Tag: Chris Christie

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Politics

Poll: New Jersey Voters say Bridge-Gate Hurt Christie’s Chances in 2016

wpid-2014-01-15-08-48-29 Poll: New Jersey Voters say Bridge-Gate Hurt Christie's Chances in 2016

TRENTON — Even after the bridge scandal, New Jersey voters say Gov. Chris Christie is more of a leader than a bully. But about half say Bridgegate damaged his presidential chances, according to a new poll.

The Republican governor earned one of his lowest “bully” scores since Quinnipiac University started asking the question more than three years ago. Voters say Christie is more of a leader than a bully, 54 percent to 40 percent. Democrats feel differently, saying, 56 percent to 37 percent, that he’s more bully than leader.

Democrats have labeled a Christie a bully and say he created a culture that make it OK for his allies to close lanes to the George Washington Bridge, creating an epic traffic jam in Fort Lee in September, to punish the borough’s mayor. The governor has denied any involvement.

Asked if the scandal damages Christie’s chances as a 2016 presidential contender, about 49 percent of voters who are aware of Bridgegate say ‘yes’. Another 7 percent say the scandal ends those White House chances, while 2 percent say it helps them and 38 percent say the scandal will have no impact.

“Christie for President? This scandal hurts his chances, both Democrats and Republicans think,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “But – maybe it’s pride in having their governor tops on the list – many New Jerseyans think he’s still up there.”

Quinnipiac surveyed 1,207 voters from Jan. 10 – 13. During a Jan. 9 marathon news conference that fueled national interest in the bridge scandal, Christie said, “I am not a bully.” The poll has a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.

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New Jersey Politics

Report: Under Christie’s Leadership, New Jersey’s Poverty Rate hit 52 Year High

It seems that when Chris Christie’s mentor asked this question – “is that what you want in your president?”-  he was not only talking about Christie’s possible involvement in the BridgeGate crisis. It is quite possible that he got a glimpse of this report.

Poverty in New Jersey continued to grow even as the national recession lifted, reaching a 52-year high in 2011, according to a report released today.

The annual survey by Legal Services of New Jersey found 24.7 percent of the state’s population — 2.1 million residents — was considered poor in 2011. That’s a jump of more than 80,000 people — nearly 1 percent higher than the previous year and 3.8 percent more than pre-recession levels.

“This is not just a one-year or five-year or 10-year variation,” said Melville D. Miller Jr., the president of LSNJ, which gives free legal help to low-income residents in civil cases. “This is the worst that it’s been since the 1960 Census.”

And it may get worse: The report warned Census figures for 2012 to be released this month may be higher. Those numbers are expected to show some of the impact from Hurricane Sandy, which took a bite out of the state’s economy and destroyed a large amount of affordable housing.

The numbers for New Jersey — one of the wealthiest states in the nation — mirror a national trend. In 2011, the federal poverty rate was the largest it had been in 18 years, according to the Congressional Research Service.

“The Great Recession was the worst major economic event since the early ’30s,” Miller said. “It’s taken longer for the U.S. to come out of it.”

The report — the seventh issued by Legal Services — defines being poor in New Jersey as a family of three making less than $37,060. That’s twice the federal poverty rate because New Jersey’s cost of living is among the highest in the nation.

The report found:

• A record high of more than 630,000 children — 31.2 percent — lived in a household defined as poor.

• The percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds living in poverty rose from 26.9 in 2007 to 32.8 in 2011.

• Of families headed by single mothers, 22 percent were poor compared to 3.6 percent of families headed by a married couple.

• African-Americans and Hispanics had poverty rates at least three times higher than whites.

• …Boosted by the consistency of Social Security payments, the percentage of elderly who were poor dropped from 26.7 in 2007 to 26.2 in 2011.

• Six counties — Passaic, Cumberland, Hudson, Essex, Atlantic and Salem — had more than 30 percent of their population living in poverty in 2011.

• Among cities, nearly 65 percent of Camden residents lived in poverty, and 79 percent of children lived in poor households. Poverty topped 50 percent in Passaic, Lakewood, Paterson, Trenton and Newark.

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Politics

Governor Dirty – More Retribution Claims aimed at Chris Christie

HOBOKEN — In the wake of the George Washington Bridge controversy, several Democratic mayors are speaking out saying they, too, believe they were punished by the Christie administration for failing to endorse the Republican governor’s re-election in November, WNYC reports.

Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said that after Hurricane Sandy, she applied to the state for a Hazard Mitigation Grant. In the spring, when Christie asked her to endorse him for re-election during a face-to-face meeting, Zimmer told the governor no.

“He was quite disappointed, but I wouldn’t say that he was angry,” she told WNYC.

When her request for grant funding came back, she said, Hoboken received $300,000 of the $100 million in grants requested — less than 1 percent.

