| ||||||||||||
NY TIMES - November 6, 2009 Op-Ed Contributor/Harlen Coben 'Chris Christie Confidential'
My Central Jersey - 'Christie: My win not a loss for Obama'
Nj.com/Star Ledger -'Governor-elect Chris Christie prepares to take on role as head of New Jersey'
Politickernj.com -'GOP leaders rejoice in Christie's ability to unify, while Dems still skeptical'
NY TIMES - November 6, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Chris Christie Confidential
By HARLAN COBEN
Ridgewood, N.J.
I AM in Chris Christie campaign headquarters on election night. Broadcasters are about to call the race. Pollsters in the room huddle and whisper numbers. The air crackles with words like “victory” and “change.” But I’m lost in a bearhug with Chris, my childhood friend, and now the next governor of New Jersey. If you’ve seen Chris, you can probably imagine that he can bearhug with the best of them. This one lasts an especially long time, and corny to say, I relish it.
Suddenly I flash back to the Meadowbook Little League ball field. I am 10 years old again and scared. Because of a bout with rheumatic fever, I’ve missed the first half of the season. This is my first game back, and I’m standing there in my baggy green and white uniform, not sure what to do. A roly-poly kid in catcher’s gear sees my hesitation. He hurries over with a big smile, calls me by my name, tells me how excited he is that I’m finally ready to play.
He introduces himself. His name is Chris Christie and he, this remarkable 10-year-old boy, spends the rest of the day going out of his way to make me feel welcome. Being the cynical one in this relationship, I wonder if he’s for real. I will wonder that a lot over the years, but the answer will always be yes.
Growing up in Livingston, N.J., Chris and I both attended Heritage Junior High and Livingston High School. Chris was always quick with a smile, loved to do impressions of the teachers, had an easy laugh. When we were in seventh grade, our homeroom team won the intramural basketball championship. Chris wasn’t the best player on that team, but he was the glue. He would seek out each player’s strength and talk it up (to a terrible athlete: “Harry, you are an amazing defensive player!”). If he hadn’t gone into politics, he’d have made an excellent coach.
Chris and I had parallel New Jersey upbringings. We were both born in Newark in 1962. Our fathers were both conservatives, our mothers skewed more liberal. But while Chris favored Dad’s political viewpoint, I ended up a mama’s boy. From a fairly young age, we began to disagree on a host of issues, though we never fought about it. I credit him for this — he’s always been more tolerant than me.
•
In our senior year at Livingston High School, Chris is elected president of the class for the fourth year in a row (no surprise), and I’m elected president of the student council (burning-bush-type miracle). I practice what Chris now sort of preaches — lesser government. In short, I do nothing. Chris is far more diligent. He sets up meetings, fights for off-campus lunch privileges, oversees the prom, tries to raise money. I keep chocolate milk on the lunch menu.
Like most good friends, Chris and I haven’t always gotten along. There was a rough spot sometime during that senior year, though I don’t remember why anymore. I’m pretty sure it was my fault. But maybe it had something to do with Chris, too. He had an honesty that bordered on arrogance. As easygoing as he was, he tended to ignore those gray areas, seeing the world as black and white — admirable in a way but also occasionally irksome.
Still, I’ve noticed that this aspect of his personality has slipped away as he’s grown older, as he’s earned his battle scars. In the beginning of the campaign Chris told me that he would not resort to negative personal attacks on his opponent. One can argue how much of the pledge was kept, but I know that many in his party urged him to attack Gov. Jon Corzine on personal matters. Chris refused — even when his opponents unloaded a nonstop barrage of attacks about him, his appearance, and even his brother.
He did this, I think, for three reasons. One, the obvious: he claimed that fighting in the gutter would tarnish his dignity and he’d rather lose the race than lose his soul. Two, the strategic: Chris believed that going negative would backfire. You can decide if he was right.
And three, the most revealing: Chris doesn’t like to break a promise. He has been criticized by many — this friend included — for deflecting questions on what will get slashed and how, with a projected $8 billion deficit, he will be able to cut taxes. But Chris isn’t being vague for political gain. He fears being specific because that may mean breaking a promise, going back on his word.
