No “Jersey Jindal” in the Garden State, please (NJ-Gov)

Many of you are aware that New Jersey is one of the two states with high profile Governor races in 2009, and some of you may know that former US attorney and Bush toadie, Chris Christie is the republican frontrunner to challenge Governor Jon Corzine.  And as of now, Christie has jumped out to a pretty big lead (between 10-15 points) based largely on a reputation of a tough prosecutor as well as being undefined and dodging every issue and making statements which are long on buzzwords but short on meaning.

I don’t have to give many examples of what happens when someone who is largely undefined, flies under the radar with a false persona and doesn’t do much other than repeat slogans and more-of-the-same republican talking points gets into a high level Executive office.  But when it is someone who has very questionable and deep ties to many of the worst parts of the Bush administration and has questionable loyalties – even more so in the ever deepening blue northeast – it is more than a local or regional matter.

So, it is time to start spreading the word about who Chris Christie really is – something that I have been doing in bits and pieces for close to 2 years since he first found himself on and then mysteriously off of the short list of US attorneys to be fired and the questionable events surrounding his appearance and disappearance from “the list”.  Oh yeah, his brother was also involved in a securities fraud suit while a top executive at Spear, Leeds & Kellogg while Christie was US attorney in a neighboring district, he somehow got more favorable treatment then all but a handful of the 20 people charged.

But I’ll touch on that a bit below – as the first thing that will give you a sense of what type of republican Christie would be as Governor and why it is so dangerous for him to continue to fly under the radar is an interview that he did with Brian Lehrer just the other day.  I’ll spare you the full 25 minutes here, but there are a few things that must be pointed out.  I mentioned him being the “Jersey Jindal”, and that is because of Jindal’s comments about not accepting stimulus money under certain conditions, and that is precisely what Christie said he would do as well.  Yes, another in league with “those republican Governors”.   Here is the exact quote in context as a short audio clip where he says just that.  

As we are about to make the entire Northeast (save a district here or there) blue, can we really afford to have this petty nonsensical partisan failure of a strategy at a time when there is a tremendous economic crisis in the country (and the state as well)?

His interviews and remarks tend to take on the generic republican “buzzword Mad Libs” template, and he was called on it during the interview.   His response? (audio at the link and transcript here – emphasis mine)

LEHRER: “A number of people want me to follow up again on the back and forth we had about what you would actually cut, because they said you never gave a specific answer to what you would cut, even if you wouldn’t do the same spending policies as Governor Corzine.”

CHRISTIE: “Well listen, I think again, that you know, I know people love to continue to press on that, but the fact of the matter is that Governor Corzine has a responsibility for putting together this budget and my responsibility is to critique what he’s done.”

Um…..for someone who is in the middle of the interview process for New Jersey Governor, he damn well has a responsibility to do more than just critique it.   How about an actual idea or two? other than (as he quotes), “some people are going to have to lose jobs”

That is what we have heard from the republican frontrunner for Governor in New Jersey:  People have to lose jobs and I won’t accept stimulus money.

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As I said above, there are a lot of other things about Christie that would make anyone shudder over and above the fact that we know that he wants to be called the Governor but hasn’t done or said anything to show what he would actually do as or why he wants to be the Governor.  While I’ll get into them in more detail over the next few months, here are some of the “highlights”:

• He accepted of disgraced former Mayor Giuliani’s endorsement for Governor, disregarding the fact that Giuliani took public money, tax dollars, intended to help the disabled and the poor and used it to cheat on his wife.  That’s supposed to be the kind of politician Christie hates so much it makes his head spin.  That’s supposed to be the guy Christie puts in jail.
• He awarded a lucrative no-bid contract to former boss and Attorney General John Ashcroft’s firm worth between $28 and $52 million, as well as directed similar monitoring contracts in 2007 to two other former Justice Department colleagues from the Bush administration as well as to a former Republican state attorney general in New Jersey.  If these weren’t questionable enough on their own, why didn’t Christie or Ashcroft want to testify and clear their names in this matter?
• Christie owes his political career to the Bushies, as he was a “Bush Pioneer” in 2000, meaning that he raised over $100,000 for the campaign
• Most interestingly, the story of how he got on and off the US attorney firing list has never been resolved or questioned.  In short, in January 2006, Chris Christie was on a list of US Attorney’s who were being looked at for replacement.  Then, in September 2006, in the midst of a hard-fought US Senate campaign being dominated by accusations of corruption, Chris Christie authorizes a last minute subpoena that plays into Tom Kean Jr.’s political attacks against Bob Menendez.  Miraculously, in November 2006, after the election is over, Chris Christie is taken off the list and allowed to keep his job.

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Any one of these bullet points is questionable enough.  All of them taken together blow a hole right through the “caped crusader” façade that he has built.  Added to his bobblehead approach to running for Governor, and you have a perfect storm of political incuriosity, party first mentality and questionable ethics.

This country, and the good people of New Jersey, can’t afford to have someone of those characteristics in a position to appoint replacement Senators, act as a fair executive with the people of the state’s interests first and be in charge of the administration of elections – even more so with one of the least reliable voting machines in the country.