“With 20/20 hindsight, in the context we’re in right now, we can always look back and say, ‘Okay, was it retribution?'” Zimmer told the station. “I think probably all mayors are reflecting right now and thinking about it, but I really hope that’s not the case.”

Meanwhile Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop has said Christie’s office apparently canceled several meetings the day after Fulop refused to endorse the governor.

In Elizabeth, Mayor Chris Bollwage claims Christie targeted the city and shut down the Division of Motor Vehicle’s office there after its state legislators fought Christie on several pieces of legislation.

“The governor’s retribution was to close down the Division of Motor vehicles here in the city of Elizabeth, which is the fourth largest city in the state of New Jersey,” Bollwage said in the report.

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Politics

Feds Investigating Chris Christie and Hurricane Sandy Relief Funds

When it rains, it pours. Chris Christie,  presently dealing with the bridgegate controversy, is now faced with another crisis – a federal investugation into his use of Hurricane Sandy funds.

The Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has opened a federal investigation into whether New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) improperly used Hurricane Sandy relief funds to produce commercials starring himself and his family ahead of his re-election campaign.

Auditors will examine how the Christie administration used $25 million set aside for “a marketing campaign to promote the Jersey Shore and encourage tourism,” focusing on the bidding process to award a $4.7 million to a politically connected firm that cast Christie and his family in the Sandy ads, while “a comparable firm proposed billing the state $2.5 million for similar work” but did not include Christie in the commercials.

The ads produced by the company, MWW, attracted significant criticism. The New Jersey Star Ledger accused Christie of siphoning off “money that was intended for victims of Sandy to promote himself in a series of TV ads,” and described the move as “offensive” and a ” new low.”

Watch the ad here:

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Politics

Chris Christie – The Ultimate Definition of The Republican Party

Some Republicans are claiming Chris Christie isn’t really one of them. Some pundits are claiming, even as scandal erupts around him, that he’s a “different kind of Republican.” He’s more than that: He is the archetypal Republican, the incarnation of its arrogant, corporatist soul.

It’s like we said a while back: Christie is “the heartless, smug, bullying embodiment” of his party. He and his staff reflect a world in which other people are nothing more than rubes to be manipulated and exploited, whether they’re trying to escape the trap of long-term unemployment or Fort Lee during the morning rush hour.

The conventional wisdom says that Christie’s not like other Republicans. Pundits say he’s a “moderate,” a “pragmatist,” a counterbalance to the far-right ideology of the Tea Party Republicans. But no leading Republican is really moderate, including Christie. And at the end of the day they’re all pragmatists, ready to do whatever it takes to serve their paymasters’ agenda.

Democrats and liberals routinely express frustration and bafflement at Republican hypocrisy. “They claim to hate big government,” they’ll say, “but they want to expand the Defense Department. They say they want government out of our lives, then vote to control women’s sex lives or manage a brain-dead woman’s care from the nation’s capital.”

Well, yeah.

It’s true that Republicans are hypocritical in word and deed. But while they may be false to an ideology, they’re always true to their mission: to promote and serve the interests of big corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals. And when it comes to that agenda, all of them — the Chris Christies as well as the Paul Ryans — are as extremist as the political climate will permit. Whether the subject is taxation, “corporate personhood,” or the future of the planet, there’s no room for either moderation or ideology in the service of corporate goals.

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Politics

Chris Christie’s Mentor on Christie – “Do You Really Want That in Your President?”

Tom Kean

It is safe to say that former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean Sr. is responsible for Chris Christie’s political career. When Christie was 14 years old, it was Tom Kean Sr. who held his hand and brought the young teenager into politics.

In an interview with the Washington Post published Saturday, former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean Sr. (R) had some rather interesting things to say about the possible brain behind the Bridgegate scandal, Chris Christie.

“On the one hand, I think he’s got a lot to offer,” Kean Sr. said. “I think he’s the most able politician since Bill Clinton. On the other hand, you look at these other qualities and ask, ‘do you really want that in your president?’”

Earlier in the week, Kean Sr. expressed similar sentiments to the Associated Press, saying that barring new details, he thought Christie would “survive” the bridge scandal. Yet the events set precedent for a thin margin of error in the future.

“If there’s a pattern of these things, if other incidents emerge with similar characteristics, that’s going to be a real problem,” Kean Sr. told the AP.

Kean Sr.’s relationship with Christie reached rocky ground in November, when the governor maneuvered to ouster his son, Tom Kean Jr., as GOP leader of the New Jersey state Senate. The move left Kean Sr. “as surprised as I’ve ever been in my life in politics,” the AP noted.

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Politics

For Chris Christie, This is a Delicious Combination – PIC

Like music to the… taste buds…

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Politics

Shaquille O’Neal on Chris Christie – “I believe him.”

Shaquille O’Neal scored headlines last year when he threw his considerable weight behind Republican Chris Christie in the race for New Jersey governor.

