Yet another step in the political deflation of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is underway — and it’s a potentially big one. Christie had shot up in the polls due to his handling of Hurricane Sandy and his willingness to work with President Barack Obama in a bipartisan way. “Bridgegate” has undermined his image of a more bipartisan type of Republican and now his handling of Sandy funds is under attack.
His state wrecked and reeling from Superstorm Sandy, Chris Christie made himself the face of New Jersey’s comeback effort with a take-charge tour de force that became a cornerstone of an expected run for president.
But the made-for-campaign-ads story of resurrection is now riddled with failures: poor performance by contractors, accusations of insider deals and increasing frustration from homeowners still waiting for recovery funds. In the aftermath of the George Washington Bridge scandal, Gov. Christie and top members of his administration also face questions about whether he and his aides used disaster relief funds to reward friends and punish enemies.
This is a biggie. If you take these two narratives together, it pretty much undercuts his sales pitch to not just national voters but to the way he argued his case to voters of his own state in his re-election bid.
At a recent public hearing on Sandy recovery, Jane Peltonen ripped into state officials: Sixteen months after the storm, she said, her Brigantine home is still in shambles and financial assistance from the state has not arrived. Once encouraged by Christie’s pledges of quick help, she now has nothing but angry words for him.
“A lot of us are still waiting,” she said during the often-raucous hearing. “Right now it is a black eye on our state. Where’s the governor? I think maybe he’s in Chicago, or maybe Texas. Do you really think he’s going to make sure we get help?”
In fact, Christie was in Chicago that day, wooing big donors in his role as chairman of the Republican Governors Assn.
(Well, politicians do have to have priorities, don’t they?)
At town hall meetings crowded with Sandy victims, Christie has acknowledged the recovery delays, but said much of the blame lay elsewhere — in poor policies, insufficient funding and “immeasurable” red tape devised by federal agencies. He defended his administration’s overall handling of the recovery.
“I never promised you, nor would I, that this was going to be mistake-free,” Christie said in Toms River recently.
Nor did state or national voters ever promise Christie that the respect with which he was held and his branding as a different kind of politician would survive evidence that he’s just the same ‘ol same ‘ol.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.