not inclined to criticize Christie on the record because their firms often do business with the state of New Jersey. Another executive said of Christie: “I like him, and under other circumstances, I could support him. But not with Mitt and Jeb in the race. And Christie has so many other issues.”…
Another challenge for the governor is that unless he resigns that office to run for president, he faces fundraising restrictions under federal pay-to-play laws. Such laws mean that anyone working for a bank that does or might do pension or underwriting work for the state of New Jersey cannot give to Christie’s campaign. These rules could make it impossible for the many high-earning financial executives who live in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to give to Christie even if they wanted to…
“Christie looks eager to leak that he is doing something without any definition of what he is even doing,” said Nick Ryan, a GOP strategist in Iowa. “Nearly every other potential candidate in the field seems to have a more clear vision of how their team will operate than Christie — which is quite surprising. His team will spend the next few weeks trying to speed up to where the others are at … makes you wonder how a guy like that could be so flat-footed.”
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