New Jersey Political Bosses-- Very Bipartisan: Norcross Is The Glue That Binds Christie And Trumpf

During Christie's term, Democratic boss George Norcross has become more powerful than ever

So far this weekend, crackpot right-wing governor Paul LePage (R-ME) and crackpot ex-Governor Jan Brewer (AZ) endorsed Herr Trumpf in the wake of Chris Christie joining Team Trumpf. Herr was also endorsed by French Nazi Jean-Marie Le Pen. But the big story is still the bully bromance between Herr and Christie and how a combination of pure opportunism and Christie's psychotic hatred for Rubio drove the train.



Pro-Publica star investigative journalist Alec MacGillis, writing for the New Republic took Chris Christie apart two years before he infuriated the Republican establishment by endorsing Herr Trumpf for president. It's worth revisiting today because, where the Republican establishment hasn't had much coherent to say beyond catty remarks about Christie's penchant for overeating and blowing up like a balloon, MacGillis started off by pointing out that the once popular governor "has been so singularly successful at constructing his own mythology-- as a reformer, a crusader, a bipartisan problem-solver--that people have never really seen him clearly" as the criminally minded corrupt stinking pile of garbage he has always been. His investigation leads him to conclude what many sensed all along, namely that "the problem with Christie isn’t merely that he is a bully. It’s that his political career is built on a rotten foundation. Christie owes his rise to some of the most toxic forces in his state-- powerful bosses who ensure that his vow to clean up New Jersey will never come to pass. He has allowed them to escape scrutiny, rewarded them for their support, and punished their enemies. All along, even as it looked like Christie was attacking the machine, he was really just mastering it."

Christie's big claim to fame-- being appointed a U.S. Attorney by Bush was a simple business transaction. Christie raised $350,000 for Bush's campaign, enough for Christie to qualify as a Bush "Pioneer" and contributed nearly 30 grand of his own money to GOP candidates and bought himself an appointment despite having no experience whatsoever in criminal law. Christie won the approval of New Jersey's senior senator, Robert Torricelli, a criminal himself looking for an ally for the scandal cases under investigation by the U.S. Attorney's office. Soon after taking over, Christie got rid of the chief investigator, Michael Guadagno, which is credited for keeping Torricelli, a Democrat, out of prison.

To say that corruption was a problem in the Garden State was an epic understatement—its political system might as well have been expressly designed to facilitate public fraud. The state’s official history is one of legendary self-dealers: Enoch “Nucky” Johnson built and ruled Prohibition-era Atlantic City from the ninth floor of the Ritz-Carlton. The midcentury mayor of Jersey City, Frank Hague, earned a salary of $8,500 a year and yet left office with a fortune of $2 million. His signature accoutrement, according to Jersey lore, was a desk with an outward-facing drawer in which visitors would deposit their bribes. As one mayor of Newark memorably put it, “There’s no money in being a congressman, but you can make a million bucks as mayor.”

In most of the United States, the big political machines have been broken, or reduced to wheezing versions of their former selves. In New Jersey, though, they’ve endured like nowhere else. The state has retained its excessively local distribution of power-- 566 municipalities, 21 counties, and innumerable commissions and authorities, all of them generous repositories of contracts and jobs. The place still has bona fide bosses-- perhaps not as colorful as the old ones, but about as powerful. The bosses drum up campaign cash from people and firms seeking public jobs and contracts, and direct it to candidates, who take care of the bosses and the contributors-- a self-perpetuating cycle as reliable as photosynthesis.

...Fighting public fraud, [Christie] announced, would be his office’s top priority after terrorism. “Corrupt politicians will steal your trust, your taxes, and your hope,” he told a New Jersey crowd in 2007. The problem was not, he noted, “an insufficient number of targets.”

Soon after Christie took office, Essex County’s Republican executive, Jim Treffinger, was out walking his dog when seven police cruisers surrounded him. Treffinger knew he was under investigation for awarding no-show jobs to friends and extorting campaign donations in exchange for contracts. He had repeatedly offered to surrender to authorities when the time came. Instead, his wife and daughter watched from the house as he was thrown up against a car and frisked, an image that appeared in the next day’s Star-Ledger, which had been tipped off to the arrest.

At first, Christie said the arrest had been left to the marshals. But later, he cast Treffinger’s treatment in moral terms. Corrupt officials, he said, shouldn’t be coddled-- they were “worse than the street criminal because the street criminal never pretends to be anything but what he or she is.” (Local lawyers wondered whether the public shaming might be linked to Treffinger’s observation, caught on a wiretap, that Christie was a “fat fuck” who “wouldn’t know a law book from a cookbook.”) “The perception was that the U.S. attorney was sending a message,” one lawyer told me.

The next seven years unfolded like a never-ending perp walk, as Christie racked up more than 130 convictions and guilty pleas for elected and appointed officials. He had a knack for extracting the maximum p.r. from every arrest or indictment. “The office leaked like a sieve,” one Democratic operative recalls. “I had reporters calling me at four in morning and saying, [so and so] is going to get pinched.”

Democrats howled that Christie was on a partisan witch-hunt, since he targeted so many more Ds than Rs. But it was hard to take such accusations very seriously. After all, New Jersey’s power structure was dominated by Democrats, and Christie was uncovering undeniable cases of abuse. One state senator pleaded guilty for accepting a low-show job at a medical school in exchange for state grants, another to accepting a $25,000 “success fee” for helping a mining company obtain permit approvals. Longtime Newark Mayor Sharpe James got 27 months on charges stemming from the sale of steeply discounted city properties to an ex-girlfriend. (James’s successor, Cory Booker, is the first mayor of Newark not to be indicted since 1962.)

Besides, to accuse Christie of protecting Republicans over Democrats was missing the point. True, his office had knocked out a swath of New Jersey’s biggest Democratic power brokers and weakened their organizations in crucial parts of the state. But that meant the bosses left standing had only grown stronger.

