The suggestive language about the New Jersey governor, whose weight struggles have been chronicled and analyzed at length, was obvious. “Dr. Hitchcock?” asked one GOP strategist in a conversation with a reporter, referring to the jowly silhouette of the famous director.

The cover came just days after the 2012 campaign retrospective “Double Down” described in detail Christie’s resistance to providing extensive medical information during Mitt Romney’s vice presidential vetting. (Christie recently released a doctor’s note saying he’s in good health and losing weight, and a Christie insider said that he doesn’t view Romney negatively but the episode is “embarrassing” for the Romney campaign.

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In a tweet derided by conservative pundits, meanwhile, former President Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod posted on Election Day: “Ever see a large man shot from a canon [sic]? Watch Jersey launch tonight, of @GovChristie boomlet. But will he have place to land in this GOP?” (Asked if he was making a crack about Christie’s weight, Axelrod replied in an email, “Of course not. It was a recognition of what has come to pass: he won a huge victory and was catapulted into the frontline of GOP contenders.”)

Christie is being heralded by donors and elites as a potential GOP savior – their early call as the party’s hope for a candidate who would have cross-over appeal in a general election. Yet, nearly nine months after his highly-publicized lap-band surgery, a lingering question about Christie’s girth hovers just below the surface of the growing buzz surrounding his 2016 prospects.

The man is certainly not lacking in energy. Christie maintained an aggressive campaign schedule in New Jersey, showing up at multiple events a day, an undeniable demonstration of stamina. Yet operatives and reporters outside of Christie’s orbit privately discussed whether the surgery appeared to be working. At least one voter asked him how his weight loss is going as he approached a stop in Hillside earlier this week.

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The answer, according to sources who’ve spoken with him about it, is yes. Christie has told people he is halfway toward his target goal.

Still, weight remains the one prejudice that appears to be permissible in society, and Christie has taken a beating over it throughout the years. He’s been eviscerated on late night television over it. And his weight remains a topic of fascination among donors and media elite, who engage in hand-wringing over whether he would be fit to serve in 2016 and whether it suggests a deeper lack of discipline. They wonder, bluntly, why the former high school baseball player gained so much weight over the years.

Any Democrat who invokes his weight in the future risks making Christie more sympathetic by dwelling on his weight, if they choose to, in the coming months. Such attacks could inspire Republicans to rally around him, if he is seen as under siege. That’s akin to what happened when Republicans began alluding to Hillary Clinton’s age earlier this year, as a way of stoking questions about the generational hurdle she’d face with increasingly younger voters if she runs for president.

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What’s more, Christie allies believe his struggles are familiar to many Americans who have battled to slim down, and could help him to connect with people on a human level. There is a certain class issue at play as well, operatives in both parties concede: For a candidate who has stressed working-class roots, his weight isn’t always the negative it’s assumed to be in the Acela corridor.

GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway, a New Jersey resident, said that Christie’s weight issue allows people to identify with him in a meaningful way, and that he’s been able to “retain his tough-guy image” while “never claiming he’s a victim” of being attacked for his weight.

Regardless, it will be an ongoing topic of conversation in the media, if not in the primary states, as Christie starts traveling around the country in his upcoming role as Republican Governors Association chairman. Like Clinton’s health after she suffered a head injury in late 2012, Christie’s weight is seen as a legitimate issue in the context of a presidential run. But unlike with Clinton, it’s also seen as more acceptable to mock.

“We don’t really know the rules” when it comes to dealing with people’s weight, said Paul Begala, a longtime Bill Clinton adviser, who noted that there are clear delineations for certain kinds of discrimination – racial, age, gender, and potentially sexual orientation.

“People [who have] a sense of justice [know] you don’t mock people for an immutable characteristic,” he said, referring to weight as one of them. But he added, “It is true that [people are] much more comfortable with” poking fun at weight than at other qualities.

Indeed, Romney himself is described in “Double Down” as mocking Christie’s weight to his staffers. “Look at that!” he’s quoted saying.

Christie is by no means the first politician to grapple with a weight issue. Bill Clinton was skewered on Saturday Night Live in a skit of him jogging into a McDonald’s and scarfing down everything on the menu.

“He didn’t like it,” Begala said. “Nobody does like being mocked about their appearance.”

Christie has been inconsistent in his own handling of his weight in interviews, at least from 2009 through earlier this year. He famously told then-opponent Jon Corzine, who used imagery not dissimilar to the Time Magazine cover, to “man up and say I’m fat.” The candor worked.

Since then, he’s struggled with dieting and curbing his appetite. Christie has discussed his weight issues on shows like MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” and pulled an unwrapped donut from a suit jacket pocket while sitting on David Letterman’s couch and started devouring it. He initially called his lap-band surgery, which was kept a secret for months, off limits, but then spoke about it at length.

His temper has flared over his weight before. He famously phoned and chewed out a former White House physician who called his weight a health issue and said she was concerned he would die in office. He said publicly she should “shut up.”

However, he hasn’t said much since, save for a dust-up during his most recent campaign, when Democratic rival Barbara Buono denounced Hurricane Sandy recovery ads he was featured in, saying no one wanted to see him “frolicking” on the beach.

Christie is in a more sanguine place about his weight, as is his team, according to several sources. He has no desire to be like Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who lost over 100 pounds and wrote a book called “Stop Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork.”

But he also doesn’t have a hair-trigger response when people discuss it, the sources said.

“He’s comfortable in his own skin, he’s not uncomfortable talking about it,” said one adviser. “It’s certainly far from any kind of disqualifier. If somebody’s not going to vote for him [over] his weight they weren’t going to vote for him anyway.”

There’s no public data to indicate how voters in New Jersey feel about Christie’s weight, and sources familiar with both Democratic campaigns against him insist the issue was never polled.

Early state activists all privately say Republicans are more focused now on comparing Christie to Romney, not his weight, as some conservatives lambaste him as the potential moderate in three years.

If Christie fails to reach his weight-loss goal, or does and then gains some of it back, that could become a story of its own. Voters love narratives about politicians overcoming adversity, but whether they love a story about an unmet challenge is unclear. And in the era of ubiquitous high-def TVs, it is unclear how voters will respond to a candidate who looks less-than-stellar.

On the other hand, he might be able to use it as an important diversion in the future, especially if critics overstep on the issue, Begala said.

“It may be that it serves like a lightening rod for him in a way that the birth certificate was for Obama,” he said.