•
Chris and I are in our junior year. We’re on a special committee to help select the new principal, interviewing the candidates and bored to tears, until one tells us he used to be vice principal of Freehold High, Bruce Springsteen’s alma mater. “Did you know Bruce?” we ask. He says yes and we practically fall off our chairs. After firing a bunch of “Was Bruce the coolest thing ever?” questions at the man, we’re satisfied. We vote for him and he gets the job. Springsteen is one issue Chris and I agree on.
A few weeks ago, during a Springsteen show at Giants Stadium, we texted back and forth about the pure joy of hearing the Boss play the “Born to Run” album in sequence. He argues that “Thunder Road” is the best song, but I side with “Jungleland.” The texts about the concert continue the next morning before I shift gears and tell him that I abhor his stand against gay marriage. I call him out on this issue, even saying that “it’s not you.” He does not get defensive. We agree to discuss this when there is more time. And we will. He will remain calm. I will probably be the one who gets heated. He’s used to this.
Whenever a new kid showed up at school, Chris was the first to greet him. Watch video of Chris on the campaign trail — he still finds the person in the back corner, the ill-at-ease one, and shakes his hand, brings him into the fold. On election night, when I entered his hotel suite, I was that person. Because of some weird hate mail after a TV appearance — I made the mistake of admitting to Sean Hannity that I voted for Barack Obama — I decided not to publicly support either candidate, even backing out of a fund-raiser Chris and I were hosting together.
Chris didn’t look at this as a betrayal. He understood my problem. When I entered the hotel suite on election night, he saw that I felt awkward and, as he did so many years ago on that baseball field, my roly-poly friend rushed over and made me feel welcome.
Cue the big bearhug.
Harlan Coben is the author, most recently, of “Long Lost.”
My Central Jersey - November 5, 2009:
Christie: My win not a loss for Obama
By SERGIO BICHAO
STAFF WRITER
Gov.-elect Chris Christie disagrees with political pundits who've suggested his win Tuesday night was a backlash against President Obama, who made three visits to the Garden State in support of Democratic Gov. Jon S. Corzine.
"It's not a repudiation of the president. In fact, I said the exact opposite during the campaign,'' the Republican said Thursday during a visit to the township.
Playing off Obama's presidential campaign, which promised "hope'' and "change,'' one of Christie's tag lines during the race was "Change Starts by Changing Governors.'' Early television ads for the Republican also featured images of Obama, who won in New Jersey last year.
Conservative commentators have pointed to Republican gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia as indicating the president's popularity is wearing out with moderate voters.
But Christie, apparently, is saying otherwise.
"As far as reaching out, the president has already reached out to me. I had a 5-minute phone conversation with President Obama yesterday. He called and asked to speak to me. We talked about the things we have in common. We talked about merit pay for teachers and more charter schools,'' Christie said.
"And I told him that I am looking forward to working with him,'' he said. "There are no hard feelings from him, and there are certainly no hard feelings from me.''
Christie also said he has spoken to White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, in charge of Intergovernmental Affairs, and with state Senate President Richard J. Codey regarding the transition of administrations.
"Codey pledged his support. He's open to me discussing with him those issues I thought were important during the lame duck session,'' Christie said. "I don't believe I am going to have a problem dealing with, on a personal level, with the folks in the opposite party.''
Nj.com/Star Ledger -
Governor-elect Chris Christie prepares to take on role as head of New Jersey
By Claire Heininger/Statehouse Bureau
November 05, 2009, 9:30PM
WOODBRIDGE -- During the long and brutal campaign, they called him hypocritical, hot-tempered, dishonest, too fat.
Now they’ll call him governor. But Chris Christie says he’s not wasting time on an enemies list.
"Please. I wouldn’t have enough paper. So let’s not even bother writing one," Christie told The Star-Ledger in his first detailed interview since defeating Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine on Tuesday. "This is now about governing. I won. The one thing I could never understand about people in politics was winners who are sore winners."