In 2002, an insurance firm in Mt. Laurel received an unexpected e-mail from a man named George Norcross. Congratulations, Norcross told the firm: It had won a big contract for the Delaware River Port Authority, which oversees four bridges in the Philadelphia area. The e-mail was unexpected because the firm hadn’t bid for the job. But there was no need for thanks. The company was simply expected to send Norcross’s insurance company $410,000 over the next few years, as a “finder’s fee.”

This is how things work in the world of George Norcross III. Officially, he is the supremely wealthy chairman of Conner Strong & Buckelew, one of the largest insurance firms in the nation; the chairman of Cooper University Hospital in Camden; and, as of last year, the majority owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Unofficially, he is the most powerful man in New Jersey never to have held elected office. Close observers of state politics have estimated that more than 50 elected officials in South Jersey owe their positions to Norcross (including his brother, a state senator [Donald Norcrosss, more recently one of the more conservative Democratic members of the U.S. House]). Much of the money he raises for candidates comes from people and companies eager to secure government work or development deals, as documented over the years by his local paper, the Courier-Post, among others. Norcross’s own firm holds sway over New Jersey’s large municipal insurance market. (He declined to comment for this article.) “George is probably the smartest politician we have now in the state of New Jersey,” says former Republican State Senator John Bennett. “He knows where the power is and goes to the power. Whether that power is a Republican or Democrat.” ...Norcross is silver-haired and impeccably dressed and runs his operation out of well-appointed boardrooms. He is only foul-mouthed in private.

On numerous occasions, Norcross’s operation has come under legal scrutiny-- from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), state investigators, and the FBI. The cases are labyrinthine, but they all involve some dubious overlap of his many public and private interests. One case in particular threatened to get real traction. In the early 2000s, several New Jersey attorneys general investigated whether he had pressured a Palmyra councilman to fire a city solicitor, Ted Rosenberg, who wasn’t cooperating with the machine. Wiretaps offered a rare glimpse of a man completely convinced of his power. “[Rosenberg] is history and he is done, and anything I can do to crush his ass, I wanna do cause I think he’s just a, just an evil fuck,” Norcross said. In another conversation, referring to then-top Jersey Democrats, he declared, “I’m not going to tell you this to insult you, but in the end, the McGreeveys, the Corzines, they’re all going to be with me. Not because they like me, but because they have no choice.” While discussing plans to remove a rival, he exclaimed: “Make him a fucking judge, and get rid of him!”

In February 2003, Norcross met Christie for a steak dinner at Panico’s in New Brunswick. It was, to put it mildly, highly unorthodox for a U.S. attorney to sit down with a political boss who was the subject of state and SEC attention. But Christie brushed off the criticisms. “I’m very careful with who I would go out with,” he said. “If I’m looking at somebody, I’d try to stay away from them.”

That, to the skeptics, was just the issue. His corruption squad was scrutinizing dozens of lower-profile figures, all the way down to an Asbury Park councilman charged for getting his driveway paved for free. Why wasn’t he looking at Norcross? And didn’t he realize that he might have to in future? Sure enough, the following year the state attorney general referred the Palmyra case to Christie’s office.

Two years later, Christie issued a scathing six-page letter announcing that he would not bring any charges against Norcross. It was a remarkable document. Not only did Christie openly declare a controversial figure to be home free, but he accused the state prosecutors of bungling the case so badly that they may have been shielding Norcross. “The allegation of some bad motive on the part of the state prosecutors is very unusual,” says Andrew Lourie, a former chief of the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice.

High-ranking legal sources in the state view the letter as the ultimate Machiavellian maneuver. They agree that there may not have been a strong case to bring against Norcross in the Palmyra case after so much time had lapsed. But by publicly accusing his state counterparts of protecting Norcross, Christie was inoculating himself against accusations of favoritism. One of the former attorneys general who’d handled the case, John Farmer, who went on to become senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission and is now dean of Rutgers Law School, told me: “The statements and insinuations contained in that letter were, as I said at the time, utter nonsense. The passage of time has only magnified their essential absurdity.”

Norcross may have been the most formidable player to escape Christie’s net, but he wasn’t the only one. Another was Brian Stack, a state legislator and Union City mayor who exemplifies a Jersey tradition Christie had long railed against: holding paid elected office at both the state and local levels. Stack maintains his constituents’ loyalty with acts of largesse such as doling out 15,000 free turkeys at Thanksgiving. He is rewarded with Soviet-style vote totals. (His slate won 92 percent in 2010.) In 2007, Christie conducted a massive investigation into legislative earmarks. It found that Stack had secured $200,000 in state grants that benefited a day-care center run by his then-wife. Charges were brought against other legislators for directing money to entities in which they held a personal interest, but not Stack.

There was also Joe DiVincenzo Jr., lumbering and gregarious, the protégé of legendary Newark community leader Steve Adubato Sr. In 2002, “Joe D.” ran to replace Treffinger as executive of Essex County, the largest source of Democratic votes in the state. Rumors raged that he, too, was under investigation, for conflicts between his freeholder duties and his job (one of four he held at the time) at a produce company with a county contract. Then, right in the heat of the primary, Christie released a statement denying that Joe D. was under investigation. “It was totally unprecedented. I’ve never seen that done by a sitting U.S. attorney,” said DiVincenzo’s opponent, now-Assemblyman Tom Giblin. “Trying to get a letter out of the U.S. attorney’s office is usually like pulling a wisdom tooth.” After Joe D. took office, he invited Christie to give county workers a symposium on ethics.

