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As he campaigned, Mr. Christie became more moderate than he had been in the past, either admitting to mistakes like endorsing Mr. Trump or evolving on issues such as same-sex marriage. “I was wrong,” Mr. Christie said of his opposition to such marriages at an event in New Hampshire last month. He peppered his stump speeches with references to former President George W. Bush, hardly a popular figure with today’s Republican base.
Betting his entire campaign on New Hampshire, Mr. Christie argued in an interview with The New York Times in September that “once Donald Trump loses in one place, that entire rotted building will crumble.” He held dozens of town halls and other events across the small state, building modest traction and rising in polls, though he never came within striking distance of Mr. Trump. Mr. Christie’s allied super PAC dumped all of its advertising budget — $5.1 million as of Wednesday, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm — into the state.
Some of Mr. Christie’s supporters expressed disappointment after his event on Wednesday. Toni Pappas, a Hillsborough County commissioner from Manchester, N.H., was one of them, but said, “I think he did something very noble and patriotic.”
Tom Barton, a self-described libertarian from Washington, N.H., who planned to vote for Mr. Christie, said he could not see himself supporting another Republican. “They don’t have the courage to tell the truth about Trump,” he said.
Still, most Republican voters had remained firmly opposed to Mr. Christie, who trudged on without changing his approach. If anything, his resolve to attack the former president increased.
“The future of this country is going to be determined here,” Mr. Christie told a crowd at a New Hampshire brewery in September, clutching an I.P.A. It was a warning he would issue at nearly every campaign stop. “If Donald Trump wins here, he will be our nominee. Everything that happens after that is going to be on our party and on our country. It’s up to you.”
Shane Goldmacher, Neil Vigdor and Maggie Astor contributed reporting.
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