Instead, the Republican governor-elect is going out of his way to mend fences with Democrats, from a pleasant phone conversation with President Obama to a downtown tour today of Democratic-leaning Woodbridge.
Christie said that with an $8 billion budget deficit, the nation’s highest property taxes and countless other obstacles in his path, "the problems are too big in this state to say there’s only Republican answers and Democratic answers."
His voice raspy, Christie spoke animatedly about the rough-and-tumble campaign, his immediate governing goals, and the sudden changes facing his family. "We’re on the job, we’re getting ready," he said. "I’m ready to work ... Failure is not a part of my vocabulary."
Christie spoke in a sparse conference room at the Woodbridge municipal building on a day that also included a formal meeting with his transition leaders.
New Jersey’s first anti-abortion governor since the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision, Christie said he is not sure if he will push for abortion restrictions he supports during his first year in office, such as a 24-hour waiting period, parental notification and a ban on so-called "partial birth" abortions.
A parental notification law is "something we can agree on, Republicans and Democrats, and certainly it’s something I’m going to try to get done," he said. "But it’s certainly not the first thing I’m going to be thinking about when I walk in the door.
"I haven’t made up a priority list yet beyond the first three — which is tax relief, spending cuts and reform of urban education," Christie said.
His transition team is collecting resumes to fill his cabinet, he said, but he would not name anyone under consideration for key posts. He said running mate Kim Guadagno, who will New Jersey’s first lieutenant governor when the two are sworn in Jan. 19, may be put in charge of a department.
"Budget times are tough, and I don’t know that we necessarily want to be creating a whole new staff for the lieutenant governor," he said.
Christie said he would not rule out hiring Ralph Marra or Michele Brown, his former colleagues from the U.S. Attorney’s office who faced criticism during the campaign.
"People who have real problems won’t be in the administration. People who have problems that are contrived for attempted political advantage won’t be hurt by that," he said. "That doesn’t necessary mean they’re going to be in, but if they’re not in, that won’t be the reason why they’re not.
Christie said he is planning a January inauguration, headed by brother Todd Christie and advisor Bill Palatucci, and says he’s "not beneath begging" idol Bruce Springsteen to perform. Before he is sworn in, he said he plans to place his financial assets in a blind trust to avoid conflicts.
His wife, Mary Pat, will keep her part-time job as a broker, he said, and the couple and their four children will not move to the governor’s mansion from their home in Mendham Township. They will use the Princeton Township residence, Drumthwacket, for weekly family dinners and the occasional pizza party and sleepover with Guadagno’s children.
They’re also adjusting to the omnipresence of state troopers.
"I went to go to (son) Patrick’s football game last night, and I couldn’t drive myself over there," said Christie, whose poor driving record became an issue in the campaign. "I said, ‘The people of New Jersey are relieved.’"
Asked to name the lowest point in the campaign, Christie said, "One?" then paused for several seconds, as if replaying the nine months in his mind. He eventually named the period when the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which he led for seven years, became fodder for attack as Democrats questioned whether Christie used his corruption prosecutions to launch a political career.
"That was probably the low point for me, because it was unexpected. I knew they were going to go after my brother, and I hated that, but I knew it was coming," he said. "You talk about people who have been very good public servants for decades that were impugned — that was probably the lowest point for me, because they’re my friends, and I felt badly for the fact that it was me running for this job that was causing this, that at least put them into that position."
Christie did take one swipe at Corzine’s campaign tactics, including a wave of expensive negative advertising.
"It was a lot of money they spent on something that said nothing about him — except something bad about him by implication, that he was willing to do this kind of stuff," Christie said. "I think it was just an awful strategic decision by their team, and by extension, a bad decision by him."
He said there were no apologies or allusions to the attacks during his first lengthy phone conversation with Corzine.
"The tone of our voice put it behind us," said Christie, who called Corzine "desperate" and a "failure" on the campaign trail. "I didn’t have an angry tone, or a standoffish tone in my voice, and neither did he."
