New Jersey's Gubernatorial Election Is Just Over A Month Away... And Chris Christie Is Still A Disaster

Let me say that Blue America has enthusiastically endorsed state Senator Barbara Buono for governor of New Jersey. We've seen what a terrible governor Chris Christie has been and what a consistent and independent voice for progressive policies Barbara has been and it was really a no brainer. And we're glad Barbara has put his polling lead in half. It's still quite the climb to catch up with him after he endeared himself by hugging Obama in a post-Sandy photo-op. Christie's record is something, apparently, going unstudied by many low-info voters in the Garden State. Last week, the state's biggest newspaper, the Newark Star-Ledger explained why Christie is America's most overrated governor.

Yes, he’s a skilled politician and a talented deal-maker who, for his first two years in office, got nearly everything he wanted from the Democratic Legislature.

But it hasn’t worked. New Jersey’s economy is a mess, even compared with its neighbors. The property tax burden is up sharply. Poverty is rising. And the state’s credit rating has dropped on Christie’s watch as the long-range outlook deteriorates. His successor will inherit a bigger mess than he did.

Crime is spiking in several of New Jersey’s hard-pressed cities, where loss of state aid has forced massive police layoffs. The state’s home foreclosure rate is the second highest in the nation and Christie fumbled a federal aid program intended to soften the blow. Yet he tried to raid a fund earmarked for affordable housing until the courts stopped him.

The list goes on. The state’s open space program is essentially dead, with no money and no ideas from the governor on how to fix it. The transportation trust fund is broke as well, so the governor has financed projects mostly by borrowing and by scavenging money that former Gov. Jon Corzine had set aside for the Hudson River tunnel project, which Christie canceled.

Could he turn this around in a second term? Maybe. But it’s not likely because he’s moving rightward to appeal to voters in the 2016 presidential primaries, shrinking the common ground with Democrats. Christie hasn’t discussed his agenda for a second term, but the era of big bipartisan deals in Trenton may be over.

He rejected sensible gun control legislation, slow-footed the medical marijuana program, and is sticking to his vetoes of the minimum wage hike and the millionaires tax. The standoff on gay marriage continues. And he is stuck in Washington-style gridlock over the state Supreme Court, unable to fill two vacant seats and unwilling to strike a deal.

...The political mystery of the year is how Christie can be so popular when the state’s economy is so rotten. Only 11 percent of New Jerseyans say they are better off than when he took office.

No wonder. Employment is up just 2.2 percent since he swore his oath, the sixth-lowest job growth in the nation during that period, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News.

Incomes are stagnant as well. New Jersey ranks near the bottom of the nation again, tied with Rhode Island for the third-smallest income growth in the country.

Home prices are down 6.7 percent, putting New Jersey in the bottom quartile. Only Florida has a higher rate of foreclosure. And mortgage delinquencies have increased in New Jersey under Christie more than in any other state in the country.

When Bloomberg put all its indicators in one basket, New Jersey ranked 45th among the states, behind all its neighbors.

In fairness, Christie inherited an economy that was already sputtering. The few jobs it produced in the decade before he arrived were almost all in the public sector.

Christie’s economic philosophy is a simple one: Cut taxes and they will come. So he sharply increased the broad-based business tax cuts signed by Corzine, bringing the total to about $600 million a year over the next three years. Subsidies targeted to specific projects jumped as well, to $2.1 billion over the past three years, more than the prior 10 years combined.

To put it plainly, the strategy failed. The tax cuts forced even deeper austerity than the recession demanded, leading to significant layoffs of teachers, police and town hall workers.

Private sector job growth has picked up, and Christie’s team points to data from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve showing an encouraging uptick in overall economic activity, but it hasn’t been enough to lift New Jersey’s economy out of the national basement.

As for the housing crisis, Christie has not only failed to offer a remedy, he has aggravated it by trying to dismantle the state’s affordable housing program and raid an affordable housing fund that was established long before he arrived. When the federal government granted the state $300 million to ease the foreclosure crisis, the money went unused for so long that Christie was forced to concede his administration blew it.

“Government doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to,” he said.

...When Christie hugged President Obama after Sandy, New Jersey swooned. When he unleashed his famous fury on fellow Republicans in the House who dithered over disaster relief, he seemed to rise above the partisan tribalism that has paralyzed Washington.

And that fit a narrative that is both true and compelling: Christie is a Republican who will compromise to get things done. He did so on pension reform, tenure reform and nearly everything else. He’s a grown-up.

But don’t mistake him as a moderate. The more that Republican primary voters learn about him, the more they will like him.

He favors the rich over the poor and middle class every time. In his first budget, he scaled back the earned-income tax credit that lifts millions of low-wage families out of poverty. The veto of the minimum wage hike added to the insult, as did his attempt to grab $164 million from funds earmarked for affordable housing.

Faced with rising poverty, he has ignored the problem. He left federal money on the table that could have helped enroll the uninsured in health plans under the Affordable Care Act. And despite rising college tuitions, he has frozen operating funds to higher education. If he gets his way on the Supreme Court, he says he will cut spending on urban schools and kill the state’s major affordable housing program.

For the wealthy, he vetoed a tax hike on incomes greater than $1 million, handed out unprecedented business tax cuts and tried to cut the income tax, a move that would have given 40 percent of its benefits to the richest 1 percent of families.

On the environment, he’s been a catastrophe. He’s raided nearly $1 billion from clean-energy funds, most of which are financed with surcharges on electric bills. He withdrew from the regional treaty on climate change, abandoned another regional effort to force a comprehensive clean-up of Midwest coal plants and broke a promise to finance open space purchases.

On social issues, he checks all the key boxes. Abortion rights, gay marriage, Planned Parenthood.

And the governor who speaks his mind will not touch the Supreme Court’s decision gutting the Voting Rights Act.

So be careful about the hug. Even hard-core conservatives appreciate some presidential love during a time of need.

If you'd like to see Christie goes down in flames as a one-term governor, and replace him with a strong, smart compassionate progressive-- who will put an end to the state's endemic transpartisan political corruption-- you can contribute to Barbara Buono's campaign here. Hillary Clinton fans take note: polling shows that Christie is the only Republican who has the potential to beat her in 2016. If he's stopped now, he'll be working as a lobbyist in 2016 instead of running for the GOP nomination.