June 30, 2015

Chris Christie Announces Presidential Bid, Doesn’t Break Internet

The reaction to Christie’s declaration is not overwhelming.

Dennis Van Tine/ZUMA

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On Tuesday morning, Chris Christie, the brash and gruff scandal-tainted governor of New Jersey, announced he was officially entering the GOP race for president. Flanked by his wife Mary Pat Foster and his four kids, Christie hit the stage at his high school alma mater to Bon Jovi’s “We Weren’t Born To Follow,” and he declared, “We must tell each other the truth about the problems we have and the difficulty of the solutions.”

Once upon a time, Christie was widely regarded as a potential leader of the GOP pack; he was a favorite of Republican-leaning billionaires (Koch Brothers and others) and a GOPer who could boast success in a Democratic state. His entry into the contest would have been major news. But after Bridgegate and various economic setbacks in New Jersey, he’s fighting for to be at the top of the second tier. (There are now 14 contenders officially in the race.) A recent poll found that only 4 percent of Republican voters want to see Christie as president. And his announcement hardly set the Internet on fire.

Here’s some of the immediate reaction on Twitter, which was, to tell it like it is, a bit underwhelming:

Ann Coulter

Laura Ingraham

Ted Cruz

Greta Van Susteren

Mark Murray

Nate Silver

Fortune

Deborah Wasserman Schultz

Seton Hall Law

Mashable

Chris Christie has gone from telling people to sit down and shut up to having to ask them for attention.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

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