Christie will campaign alongside Kemp next week as the Georgia governor fights a Trump-backed primary challenge.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will campaign alongside Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp next week as the conservative governor faces a primary challenge from Trump-backed former Republican Sen. David Perdue.

Christie, a former two-term governor of Pennsylvania and former chair of the Republican Governors Association (RGA) who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, will join Kemp on a bus tour stop in Canton and a get-out-the-vote rally in Alpharetta during his visit to Georgia next Tuesday, May 17.

Kemp narrowly defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams to win the governorship four years ago, with the assistance of then-President Donald Trump. Kemp, on the other hand, drew Trump’s ire in late 2020, when he declared President Biden’s slim victory in Georgia’s presidential election following repeated recounts of votes. Trump has already traveled to Georgia twice to campaign against Kemp, having unsuccessfully encouraged the governor and other senior Republican leaders in the state to reverse the results.

Trump has been urging Perdue to run against the governor for months, and he supported Perdue a day after the former senator announced his candidacy late last year. Perdue announced his campaign just days after Abrams, an election reform advocate and rising star in the Democratic Party, announced her second consecutive race for governor.

Regardless of Trump’s support, Kemp leads Perdue in two important campaign measures — public opinion polls and money — with less than two weeks until Georgia’s primary.

The Kemp campaign announced earlier this week that Christie, as well as RGA, co-chairs Govs. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Pete Ricketts of Nebraska will be visiting Georgia to campaign alongside Kemp. Trump reacted quickly, stating in a statement that “today, the worst ‘election integrity’ Governor in the country, Brian Kemp, filled the wonderful state of Georgia up with RINOs.”

“That’s true, he had all of them. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Arizona’s Doug Ducey, and Nebraska’s Pete Ricketts. That tells you everything you need to know about what you’ll get in Georgia if you vote for Brian Kemp: a continuation of poor elections and a true RINO “argued the former president.

Christie, a former close Trump buddy, and advisor who has become a loud Republican critic of the former president said on Twitter “From a former President who lost to Joe Biden, insightful analysis on three Republican governors who were overwhelmingly re-elected by their constituents. Perhaps the ‘R’ in RINO stands for re-election.”