I should have touched on this yesterday, but it slipped beneath the radar thanks to some computer issues.
Nevertheless, what we have here is a story that is both very New Jersey and very Washington GOP. U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, widely believed to be angling for the Republican nod for governor in 2009, is coming under fire for handing a rather lucrative contract to monitor a settlement with a company facing criminal charges over to his former boss, former Attorney General John Ashcroft.
With no public notice and no bidding, the company awarded Mr. Ashcroft an 18-month contract worth $28 million to $52 million.
That contract, which Justice Department officials in Washington learned about only several weeks ago, has prompted an internal inquiry into the department’s procedures for selecting outside monitors to police settlements with large companies.
The contract between Mr. Ashcroft’s consulting firm, the Ashcroft Group, and Zimmer Holdings, a medical supply company in Indiana, has also drawn the attention of Congressional investigators.The New Jersey prosecutor, United States Attorney Christopher J. Christie, directed similar monitoring contracts last year to two other former Justice Department colleagues from the Bush administration, as well as to a former Republican state attorney general in New Jersey.
The appearance here, as Christie himself notes, is not exactly above board.
Christie has defended the contract and appointment, pointing to Ashcroft’s integrity and his experience running the Justice Department. He also said Zimmer Holdings never objected to the appointment or to Ashcroft’s contract.
“I know the way our process worked internally there was no coercion,” Christie said in an interview yesterday. “But I also understand in the aftermath there was the perception of coercion, and you have to deal with that perception.”
And the perception is out there. The liberal blog Blue Jersey has been critical of Christie on a number of levels since an alleged investigation of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was leaked to the press in the waning hours of the 2006 Senate race. PolitickerNJ has picked up on it, as well. And even Harper’s has something on it.
Perhaps, this is all appearance. But appearance is reality in politics. Chris Christie has been hailed buy many as the white knight on a white horse battling corruption. While that always seemed overblown, his reputation had always been rather clean.
The Ashcroft contract, however, makes the other criticisms seem more valid — and leave Christie looking like nothing more than your garden-variety New Jersey politician.
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
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Hank Kalet 