Larry Downing/Reuters
Gov. Chris Christie, left, lauded President Obama, who visited New Jersey and viewed damage from Hurricane Sandy.
A few days after Hurricane Sandy shattered the shores of New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie picked up the phone to take on a different kind of recovery work: taming the Republican Party fury over his effusive embrace of President Obama.
On Nov. 3, Mr. Christie called Rupert Murdoch, the influential News Corporation chief and would-be kingmaker, who had warned in a biting post on Twitter that the governor might be responsible for Mr. Obama's re-election.
Mr. Christie told Mr. Murdoch that amid the devastation, New Jersey needed friends, no matter their political party, according to people briefed on the discussion. But Mr. Murdoch was blunt: Mr. Christie risked looking like a spoiler unless he publicly affirmed his support for Mitt Romney, something the governor did the next day.
Mr. Christie has been explaining himself to Republicans ever since. His lavish praise for Mr. Obama's response to the storm, delivered in the last days of the presidential race, represented the most dramatic development in the campaign's final stretch. Right or wrong, conventional wisdom in the party holds that it influenced the outcome.
But behind the scenes, the intensity of the reaction from those in Mr. Christie's party caught him by surprise, interviews show, requiring a rising Republican star to try to contain a tempest that left him feeling deeply misunderstood and wounded.
The governor, who had spent days delivering bear hugs and words of sympathy to shellshocked residents, resented the pressure to choose between the state he loves with fervent, Springsteen-fueled ferocity and his future as a leader in the Republican Party.
In New Jersey, Mr. Christie's politics-be-damned approach to the storm seemed to represent a moment of high-minded crisis management for a governor frequently defined by his public diatribes and tantrums. Mr. Christie locked arms with Mr. Obama, flew with him on Marine One, talked with him daily and went out of his way to praise him publicly as "outstanding," "incredibly supportive" and worthy of "great credit."
But in the days after the storm, Mr. Christie and his advisers were startled to hear from out-of-state donors to Mr. Romney, who had little interest in the hurricane and viewed him solely as a campaign surrogate, demanding to know why he had stood so close to the president on a tarmac. One of them questioned why he had boarded Mr. Obama's helicopter, according to people briefed on the conversations.
It did not help that Mr. Romney had not called Mr. Christie during those first few days, people close to the governor say.
The tensions followed Mr. Christie to the annual meeting of the Republican Governors Association in Las Vegas last week. At a gathering where he had expected to be celebrated, Mr. Christie was repeatedly reminded of how deeply he had offended fellow Republicans.
"I will not apologize for doing my job," he emphatically told one of them in a hotel hallway at the ornate Wynn Resort.
His willingness to work closely with the president has cast a shadow over Mr. Christie's prospects as a national candidate, prompting a number of Republicans to wonder aloud whether he is a reliable party leader.
"It hurt him a lot," said Douglas E. Gross, a longtime Republican operative in Iowa who has overseen several presidential campaigns in the state. "The presumption is that Republicans can't count on him."
Republican voters in Iowa, the first state to select presidential candidates, "don't forget things like this," Mr. Gross said.
With Mr. Romney's loss still an open sore, Mr. Christie's conduct remains a topic of widespread discussion in the party.
"People keep asking me why you were so nice to the president," Governor-elect Pat McCrory of North Carolina told Mr. Christie when they encountered each other beneath a gem-studded chandelier at the hotel.
"I tell them you are doing your job," Mr. McCrory said.
"That's right," Mr. Christie replied, patting him on the back.
Inside the Romney campaign, there is little doubt that Mr. Christie's expressions of admiration for the president, coupled with ubiquitous news coverage of the hurricane's aftermath, raised Mr. Obama's standing at a crucial moment.
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