Chris Christie – Page 12

Voters held Corzine accountable; they will hold Christie accountable, too

The New Jersey electorate held Jon Corzine to his word and held him accountable for the mess the state is in, even if he was not responsible for a good portion of the mess.

That said, it will be interesting to see how Chris Christie, the new governor elect, can pull off his agenda without budget gimmicks and what might happen when it becomes obvious that we cannot lower both state and local taxes, cannot promise to cut waste and shrink government without hurting someone, without angering some constituency that he will need down the road.

Who gets hurt is the question that awaits. Who gets hurt? Because someone will get hurt. It is the only way to bridge an $8 billion gap.

Eric Idle for governor?

I love this story, especially because it’s not clear if it is anything more than a prank.

Chris Christie, the Republican candidate for Governor of New Jersey in Tuesday’s knife-edge gubernatorial election, has been called out as a copyright thief. The 47-year-old lawyer, who was controversially appointed by George W. Bush as a U.S. Attorney in 2001 on Karl Rove’s recommendation after being a top Bush fund-raiser in the 2000 election, has created an election commercial that steals copyright-protected material from British comedy troupe Monty Python — without permission or credit.

The official campaign advert — titled “Deja Vu” — attacks incumbent New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine by using scenes from a famous skit on the “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” TV show that features Michael Palin. The ad is on Christie’s official YouTube campaign site, and has already aired on national TV.

But neither Christie — a lawyer for 22 years — nor anyone in his campaign bothered to seek any permission for using the copyrighted material in his election spot.

Alerted to the theft of their copyright, members of Monty Python are most unhappy. Michael Palin, who appears in the clip pirated for the advert, is especially displeased that his likeness is being used by the Republican candidate without permission.

“I’m surprised that a former U.S. Attorney isn’t aware of his copyright infringement when he uses our material without permission. He’s clearly made a terrible mistake. It was the endorsement of Sarah Palin he was after — not that of Michael Palin.”

Monty Python’s Terry Jones says that the troupe is strongly considering suing the Republican for his copyright infringement:

“It is totally outrageous that a former US Attorney knows so little about the law that he thinks he can rip off people. On the other hand — another of Bush’s legal appointees was Alberto Gonzales and he didn’t seem to know much about the law either…,” Jones said.

The New Jersey race already was surreal, but introducing Monty Python takes it to a whole new level.

It’s still a numbers game

It’s about numbers, and the most recent number to hit the New Jersey is the registration figure released by Secretary of State Nina Wells (as reported in The Star-Ledger):

New Jersey Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells said the state has 5.22 million registered voters, down from 5.35 million in 2008 when the presidential race brought a registration surge.

There are still more Democrats than Republicans — 1.77 million to 1.06 million. But Republicans have closed the gap a bit, adding some 5,000 voters since last year. Meanwhile, the number of Democrats dropped by a similar amount.

Nearly half of the voters — 2.51 million — are registered as “unaffiliated.”

It’s not much of a change, especially when you consider last year’s record registration figures. And it seems pretty clear that quite a few of those still registered will be staying home next week. The question is: Which candidate benefits?

Waiting for Christie to be specific on his budget is like waiting for Godot

I have a question for Republican candidate Chris Christie: When do you plan to explain how you can cut taxes, increase property tax rebates and balance a budget that already is expected to be $8 billion in the red next year? Because his public comments — mostly criticism of his opponents tax policies — leave me wondering whether he understands how budgets work.

Consider: If you cut taxes, you’re cutting revenue. That means the state has less money coming in, unless you can find a new source of cash to replace it. If you can’t — or won’t — you will need to make budget cuts to offset the lost revenue.

That’s how a family budget works. Think about a two-income family. If one person is laid off or quits his or her job, then that family has to account for the lost money, either by bringing in new money or reducing the amount going out. That person can find a job or a couple of part-time jobs. The remaining breadwinner can get a second job or someone else in the family can go to work. The alternative is making cuts in what each member spends — driving less, going out to eat less frequently, stretching food or other supplies for longer periods and so on. But the family cannot continue to spend at the same level when less money is coming in.

It works the same way with a state budget.

Christie has been talking about his plan — a vague promise to cut waste and end corruption. OK. If he wins, I hope he’s successful at doing that. The reality is, however, that the waste and fraud he’s talking about will not result in enough savings to cover his own promises, let alone the anticipated deficit.

Unless, of course, he has a different definition of what wasteful spending might be (cutting programs with which he disagrees, for instance) or plans to borrow to plug the gap. If those are possibilities, he needs to say so. New Jersey voters need to know what programs might be on the chopping block under a Christie administration.

If he’s not thought that out, he needs to explain that, as well, so that voters know he is making bogus promises.

It’s about Corzine and Christie, not Obama

I’m getting tired of hearing that a Jon Corzine loss in the New Jersey governor’s race would be an indication of a loss of faith in Barack Obama.

You hear it on cable, in the blogs (especially the right-wing ones) and it pops up from time to time in print: The gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia are bellwethers and can be used effectively as standins for a rerun of the 2008 presidential race or as a preview of the 2010 congressional mid-terms.

In a state where no Republican has won a statewide race in more than a decade, Mr. Christie could be a “bellwether” for a GOP revival in 2010, according to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who stumped with the candidate in the state last month.

Mr. Christie “plays across the state unlike any Republican” in the past several election cycles, Mr. Steele told a gathering of Republican faithful in Pitman, N.J.

“You must be the next governor from this state,” Mr. Steele said. “It is a bellwether in so many ways for the future of our party and the future of our nation.”

The reality is far more complex, at least here in New Jersey, and has little to do with the president’s popularity and everything to do with Jon Corzine’s — or his lack thereof.

Consider the poll numbers and the trends:

Notice anything? Chris Christie has maintained a rather consistent lead since at least April. And if you go back farther, you’ll see that the governor has managed to lead in only two polls all year: a Jan. 12-14 Monmouth/Gannett poll that had him up by 2 percentage points and a Jan. 2-7 Fairleigh Dickinson poll that had him up by 7. Once we hit February, it’s been all Christie.

At the same time, Obama continues to have approval ratings in the 50s (aside from a Rasmussen poll that puts him at 49 percent) nationally and much higher in New Jersey.

Corzine, on the other hand, has some pretty horrid approval numbers — in his case, it might be better to call them disapproval numbers: 37 percent positive and 52 percent negative among registered voters 34-58 among likely voters) in a Monmouth University poll released Sunday.

The evidence, it would seem, just doesn’t support the bellwether meme. But the bellwether meme has nothing to do with New Jersey; it is a national construct that makes good fodder for cable television, which has difficulty getting past their narrow focus on Washington.

The New Jersey governor’s race has played out and will continue to play out on state issues. In the end, it will not be a referendum on Obama, but a referendum on Jon Corzine. The Washington media and the cable TV cranks are just too removed from the ground to understand that.