Chris Christie’s biggest hurdle in a 2016 presidential run is not just surviving the ongoing investigations into the politically fraught traffic jam caused by his administration, but convincing Republican donors that there will be no more surprises.

As the New Jersey governor mingled with some of the Republican Party’s most influential fundraisers at Mitt Romney’s three-day political retreat here in Utah, there was still palpable uneasiness about the swirl of investigations surrounding Christie and concern that he could be too damaged to be the Republican Party’s nominee in 2016.

But Christie tried forcefully to dismiss those concerns when he addressed a group of 300 donors during a speech Saturday, which was closed to the media. One of the first questions posed to him was whether the controversy over his administration’s closure of roads leading to the George Washington Bridge last September — in apparent retribution for the refusal of a local mayor to endorse Christie’s reelection — was behind him.

Christie replied that he didn’t get to “decide that,” according to accounts from people in the room, but he framed the bridge scandal as a media conspiracy against him after he won 61% of the vote in his gubernatorial race in a Democratic state. His opponents, he said, were trying to prevent him from getting any “more altitude.”

More: Chris Christie to GOP donors on bridge scandal: ‘You’ll get over it’ - Los Angeles Times