Finally, there was Glenn Paulsen of Burlington County, who had become the most powerful Republican power broker in the state in part because of his symbiotic détente with Norcross. Norcross got a lot of business for his insurance firm in Burlington County, while Paulsen’s law firm got plenty of municipal work in Norcross territory. In 2006, Christie’s office secured a guilty plea from a Republican operative, Robert Stears, for hugely overbilling several million dollars of lobbying work for the Burlington County Bridge Commission. According to one person with knowledge of the matter, it seemed likely that more revelations would follow and that an investigation of the commission’s spending could draw in Paulsen, and perhaps even Norcross. Stears, according to Christie’s announcement, was cooperating with an “ongoing criminal investigation.” In court, he explained that he had been “sucked into a corrupt group of people” and that he had been directed how much to bill the commission and how much to donate to the county Republican Party, which had been led by Paulsen. “Everyone was waiting for the second shoe to drop,” David Von Savage, the former GOP chairman in Cape May County, told me. It never did. “Chris essentially dumped that investigation-- he absolutely dumped it,” says one lawyer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. “As a favor to these guys, he tanked the investigation completely.”

By taking down some of the state’s bosses while leaving others off-limits, Christie had effectively turned the supposedly apolitical role of prosecutor into that of kingmaker. It was a brilliant strategy. New Jersey offered such a target-rich environment that Christie was able to get credit for taking down a slew of crooked officials and build alliances with some of the most powerful bosses in the state at the same time. Christie’s allies insist that he wasn’t playing favorites. “I can’t imagine Christie would suggest in any way, ‘I want you to lay off of this guy or go after this guy.’ It’s inconceivable to me,” says Ed Stier, a former federal and state prosecutor. Still, by the end of his tenure, Christie began showing up to administer the swearing-in ceremonies of town officials who were replacing the ones he’d pursued. No one could recall a prosecutor doing so, says one longtime Jersey hand: “It was like he was giving them his blessing.”

...[R]ight from the outset, Christie was working as closely with the machine as any recent governor. Well before his election, the Democratic bosses had met at the U.S. Open in Queens to divvy up the leadership spoils. Sheila Oliver, who worked under Joe D. in Essex County, would become the speaker of the Assembly. Sweeney would get the Senate presidency. Sweeney was a union man-- an ironworker-- but he was a Norcross man first and foremost. When it came time for the vote on Christie’s proposal to cut public-employee pensions and health benefits, Sweeney delivered the numbers. It was a coup for Christie-- national pundits hailed him as a politician more interested in getting results than scoring partisan points.

In hindsight, what is notable is how openly Christie embraced the bosses. He sent massive resources in their direction; when they came under fire, he vouched for them. In early 2011, it emerged that Stack’s wife, now estranged, had been allowed to use city SUVs for personal use and fill up for free at the city’s natural gas pumps. Christie defended him: “I have no reason to question Brian Stack’s integrity.” (Stack returned the compliment, calling Christie “the greatest governor the state has ever had.”) On paper, Union City embodies the kind of waste that Christie has vowed to eliminate-- it paid its police chief a handsome $248,000 in 2011 and provides health benefits to part-time elected officials. And yet it has been showered with cash from Trenton-- about $12 million per year in discretionary “transitional aid.”

Christie’s bond with DiVincenzo was just as overt. Corzine’s attorney general had led an investigation into voter fraud by election workers in Essex County, after reams of absentee ballots were filled out to benefit Joe D.-approved candidates. Following Christie’s election, the case was quickly wrapped up with a handful of light sentences for low-level workers. During his term, Essex County has been deluged with millions for big capital projects. The relationship has thrived despite 2012 revelations by the Star-Ledger that Joe D., who makes $153,000 per year on top of a $68,000 pension for the same job (via a legal loophole), has claimed an astonishing list of reimbursements from his campaign funds for personal expenses, such as a trip to Puerto Rico and more than 100 meals over the course of three months. In 2011, Christie observed that Joe D. had been with him “right from day one.”

As for George Norcross, he is more powerful than ever. “It’s not just South Jersey anymore. Now it’s way beyond that,” says the longtime Jersey hand. Christie consented to Norcross’s pick to lead the patronage goldmine that is the Delaware River Port Authority.* The following year, the authority gave a $6 million grant to a cancer center at Norcross’s Cooper University Hospital. Next, Christie pushed through a controversial measure that granted Norcross his desired merger between Rutgers-Camden and nearby Rowan University.2 The result was a well-funded university that will further expand the Norcross empire—boosting beleaguered Camden, yes, but also putting even more jobs, money, and development projects at his disposal. (A former Navy SEAL attending Rutgers-Camden challenged the merger at a town-hall meeting. As he was escorted out by police, Christie hollered after him: “After you graduate from law school, you conduct yourself like that in a courtroom, your rear end is going to be thrown in jail, idiot!”)

...In early 2013, as Christie’s reelection neared, the operation kicked into overdrive. Christie was fixated on securing Democratic endorsements to bolster his image as a Republican with crossover appeal. It didn’t matter that he was expected to waltz back into office—people needed to get on the list. The administration’s intergovernmental-affairs staff, who knew which mayor or county official had gotten which grant, was moved almost wholesale to the campaign. Christie himself made repeated calls to mere county-level officers: clerks, sheriffs, registers of deeds.

For those who got behind the governor, there were incentives. To give but one example: The close-knit Orthodox community in Lakewood had endorsed Corzine in 2009. In March, a coalition of the town’s rabbis and businessmen announced it would be backing Christie this time around. Two months later, the state granted $10.6 million in building funds to an Orthodox rabbinical school in Lakewood, one of the largest expenditures for any private college in the state. (The yeshiva was not exactly cash-strapped: A copy of its application I obtained noted that its endowment “far exceeded” the $1.84 million it was expected to contribute to the project.)

