MADISON - Chris Christie assumes that every night before bedtime Jack Ciattarelli and Bill Spadea drop to their knees and pray:

"Jesus, let it be me."

What the men seek is an endorsement from Donald Trump.

Christie was the guest speaker Monday at a periodic Fairleigh Dickinson University program about public issues.

As usual, the former governor was blunt and entertaining.

In looking at the GOP gubernatorial field, Christie cited polling suggesting that a majority of primary voters would follow Trump's lead.

Trump posed with Ciattarelli for a well-circulated photo a week or so ago, but there was no formal endorsement.

Suppose Trump endorses no one.

Not a chance, Christie said.

He explained that there are only three major elections this year - New Jersey governor, Virginia governor and New York City mayor.

And of those three, only New Jersey offers a genuine Republican primary. And he said the president will be unable to resist getting involved.

So, both Ciattarelli and Spadea want that endorsement. Jon Bramnick, who is also in the race, is not a Trump devotee.

Generally speaking, Christie, who won by about 87,000 votes in 2009 and by a landslide in 2013, said there's unhappiness with how Democrats are running the state.

But the election may also be a referendum on Trump, whose poll numbers have dipped since he took office.

"I think that trend will continue," Christie said.

Of course, a lot depends on who the Democratic candidate is, and to that end, Christie offered his diagnosis.

For openers, he discounted Steve Fulop and Sean Spiller as irrelevant.

He said Fulop, the Jersey City mayor, has too many ties to developers, which will eventually sink him.

As for Spiller, the president of the NJEA, Christie said:

"It's amazing, the gall of the teachers' union is, even now, breathtaking to me."  He said Phil Murphy has given the NJEA everything it wants and now the union thinks it can take the governor's seat. But he said that has no chance of happening.

Christie briefly sized up the four remaining Dem candidates.

He said he had a good working relationship, disagreements notwithstanding, with then-Senate President Steve Sweeney, but that Sweeney's problem is geography. South Jersey just does not have enough people and voting strength,

Christie said Ras Baraka is the "most underrated" candidate in the race and said he should not be discounted. He also said Baraka is the most ideologically liberal.
Mikie Sherrill is seen as the frontrunner for the party's nomination and Christie did not disagree.

But he said, "She has to stop being Congresswoman Sherrill" and act more like a governor. By that, he meant, she should tell people precisely what she wants to do and not answer questions by talking about bills she has proposed in the House. He said the public doesn't care about that.

Josh Gottheimer, in Christie's view, is acting too much like a general election candidate in talking about cutting costs, lowering taxes and bringing back paper bags. He wondered how that's going over with a primary electorate that tends to be pretty liberal.

Looking back to 2021, the prevailing wisdom is that Ciattarelli did quite well in losing by only three percentage points.

Christie doesn't buy it.

He said Republicans underperformed that year, adding, "We should have won that race."