US Presidential campaign 2016: Republican Chris Christie is latest to start preparing campaign ahead of possible White House run

Christie was badly burned by a scandal in 2013 about the closing of traffic lanes on the George Washington Bridge linking his state to New York City

Chris Christie has a reputation for a brusque demeanour when speaking with voters (AFP) (AFP)

The likely presidential run by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie looked even likelier this morning after he confirmed the creation of a political action committee, PAC, that will help him begin building a potential campaign operation even though he is yet formally to declare.

Mr Christie said on Facebook he had filed the paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Friday to found the ‘Leadership Matters for America’. The organisation will allow him to begin touring the country testing the waters for an effort to seek the Republican Party’s nomination for president.

“America has been a nation that has always controlled events and yet today events control us. Why? Because leadership matters,” Mr Christie wrote in a post on his Facebook wall. “It matters if we want to restore America's role in the world, find the political will to take on the entrenched special interests that continually stand in the way of fundamental change, reform entitlement spending at every level of government, and ensure that every child, no matter their zip code, has access to a quality education.”

The birth of a political action committee has become the first harbinger of a presidential run. Putative candidates christen them with names meant to encapsulate their Republican credentials. When Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, turned the race for the party’s nomination on its head by expressing his own 2016 ambitions in December he said he was forming two committees under the name “Right to Rise”.

Sources close to Mr Christie, who was badly burned by a scandal in 2013 about the closing of traffic lanes on the George Washington Bridge linking his state to New York City, had indicated some weeks ago he wouldn’t formally announce until March or April. That timetable may be brought forward, however, particularly given Mr Bush’s aggressive push to recruit campaign staffers and raise money.

Mr Christie, who has a reputation for a brusque demeanour when speaking with voters, announced the committee’s creation hard on the heels of addressing a gathering of hardline conservative Republicans at the so-called ‘Freedom Forum’, in Des Moines, Iowa, an event that Mr Bush and also Mitt Romney, standard-bearers for more moderate members of the party, declined to attend.