As Election Day neared, you could be forgiven for mistaking Christie for a Democrat. State Republicans were frozen out; candidates were told not to include his name or picture on their literature. “We didn’t get the support,” says George Wagoner, a losing Assembly candidate. Meanwhile, the weight of the Democratic machine swung behind the Republican governor. More than 50 Democratic elected officials endorsed Christie, including Brian Stack (who was hit with a $68,725 fine in July for failing to properly disclose campaign spending) and Joe D. (who also has a large fine looming). In photos and media appearances, Christie kept showing up smiling alongside Sweeney and other prominent Democrats. Norcross didn’t formally endorse Christie, but he made his approval clear. At one event, Norcross said he’d recently seen a man in a “Chris Christie: too big to fail” t-shirt. He told Christie: “You’re not too big to fail-- you’re too good and too important to fail us.”

Meanwhile, Barbara Buono, the state senator who had volunteered to challenge Christie when more prominent Democrats, such as Cory Booker, declined, was unable to raise anywhere near enough money for a credible campaign. Numerous Democratic donors refused to give above the $300 threshold where their names would be disclosed, fearing Christie’s retribution. “I’d say to people, ‘What is going on?’” Buono recalls. “This is an election, not a military junta.” She attended one campaign rally in a North Jersey church, at which Sheila Oliver, once a reliable ally of the bosses, railed against unnamed powerful people who were supporting Christie only because he had a “dossier” on them. A month before the election, a picture surfaced on Twitter of Christie and Norcross, arm in arm at a Cowboys-Eagles game in Philadelphia. “I didn’t think [Norcross] would embrace me,” says Buono. “But I didn’t think he’d work directly against me.” In the end, Christie won by 22 points and Republicans gained not a single seat in the state Senate.

And now we come to the national uproar over the mother of all traffic jams in Fort Lee. Christie has denied any knowledge of the ruse. But it has become increasingly hard to credit his ignorance, given how deeply involved he had been in his team’s political outreach to local officials, not to mention that the names of many of his closest aides were surfacing in communications about the closures. Among national Republicans, even some of Christie’s most vocal backers have started to waver. One Republican strategist told me: “No one’s rushing out there to defend him, because they don’t know where this could go next.”

The Democratic bosses, though, are standing by their man. Norcross declared that, instead of obsessing over the bridge, national Democrats should be “pretty concerned about circumstances involving the implementation of Obamacare right now.” Joe D. struck a blasé tone: “Every place I go, people say, ‘What do I care? Why are we talking about it?’ ” And Brian Stack blasted the claim that Christie had threatened to withhold Sandy aid from Hoboken as “far-fetched.” “My relationship with the governor and his staff and this administration has been one of the best,” Stack said-- as if that wasn’t part of the problem.

What Bridgegate has laid bare is the skill and audacity with which Christie constructed his public image. “It’s almost like people were in a trance,” Buono told me. Christie may have been misunderstood for so long because his transactionalism diverted from the standard New Jersey model. He wasn’t out to line his own pockets, or build a business empire. He wasn’t even seeking to advance a partisan agenda. And yet it was transactionalism all the same. Christie used a corrupt system to expand his own power and burnish his own image, and he did it so artfully that he nearly came within striking distance of the White House. When he got cozy with Democratic bosses, people only saw a man willing to work across the aisle. When he bullied his opponents, they only saw a truth-teller. It was one of the most effective optical illusions in American politics-- until it wasn’t.

Good thing Christie has all those friends inside the corrupt Democratic establishment and the criminal machines that are so intent on making sure Hillary can count on New Jersey to keep Bernie at bay. After all, after Christie's endorsement of Trump, his ties inside the GOP establishment are... very frayed. Yesterday the New York Times heavy-duty reporting trio of Alexander Burns, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin explained the fumbling efforts of the GOP establishment to stop Herr Trumpf. On Feb. 19 Rove was insisting to GOP fatcats that a Trumpf nomination "would be catastrophic, dooming the party in November" and that it is not inevitable and can be stopped. The next day Maine's Paul Le Pen "erupted in frustration over the state of the 2016 race, saying Mr. Trump’s nomination would deeply wound the Republican Party. Mr. LePage urged the governors to draft an open letter 'to the people,' disavowing Mr. Trump and his divisive brand of politics. [A week later he endorsed Trump.]

Efforts to unite warring candidates behind one failed spectacularly: An overture from Senator Marco Rubio to Mr. Christie angered and insulted the governor. An unsubtle appeal from Mitt Romney to John Kasich, about the party’s need to consolidate behind one rival to Mr. Trump, fell on deaf ears. At least two campaigns have drafted plans to overtake Mr. Trump in a brokered convention, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has laid out a plan that would have lawmakers break with Mr. Trump explicitly in a general election.

Despite all the forces arrayed against Mr. Trump, the interviews show, the party has been gripped by a nearly incapacitating leadership vacuum and a paralytic sense of indecision and despair, as he has won smashing victories in South Carolina and Nevada. Donors have dreaded the consequences of clashing with Mr. Trump directly. Elected officials have balked at attacking him out of concern that they might unintentionally fuel his populist revolt. And Republicans have lacked someone from outside the presidential race who could help set the terms of debate from afar.

The endorsement by Mr. Christie, a not unblemished but still highly regarded figure within the party’s elite-- he is a former chairman of the Republican Governors Association-- landed Friday with crippling force. It was by far the most important defection to Mr. Trump’s insurgency: Mr. Christie may give cover to other Republicans tempted to join Mr. Trump rather than trying to beat him. Not just the Stop Trump forces seemed in peril, but also the traditional party establishment itself.

Should Mr. Trump clinch the presidential nomination, it would represent a rout of historic proportions for the institutional Republican Party, and could set off an internal rift unseen in either party for a half-century, since white Southerners abandoned the Democratic Party en masse during the civil rights movement.

...While still hopeful that Mr. Rubio might prevail, Mr. McConnell has begun preparing senators for the prospect of a Trump nomination, assuring them that, if it threatened to harm them in the general election, they could run negative ads about Mr. Trump to create space between him and Republican senators seeking re-election. Mr. McConnell has raised the possibility of treating Mr. Trump’s loss as a given and describing a Republican Senate to voters as a necessary check on a President Hillary Clinton, according to senators at the lunches.