"I’m just not going to get angry at people who were opposed to me, or even people who I thought did awful things to me during the campaign," he said. "It doesn’t make any sense. You won. That’s the ultimate vindication."
Politickernj.com -
GOP leaders rejoice in Christie's ability to unify, while Dems still skeptical
Leaders of a once fractured minority party - over the last years seemingly constantly at the verge of splitting farther apart - see unity in Gov.-elect Chris Christie.
During the campaign, Christie regularly invoked the example of former Gov. Tom Kean, a moderate, then publicly embraced movement conservative Steve Lonegan in the closing days of the general election campaign to solidify his Republican base.
Kean's son, state Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) said he believes Christie's leadership abilities are expansive enough to include both the conservative wing and moderate wing of the GOP, in addition to independents and Democrats.
Not unlike his own father's skills in that regard.
"My father worked with a Democratic legislature in both of his terms as governor," Kean said of former Gov. Kean. "Chris also has the ability to work in a bipartisan way."
Christie's more conservative tendencies coupled with campaign trail trumpeting about turning Trenton upside down and Christie Campaign Chairman Joe Kyrillos' acknowledgement that Christie will "push outcomes," however, have some Democrats already in off-the-record bunker mode.
"I'll be curious to see what he has to offer," Assemblyman Joe Cryan (D-Union), the state Democratic Party chairman, told NJN News in the aftermath of a grueling campaign.
"It had better be in the interest of the people of New Jersey," he added.
Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Princeton) anticipates a fight.
"Christie's in the catbird seat," Gusciora said. "I think he could very well be a two-termer. He could offer a $15 billion budget and dare Democrats to increase it. The programs to be cut would be those affecting our base: jobs, healthcare and state workers. Democrats are going to have to step up to the plate."
Alert to the $8-$10 billion budget deficit the state is facing, Kean this week called on Corzine not to engage in any lame duck spending.
"We've seen it before, a late flurry of spending and massive last minute appointments, and in the interest of giving Gov.-elect Chris Christie flexibility in a budget crisis, I call on Gov. Corzine not to do that," said the minority leader.
On the conservative side of the spectrum, state Sen.-elect Mike Doherty (R-Washington Twp.) believes Christie ultimately paid proper respect to the party's conservative wing during the general election.
The conservative feels especially energized heading into the upper house knowing Christie will be governor.
"Gov-elect Christie has a good ability to identify leaders," Doherty said. "I remember some time ago seeing (Lieutenant Gov-elect) Kim Guadagno at an event and I thought, 'she's really on the ball.' Obviously, Chris Christie figured it out. That's what made Ronald Reagan great: the confdence to put winners in key roles."
What about movement conservative leader Steve Lonegan in the Christie cabinet?
"Steve Lonegan is a smart guy with incredible energy," said Doherty. "It would be a tremendous asset to have him in the cabinet. Of course, it's up to Chris Christie to put his team together."
Of Christie's prospective relationship with the legislature, "He certainly knows all the legislators and has a good relationship with leadership," said Doherty. "Being a Jersey guy means a lot. I think Jon Corzine, coming from Illinois, was then stuck in his tower at Goldman Sachs. You look at that compared to a guy (Christie) who was born in Newark, who moved up Bloomfield Avenue to Livingston, who knows how tough people are in New Jersey."
Doherty praised Kean early for his leadership during the senate presidency struggle.
"As a new member of the Republican caucus I'm impressed with the leadership of Tom Kean, Jr.," said the Warren County-based senator. "He recognizes if the Republican Party stays together we're stronger."
Kean would not say whether he believes Christie's presence as governor would alter the terrain heading into next year's vote in the full senate.
"The Republican caucus has 17 votes, Senate Majority Leader Steve Sweeney (D-West Deptford) has 15, and Senate President Dick Codey (D-Roseland) has eight," said Kean. "That dynamic has not changed."
Max Pizarro is a PolitickerNJ.com Reporter and can be reached via email at max@politicsnj.com.
