Chris Christie Returning to New Hampshire as New Jersey Continues Blizzard Cleanup

— -- A day after an historic blizzard plowed through New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie is returning to New Hampshire to resume campaigning through the state.

After holding a briefing on the storm cleanup Sunday morning, Christie was set to hold a previously scheduled town hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, only 30 minutes after its original start time. He will also attend a watch party for the AFC championship game that pits New Hampshire’s beloved New England Patriots against the Denver Broncos.

Christie called New Jersey’s handling of the storm a “model response” and touted that by the day’s end, power should be restored to 90 percent of customers who experienced outages and that all mass transit systems would be back up and running.

Christie decided to return to New Jersey ahead of the storm on Friday afternoon after saying Thursday that he didn’t plan to return home.

“The lieutenant governor is there and she’s handling things on the ground there and if I needed to go back I would,” Christie told reporters on Thursday, qualifying that it was “too speculative to know” at that point whether the storm might necessitate his return.

But following a call with his cabinet Friday morning with an updated forecast putting New Jersey squarely in the storm’s path, Christie returned to New Jersey, leaving his wife Mary Pat in New Hampshire to campaign for him in his absence.

“When snow comes people get nervous,” Christie said Friday. "They’ll feel better if I’m there.”