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Chris Christie to Republican Party: Follow my lead

WASHINGTON – Reveling in his landslide re-election victory, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declared Sunday that he’s got what it takes to win the White House for Republicans – even comparing himself to President Reagan.

Christie boasted that he proved Republicans can win with Hispanics and other blocs that usually vote Democratic by simply going “into those neighborhoods.”

“Here is what people in Washington, D.C., don’t understand: If you want to win a vote by that kind of margin, you want to attract a majority of the Hispanic vote, if you want to nearly triple your African-American vote, you need to show up,” Christie said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“That is exactly what Ronald Reagan would have done and did do when he was campaigning for president,” he continued. “I did that campaigning for governor because I believed it’s what’s right to do as governor when you represent all the people, not just the people who vote for you.”

Christie celebrated his powerful re-election win Tuesday – garnering 61 percent of the vote, including 57 percent among women and 51 percent among Hispanics – with a victory lap across four Sunday political talk shows.

Christie insisted that he’s “focused on being the governor of New Jersey and being chairman of the Republican Governors Association.”

“I think those two jobs will keep me busy over the next year,” he said.

But he admitted that he doesn’t know if he’ll finish his four-year term as governor with the 2016 presidential race looming.

“Listen, who know? I don’t know,” Christie told ABC’s “This Week” about finishing his second term.

He also rejected  jabs that he’s too short tempered and impatient to withstand the rigors of the long presidential campaign trail, including the what he refers to as Washington political “garbage.”

“If you don’t think that being governor of New Jersey tries your patience, then you haven’t spent enough time in my state,” he said on the Fox News show. “I’m absolutely confident in my own ability to lead and obviously so are 61 percent of the people in the state of New Jersey who re-elected me on Tuesday night.”

Christie said that he was happy to have the publicity of being on the cover of Time magazine, despite the headline “Elephant in the room.”

“Who cares. I mean, seriously, I’m on the cover of Time magazine,” he said.

“It’s certainly not the first weight joke that has been thrown my way over the course of the last four years,” Christie said. “It doesn’t matter to me. It really doesn’t. If you’re going to be bothered by that kind of stuff, then you don’t belong in public leadership. They can say whatever they like. It’s fine by me.”