He has reminded colleagues of his own 1996 re-election campaign, when he won comfortably amid President Bill Clinton’s easy re-election. Of Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell has said, “We’ll drop him like a hot rock,” according to his colleagues.

Oddly-- hypocritically-- Republicans can't bring guns into the July convention, but I'm hearing more and more about people looking into nitroglycerine. This year there's a better way to strike at The Machine than at a GOP convention. Help Alex Law defeat Norcross' corrupt little brother Donald in South Jersey. You can do it here.




UPDATE: More Christie Baggage

The defunct Christie campaign's Finance Chair, Meg Whitman called Christie's endorsement of Herr Trumpf "an astonishing display of political opportunism." Her full statement:

Chris Christie's endorsement of Donald Trump is an astonishing display of political opportunism. Donald Trump is unfit to be President. He is a dishonest demagogue who plays to our worst fears. Trump would take America on a dangerous journey. Christie knows all that and indicated as much many times publicly. The Governor is mistaken if he believes he can now count on my support, and I call on Christie's donors and supporters to reject the Governor and Donald Trump outright. I believe they will. For some of us, principle and country still matter.

People Want To Know Why We Endorsed Bonnie Watson Coleman In NJ-12 Instead of Linda Greenstein. OK, Here's Why

Bonnie knows what team she's playing for-- New Jersey's working families

When Blue America decided to endorse Bonnie Watson Coleman one thing that weighed heavily on our decision was how-- when the climate was tough-- Bonnie stuck with Barbara Buono while the Linda Greenstein was running ads touting her fealty to Christie. It drove many of us at Blue America up the wall at the time and it made our endorsement of Bonnie pretty much inevitable. There have been a lot of people telling us that either would be a good replacement for Rush Holt and that both are "progressive Democrats." That's patently absurd. Technically it's true but the reality is far more nuanced. Linda Greenstein is a progressive... she is a conservative... she is a moderate... she believes in Chris Christie's policies… she is against Chris Christie's policies... she is essentially whatever the polling and focus groups tell her to be in order to win her next election.

In this race, Bonnie Watson Coleman is the only true progressive, and the real Democrat. Bonnie has always been there fighting on the front lines for working families and has always stood up for her beliefs and her principles when others were silent. She doesn't follow along with tough positions when it's easy. She leads when it's hard. That's why Blue America endorsed her.

When it came time to vote to abolish the death penalty in New Jersey, Bonnie proudly did so. Linda Greenstein did not. And, when the New Jersey Assembly was debating their marriage equality bill, Bonnie spoke up, loud and proud, when many were silent. Including Linda Greenstein. Here is Bonnie’s floor speech.

And, like I said, the kicker, when it came to standing up to that bully Chris Christie, Bonnie proudly stood with our friend Barbara Buono. While some Democrats like Linda Greenstein stood silently and took cover when some members of the party helped Chris Christie, Bonnie took on an even larger leadership role and became Barbara's Campaign Chair. While Bonnie was out there with Barbara fighting day in and day out against Christie’s transactional, self serving politics Linda was running ads saying that she would work with Christie.

The truth is that Linda is not a progressive Democrat, and she has not considered herself progressive until polling came back to suggest that she should be. Here is a link to an interview that Linda gave just after Rush Holt announced that he was not running.  Go to 1:42 to hear how progressive Linda considers herself to be. The fact that she can't even say if SHE is progressive, let alone as progressive as our friend Rush Holt, frightens me.

Linda voted time and time again with Chris Christie’s Bridgegate hatchet man Bill Baroni when he was also in the New Jersey Legislature because she was more concerned with maintaining her position then she was standing on principle. She voted against our values on bills that would limit campaign contributions from entities with government contracts, benefit those making real estate transactions that are over one million dollars and voted against legislation to provide financial aid to public school districts that need it the most. She also chose not to vote on a bill that would criminalize racial profiling.

Linda is not progressive, Linda has never been progressive, and Linda will not be progressive. The truth is that she has flirted with being progressive because her polling and focus groups said that is what the voters of the 12th district want. The truth is that you can’t lead from behind, and you can’t lead based on polling.

Please join me to support Bonnie Watson Coleman, and fight to ensure that Rush Holt’s progressive legacy is carried on. You can donate to Bonnie’s Campaign here!

New Jersey: "A System Where Back Room Deals, Fueled By Greed And Self Interest, Are Just The Order Of Business"

Symbols of New Jersey's transpartisan and all-pervasive corruption: Norcross (D) and Christie (R)

One of my personal favorite candidates last year was Barbara Buono. It wasn't just because of her sparkling personality and her warmth and her courage, it was also for her forward-thinking ideas and her amazing platform. Digby, John and I all spoke with her in person and all of us couldn't have been more proud for Blue America to have endorsed her and raised some campaign money for her. In yesterday's NY Times story by Jason Horowitz on Democrats' buyer's remorse, there was a line that caught my attention-- the one about how Barbara "bitterly complained about the betrayal of Democrats who barely lifted a finger to help her." Barely lifted a finger? They lifted fingers all right-- on behalf of Christie. What was it… 80 Democratic mayors who endorsed Christie? And the Jersey machine bosses? What corrupt stinking Republican governor were they all playing backy-scratchy with? They didn't "barely left a finger" for Barbara Buono… they supported their partner in crime and corruption, Chris Christie.

And Christie wasn't suddenly a thug when the story about the George Washington Bridge broke. He was a thug and a slob for his entire miserable life. And New Jersey's transpartisan political elites embraced him as fully aware-- and enthusiastic-- about that as they were after he got caught.