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that the NBA legend is still supporting the embattled would-be presidential contender as he struggles with arguably the greatest crisis of this tenure: ‘Traffic-gate’.

Several members of Christie’s inner-circle allegedly conspired to create bad traffic in Fort Lee, New Jersey, ostensibly as retribution against that city’s mayor, a Democrat who opposed Christie’s re-election.

Christie has vehemently denied any role in or knowledge of the scheme.

Shaq takes Christie as it his word, reportedly telling TMZ, “I believe him.”

“When you have a lot of employees, it’s kind of very difficult to police everybody. Some leaders let people police themselves and some of them micromanage and try to police everybody. One thing I know about Christie: He’s not a micromanager,” O’Neal, also a New Jersey native, said.

“The unfortunate thing about being a leader is that when you’re on a team and a teammate makes a wrong decision, it’s all going to come back on you,” he added.

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Politics Rachael Maddow

Rachel Maddow Offers Alternate Theory For Christie’s Bridge-Gate

Brilliant. Let me summarize. Christie was mad at New Jersey’s Senate Democrats because they were giving his nominees a hard time, so he decided not to re-nominate one of his close friends, a Republican, yo the judicial bench.

They’re “animals” an angry Chris Christie said about the Senate Democrats, in a hastily called press conference held to explain why he was not re-nominating his friend to the bench. That press conference, where he called the Democrats “animals,” was held on August 12th.

A little after 7am on August 13th, a message was sent from Christie’s office saying, “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

The head of the Senate Democrats represented Fort Lee.

This is as good as it gets.

Try and keep up…

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Politics

Here Comes The Ads – Comparing Christie to Nixon – Video

We’re still in the middle of this Bridge gate controversy, but already Democrats have released their first ad.

Using Christie’s own words and tying those words into New Jersey’s Bridge-Gate scandal, Democrats manage to paint a very dark picture of what a Christie presidency could be like for this nation.

Video

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Politics

Chris Christie Has Done This Before – Firing Someone For “Lying” When They Didn’t

Governor Christie’s statement Thursday that he fired senior staffer Bridget Anne Kelly after being “misled” about the George Washington Bridge traffic jam has echoes of an episode when he fired his education commissioner more than three years ago.

In August 2010 Christie claimed that his education chief at the time, Bret Schundler, lied to him about a bungled application for $400 million in federal Race to the Top funds. But Schundler fiercely disputed the charge that he misled the governor and quickly showed reporters emails to prove his case.

“The governor called me a liar,” Schundler wrote in a seven-page chronology of events relating to the application. “I have no choice now but to defend my name.”

At the time, a Christie’s spokesman said Schundler was engaging in “revisionist history.”

The dispute occurred when New Jersey lost the first round of the Race to the Top contest by only three points out of 500. The failure to include budget data for 2008 and 2009 in the application cost five key points.

After losing the contest, Christie said at a Wednesday press conference that the state had provided the budget data to a panel of judges in Washington D.C. – and blasted the Obama administration’s “drones” for being too bureaucratic in their rules. But a video released by the U. S. Department of Education the next day proved Christie’s remarks to be inaccurate; the Schundler team did not have the budget data on hand.

Christie fired Schundler soon after the video came out.

Hours after his termination, Schundler showed reporters emails that he sent to the governor’s top staff before the Wednesday press conference; the emails underscored that he did not present the necessary budget numbers to the panel. Schundler told reporters that before the governor’s televised tirade, Schundler had made it “crystal clear” that he did not have the precise numbers with him for the judges’ review.

Christie told reporters back then that the takeaway from the episode was “Don’t lie to the governor.”

Schundler responded that the governor was being “dishonest.”

“The governor is embarrassed,” Schundler added at the time “He looks and blames somebody else. And it’s usually not the misstep; it’s usually the coverup that gets people in trouble.”

Schundler declined to comment Thursday. A former mayor in Jersey City, he now serves as a consultant for a charter school in the city.

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Politics

Class Action Lawsuit Filed in Bridge-Gate Scandal

A class action complaint has been filed in federal court against top government officials connected to the George Washington Bridge scandal, the Fort Lee, N.J., attorney behind the move said Thursday.

The complaint — filed in the U.S. District Court of New Jersey by attorney Rosemarie Arnold — takes aim at key players in the controversy, naming Republican Gov. Christie, former Christie aide Bridget Kelly, former Port Authority officials Bill Baroni and David Wildstein, the State of New Jersey, and the Port Authority as defendants.

As a class action suit, the exact number of members has not yet been determined, but according to the filing “includes any and all individuals and business owners” who were inconvenienced or hurt by the lane closures between Sept. 9 and Sept. 13. According to Arnold, the plaintiffs work or live in or near Fort Lee or New York City and are citing economic damages by the lane closures.

The complaint follows a whirlwind week for Christie, who said in a press conference Thursday that he was blindsided by a report in The Record that said that senior members of his staff were connected with the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge.

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