Chris Christie – Page 13

Christie’s friends

There may be nothing to any of these associations and conversations, but Chris Christie’s defensive responses — answer by going on the attack — do not leave me with a lot of confidence that these stories should be ignored.

The buck stops here — sort of

Chris Christie has denied allegations that he used his “connections” to force a “lenient plea deal” in a federal tax fraud case saying “he could not have exerted influence over the case because he did not learn of it until Tuesday, when a reporter informed him about the lawsuit.”

Christie’s response was reported in today’s Star-Ledger.

There is no reason to doubt his comments — the U.S. Atorney’s office is a big place. But there is something in his comments that raises other questions. Here is what he said, according to the Ledger:

Christie said he did not actually sign the charging document outlining the crime, which bears his signature, saying that was common practice in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“There were probably 12 to 14 people at any one time who had the authority to sign my name to documents,” Christie said before a campaign event in Ewing. “My name’s on every piece of paper that goes out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I’m responsible for everything that goes on there, but what the allegation is, is that somehow I used influence to get some better deal, which I didn’t even know about the case, so my influence wasn’t used for anything because I didn’t even know about the case.”

So he knew and was involved in all of the corruption convictions won by his office, but not this? There were a dozen people who could sign off on charges, plea deals and the like, using his name, but he didn’t necessarily have to even hear about this stuff? What else didn’t he know about? This is accountability?

Will we get answers to these questions? Not likely. Why do I say this? Because the Republican candidate “blamed Corzine, who trails Christie in public opinion polls and whose campaign has criticized Christie for other dealings with Stern and Inglesino, who contributed to Christie’s campaign.”

“I understand the desperation of the Corzine campaign. I understand they’re desperate and they’re flailing away, but that doesn’t make it true, and the fact of the matter is I didn’t know anything about this case any of the time I was at the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” Christie said.

Another crack in the facade?

There always was a danger in Chris Christie portraying himself as Mr. Clean and basing almost the entirety of his campaign on this image. Allegations like this one and the questions that still surround his hiring of his former boss at the federal Justice Department, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, to a lucrative monitoring contract — should they stick in the public’s mind — have the potential to undercut his reputation, which is all he really has to run on.

One accusation is easily dismissed; a second becomes harder to ignore. If more of these questions are asked, well, then it becomes serious.

Let’s face it, Christie’s two chief virtues always have been his record as a lawman and the fact that he is not Jon Corzine at a time when it is not popular to be Jon Corzine.

He offers little on the budget — the state’s primary problem — offering vague promises to cut taxes and make tough decisions and then waiving off the tougher questions.

Corzine has his own problems — and not because the economy has worsened an already dire fiscal situation in the state. He’s not been nearly aggressive enough in challenging the status quo in Trenton, which has undercut his own promises to right the state’s fiscal ship.

Christie goes into the final three-plus months with a significant edge — those polls — but he’s no lock. He’s a Republican in a state that trends Democratic, running against a candidate with a seemingly endless supply of cash. If the squeeky clean rep gets tarnished, if he is seen as too socially conservative, and/or the public doesn’t buy his budgetary prescriotions, what now appears a foregone conclusion could become an upset.

Poll positions: A GOP firm issues its own numbers

OK, so we have another poll showing us something we already know — voters in New Jersey are not happy with the governor and, at least at the moment, ready to hand the reins off to his Republican challenger.

But the poll in question — conducted by Strategic Vision — may not be the best one to hang one’s hat on, primarily because of two things:

Strategic Visions has among its clients a bevy of conservative groups, including U.S. English and is run by a former campaign operative for Bob Dole’s presidential race.
The other issue with the poll results can be seen in this bit of info:

The results of the poll also showed that 50 percent of those polled approved of President Barack Obama’s overall job performance, with 40 percent disapproving; and 10 percent undecided. When asked if they approved of the President’s handling of the economy, 47 percent approved and 45 percent disapproved.

That means that Strategic Visions has Obama at about 10-12 percentage points below what other New Jersey polls have shown, and may explain why a race that most polls have at about a 7-or-so-point gap is at 15 points in this poll.

I have one other major question: Who commissioned this poll? Strategic Vision does not appear to function as the Gallup, Monmouth or Fairleigh Dickinson polls do. They seem, from their own literature, to be client-driven. So who’s the client in this case?

This description of the polling firm from a 2006 Media Matters piece may shed some light:

Far from being “independent,” Strategic Vision is a Republican polling firm. Johnson, the company’s founder and CEO, worked on former Sen. Bob Dole’s (R-KS) 1988 presidential campaign. Johnson’s personal website — which identifies Johnson at the top as a “Republican conservative” — further notes that while working “at Associated Industries of Florida, he assisted in the development of the association’s political operations department that played a pivotal role in Republicans capturing the State Senate in 1994 and State House in 1996.” Johnson was also involved in Republican Florida governor Jeb Bush’s first gubernatorial campaign. Most media outlets identify Strategic Vision as a “Republican polling company,” such as a March 13 Philadelphia Inquirer article. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted on March 12 that Strategic Vision “has a Republican history,” and the company’s hometown paper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, noted in a March 13 article that the “polling firm lists to the GOP side.”

No one would be foolish enough to argue that Corzine is actually leading or that the race is particularly close. But the prevalence of polling in the coverage, especially when polls like this one get the headlines, tend to create a momentum of their own, making the election results seem a forgone conclusion.

As reporters, we need to be very careful to identify those polls that are most reliable and, should we opt to use polls from places like Strategic Vision, make sure we identify who the polling firm is and take as close a look as we can at the results and how they match up with other more reliable polls.

All I’m asking for is a little respect, just a little bit

We haven’t even gotten out of July and we’re being subjected to this kind of nonsense. The state is facing a massive deficit, has been for ears, one created in a bipartisan manner through the use of shell games and risk avoidance, and Chris Christie wants the governor to accept responsibility for everything and to resign in shame? Please.

Can we treat voters with some respect? Jon Corzine has made little headwa toward fixing the state’s fiscal disaster, but Christie has offered nothing and the voters deserve a debate over what kinds of sacrifices will need to be made — whether it means higher taxes, an unprecedented slashing of services (many of which are popular), historic government restructuring or all of the above.

Mr. Christie has a responsibility at this point to explain what he would cut, who it would affect and why he thinks we can do without. His vague talk has been designed to avoid angering voters, but that should not be his goal. If he thinks he can do a better job governing the state of New Jersey — and it is very possible that he can — he needs to explain what he would do differently than Gov. Corzine and not just talk about making tough choices.