“Hillary Clinton wrote me a nice letter-- after I lost,” Ms. Buono said, pointing out that the potential Democratic standard-bearer did nothing to support the candidacy of the party’s first female nominee for governor of New Jersey. (“You and I are no strangers to the challenges of seeking and holding public office,” read the letter, signed, “Hillary.”) “The vice president called me directly-- after I lost.” Senator Cory Booker, the New Jersey star? “No no no. No, no,” she said. “I didn’t get help from a lot of people, and he was one of them.”

The list is rife. Patrick Gaspard, the former White House political director and Democratic National Committee executive director, promised help but did not deliver. The committee’s chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, “came at the very end and it was like you were at a funeral, she was just not very encouraging.” When Ms. Buono asked the chairwoman to send out an email from her fund-raising list, Ms. Wasserman Schultz suggested she would and then “didn’t even do that; isn’t that sad?” (Ms. Wasserman Schultz has since gone on the Christie warpath, following the governor around the country and telling reporters: “Chris Christie has a culture of intimidation and retribution in his office. It was directed at his own constituents.”)

Ms. Buono seems to enjoy what she referred to as the “guilt” of some of her delinquent Democrats.

“I get calls from people sometimes, and I don’t return them,” Ms. Buono said mischievously. “I got a call from Maggie Hassan after the election. She is the governor of New Hampshire. We had tried to get her in a gajillian times and she wouldn’t.”

Watch this concession speech-- not especially the gracious first 5 minutes of thanking her supporters, but where she goes after that:

We took on the bosses and the political machine that has defined New Jersey politics for far too long… We rose above the political system that too often requires surrendering one's values, a system where back-room deals, fueled by greed and self-interest, are just the order of business. The Democratic political bosses, some elected and some not, made a deal with this governor, despite him representing everything they're supposed to be against. They didn't do it to help the state. They did it out of a desire to help themselves politically and financially.

Ever hear a Democrat talk that way? There's more about the "onslaught of betrayal from our own political party":



Today Christie-the-head-of-the-Republican-Governors-Association is visiting Chicago while his administration unravels back in Trenton. Ted Strickland is in Chicago giving a press conference about the George Washington Bridge scandal a few blocks from Christie's hotel. And none of the Illinois gubernatorial aspirants want to be in the same room with Christie, let alone photographed with him. The locations of his events is being kept secret from the media and the public. Even Christie cheerleader and would-be GOP presidential nominee Joe Scarborough called him a "distraction to the RGA… If Republicans’ job is electing governors and you’ve got a guy running the RGA that has Republican candidates running away from him, that’s a serious problem and he needs to sit down and do some soul searching to see whether he wants to defend charges against him or continue this. I don’t think he can do both."

Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican campaign strategist, said he would not advise one of his candidates to appear with Christie right now.

"The last thing you want to do as a gubernatorial candidate is stand up at a press conference and be asked 15,000 questions about the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey and New York," Rollins said. "You want to be able to tell your story. And unfortunately it’s the Christie story."

Rollins said that probably won’t change any time soon. "For the next several months, it will be a distraction," he said.

And then there was this short but telling interview with former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (D) on Chris Hayes' show on MSNBC last night:

Chris Christie's Political Ambitions: Dead In The Water-- And Getting Deader

On Meet The Press yesterday, Chris Matthews ended the segment on the rapidly expanding Chris Christie scandal by pointing out that Christie's greatest hit in the eyes of the general public was how much of an activist, on-the-ground leader he was when Hurricane Sandy devastated wide swathes of New Jersey. Matthews pointed out the incongruity of Christie's supposed nowhere-to-be-found posture when his aides shut down the George Washington Bridge for 4 days. Until now, people have seen Christie not as the corrupt overbearing and thuggish bully he's always been, but as a no-nonsense get-the-job-done kind of politician. Although his political allies and ideological kinsmen inside the Eastern conservative establishment insist, kind of desperately, he can recover, most observers realize his bid for the Republican presidential nomination for 2016 is dead in the water. New Jersey legislators are talking about impeaching him now.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie claims no involvement in "Bridgegate" despite spending hours with his deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, on the day Kelly was receiving messages related to the shutdown of George Washington Bridge lanes.

The head of the New Jersey Assembly panel investigating the politically motivated lane closures said that's a reason Christie's claim to have been unaware of the plot is "not credible."

Kelly, fired by Christie last week, was the one who gave the code red shutdown order to a Christie appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, saying it was "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

With the traffic jams in place, Kelly spent time on her personal e-mail account receiving messages from authority officials on what to tell reporters on Sept. 12, the day she later accompanied Christie in response to the Seaside Heights, N.J., boardwalk fire.

"She spent the rest of the day with the governor at the fire scene at the Seaside boardwalk," Assemblyman John Wisniewski said Sunday in an appearance on Face The Nation on CBS. "This senior aide, who was with him that day, who sent the order, never once communicated with him? It's unbelievable."

Wisniewski, a Middlesex County Democrat who is chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, also said impeachment of Christie is possible if it can be proved the Republican governor had direct involvement or participation in the lane closures.

That would make Christie's chances of winning the Republican nomination just slightly better than Rod Blagojevich's-- and Blagojevich, who was impeached by the Illinois legislature in 2009 and is now in prison, is a Democrat. And now other New Jersey mayors are coming forward with their own stories about how Christie punished them for refusing to endorse him. Jersey City mayor Steve Fulop, was one of them.

Fulop decided against endorsing the governor. Within an hour of relaying his decision, the mayor said, meetings with several state commissioners were canceled. Since then, he said, "nearly every single meeting we have requested with state commissioners with regard to proactive Jersey City issues has been unfortunately rejected over the last six months, along with countless requests we made to the Port Authority" of New York and New Jersey, a bistate agency Mr. Christie jointly controls with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

…Other Democratic mayors who declined to support Christie told the Journal that they faced no retribution for their decisions. But Sokolich and Fulop may have company in Hoboken, N.J. Mayor Dawn Zimmer, who told the Journal that she was invited to the state capital in Trenton last year to discuss federal relief dollars for Superstorm Sandy, but the talk eventually turned to gubernatorial endorsements.

Although she said it "was not that easy to tell him no," Zimmer ultimately decided to stay neutral in the race.

She told WNYC that after making her decision, she received considerably less money. She originally requested $100 million in grants to help protect Hoboken from flooding-- the city was largely underwater after Sandy-- but only received $300,000 in return.

“With 20/20 hindsight, in the context we're in right now, we can always look back and say, 'Okay, was it retribution?'” Zimmer said. “I think probably all mayors are reflecting right now and thinking about it, but I really hope that that's not the case.”

A federal investigation, separate from the New Jersey legislature's investigation, into Christie's bridge shutdown, is gathering information. But today it came out that there's a second, unrelated, federal investigation into another manifestation Christie's authoritarian-- and criminal-- mindset: his misuse of the Hurricane Sandy relief funds that were at the center of his political turnaround and made him into a popular governor. (Before Sandy, he looked like someone who was far from inevitable for reelection.)

CNN has learned that federal officials are investigating whether Christie improperly used those relief funds to produce tourism ads that starred him and his family.

…If the Sandy inquiry finds any wrongdoing, it could prove even more damaging to Christie's national ambitions. His performance during and after the superstorm has been widely praised and is a fundamental part of his straight-shooting political brand.

In the new probe, federal auditors will examine New Jersey's use of $25 million in Sandy relief funds for a marketing campaign to promote tourism at the Jersey Shore after Sandy decimated the state's coastline in late 2012, New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone told CNN.

In an August letter, Pallone asked the Department of Housing and Urban Development inspector general to look into how Christie chose to spend the marketing money approved by the department.

…Pallone wrote that he was concerned about the bidding process for the firm awarded the marketing plan; the winning firm is charging the state about $2 million more than the next lowest bidder. The winning $4.7 million bid featured Christie and his family in the advertisements while the losing $2.5 million proposal did not feature the Christies.

On Sunday, Pallone told CNN that the inspector general conducted a preliminary review of the spending and concluded that there was enough evidence to launch a full-scale investigation into the state's use of federal funds. The audit will take several months, and the findings will be issued in an official report, he said.

Pallone, a 27-year veteran of the House and vocal Christie critic, said this is not about politics.

"This was money that could have directly been used for Sandy recovery. And, as you know, many of my constituents still haven't gotten the money that is owed them to rebuild their homes or raise their homes or to help," he told CNN.

Last week state Senator Barbara Buono, who many in New Jersey now regret they didn't vote for when she ran against Christie, predicted he won't finish his gubernatorial term. Slamming both the Republican and Democratic corrupt party bosses, Buono feels certain that Christie will either resign or be forced from office by impeachment proceedings or criminal charges. "Right now," she said in a statement over the weekend, "we have no idea how far this scandal goes. The Governor has created a culture where cavalierly endangering citizens' lives to exact political retribution is an acceptable form of governance. It's beneath the dignity of his office and a breach of New Jerseyans' trust. Everyone who had knowledge of the closing should be terminated immediately and the Department of Justice should conduct a thorough investigation to determine whether other towns in New Jersey suffered because the Governor wanted to get revenge."

Looks Like Humpty Dumpty Is Falling Off A Bridge-- Will Chris Christie Resign?

"They are the children of Buono voters."

When Blue America endorsed Barbara Buono for governor of New Jersey last year, it wasn't because she's pretty and it wasn't because she's a Democrat. It's because she's an outstanding, principled progressive and because she was running against the corrupt transpartisan New Jersey political machine headed by one of America's worse governors ever, Chris Christie. New Jersey voters, basking in their ignorance and pigheadedness, elected Christie 1,252,100 (60.4%) to 790,245 (38.1%). Hudson County (Jersey City, Bayonne, Hoboken, Union City) was the only county Christie lost. Bergen County was more typical and it gave Christie the most votes of any county in New Jersey, 128,950. For comparison's sake Obama beat Romney in Bergen County 193,470 (55%) to 155,267 (44%).

Ever since Rachel Maddow broke the story about Christie and the George Washington Bride-- which all the other national networks obstinately ignored-- we've been keeping an eye on it here, happily aware that this could be Christie's undoing. This could keep the only Republican candidate polling anywhere near Hillary Clinton for 2016, out of the race. In fact, after today's revelations, Christie may have to consider resigning as governor. "Time for some traffic problems." Really?

A top aide to Gov. Chris Christie told an executive at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey it was "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee" before the authority closed lanes onto the George Washington Bridge in September, triggering a week of massive traffic jams, documents show.

The aide, Bridget Anne Kelly, sent the email, dated Aug. 13, to David Wildstein, a political ally of the governor who was the authority's director of interstate capital projects.

Mr. Wildstein, replied: "Got it."

The email exchange is the clearest sign that a series of lane closures on the bridge in September were carried out at the behest of high-ranking members of Mr. Christie's administration. It is in contrast with the original explanation for the closures-- that they were part of a mishandled traffic study by Mr. Wildstein, a career political operative and friend of Mr. Christie's for years.

Democrats have suggested the lane closures were a political gesture from allies of the governor, aimed at Fort Lee's Democratic mayor, who had declined to endorse Mr. Christie for reelection.

The email exchange is contained in a trove of documents subpoenaed from the authority, Mr. Wildstein, and others as part of a Democrat-led investigation of the incident by the New Jersey Assembly Transportation Committee. The documents were reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

In the past, Mr. Christie has dismissed the inquiry and the traffic incident, once joking that he himself had moved the traffic cones to close off the lanes usually dedicated for local traffic coming onto the bridge.

But the controversy has deepened since then. Mr. Wildstein and Bill Baroni, the deputy executive director and Mr. Christie's top managerial appointee at the authority, both resigned, though Mr. Christie suggested their resignations weren't directly linked to the bridge flap.

…The documents also show Mr. Wildstein discussing the controversy with Bill Stepien, Mr. Christie's campaign manager, after the flap was reported in the Wall Street Journal.

"It's fine. The mayor is an idiot, though," Mr. Stepien wrote to Mr. Wildstein after a Journal story on the controversy in September. "[Win] some, lose some."

"I had empty boxes ready to take to work today, just in case," Mr. Wildstein wrote. He added, in an apparent reference to Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich: "It will be a tough November for this little Serbian."

In the documents, Mr. Wildstein assures Ms. Kelly in an email that he will keep her informed of "how Fort Lee goes."

The documents also show Mr. Wildstein and Mr. Baroni declining to return calls from Mr. Sokolich on the first morning of the closures, in which he complains about "an urgent matter of public safety in Fort Lee."

"Did he call him back?" Ms. Kelly writes to Mr. Wildstein in an email, after Mr. Wildstein forwarded Mr. Sokolich's message left with Mr. Baroni.

"Radio silence," Mr. Wildstein replied, adding a reference to the mayor of Jersey City, with whom the Christie administration has tussled. "His name comes right after mayor Fulop."

Ms. Kelly replied one minute later: "Ty," a shorthand for thank you.

The documents include a series of text exchanges sent during the lane closures, which were provided to the committee by Mr. Wildstein's attorney and contained large blocks blacked out text.

The text exchanges show Mr. Wildstein conversing with various individuals, whose identities aren't always clear.

"I feel badly about the kids," one text reads, sent at 8:05 a.m. on the second morning of the closures. Fort Lee officials have said that school buses were severely delayed by the traffic jams.

"They are the children of Buono voters," someone replies. Barbara Buono was Mr. Christie's Democratic opponent in the race for governor.

You want this piece of shit and his staffers running the country? Or even just the NSA?

UPDATE: Christie Finally Makes A Statement-- Disingenuous, But Still A Statement

Of course, that leads people to point out that it has been Christie's notorious cult of bullying that encouraged his staffers-- whether or not that were getting orders from him directly (and my gut is 100% positive that they were)-- to bully New Jersey residents and other New Jersey elected officials, whether Serbs or Croats.

Tonight's Election Results

The race most people were most interested in today was the lesser-of-two evils gubernatorial election in Virginia. As expected, the lesser of two evils, Clinton bagman Terry McAuliffe, won. The exit polls looked bad for conservatives in Virginia even before voting was finished. Democrats were voting in greater numbers than expected and Republicans were voting in smaller numbers. Pro-Choice voters vastly outnumbered anti-Choice voters, a sure death knell for Cuccinelli and his crackpot War on Women team. The good news: far right extremist Ken Cuccinelli has been thoroughly rejected by Virginia voters. The bad news: Virginia voters just saddled themselves with a corrupt hack as their next governor, likely to not be much of an improvement over the departing corrupt hack-- other than on social issues. At least the war against women, war against immigrants and the anti-gay hysteria won't have a friend in Richmond's Executive Mansion any longer. McAuliffe won a narrow victory 47.9% to 45.5% (with Libertarian Robert Sarvis taking 6.6%). Democratic state Senator Ralph Northam beat far right lunatic E.W. Jackson to become Lieutenant Governor by about 11 points. Cuccinelli had never stopped claiming that the election was a referendum on ObamaCare but it was probably more a referendum on the GOP government shutdown and the Tea Party. Democrats also picked up 2 House seats in the legislature, a disappointment and, an even bigger disappointment very narrowly lost the Attorney General race. Mark Obenshain, a fringe nut is up 1,095,565 over Mark Herring at 1,094,787. There are still some absentees and a few votes to count in blue precincts. This should be argued over for a few days.

Tragically, professional Democrats abandoned their best candidate for anything-- New Jersey state Senator Barbara Buono-- in her quixotic run against political machine hack Chris Christie. New Jersey has definitely been going for entertainment and celebrity over substance lately. At least New Jersey voters passed the new minimum wage increase sy a substantial margin. And, as expected, Bill de Blasio became the first Democratic mayor of New York City in 2 decades, and by a landslide, something over 70% of the votes. The first big Democratic win tonight, though was in St. Petersburg, Florida where progressive Democrat Rick Kriseman beat Republican Bill Foster by 12 points. (Six months ago Foster led in the polls 49-12%.) St. Pete also elected a nicely progressive city council while they were at it. This is all great news for FL-13 Democratic special election candidate Alex Sink.

But it was Rachel Maddow, in her on-going coverage of the Republican Party civil war (above), who explained my favorite contest today. It was in, of all places, southwestern Alabama, including Mobile and the whole of Alabama's coast. It's a hopelessly red district with a PVI of R+15. Last year, President Obama scored 37% against Romney, his best result among Alabama's 6 white congressional districts, most of the state's African-Americans having been gerrymandered into one mostly black district (AL-07), which gave Obama a 73-27% victory against Romney. Back to AL-01; longtime incumbent, Jo Bonner, decided to retire. He had no general election opponent last time he ran for reelection-- nor the time before that and the time before that. A Boehner puppet, tea baggers have tried, unsuccessfully, to beat him in primaries, including teabagger Dean Young. This was their chance-- and Young's chance-- to win the seat. By there's no prize for almost.

Former Democrat and former state Senator Bradley Byrne was the Boehner/Cantor candidate and was endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce and by Bonner. Byrne has raised close to $700,000, mostly in special interest money, and came in first in the crowded primary, with 34.57% of the vote to runner-up Dean Young's 22.95%. Like I said, Young is the Tea Party candidate and he's raised about a third of what Byrne did. Young wants to go to Washington to impeach President Obama, wage war against gays, immigrants and women and vote against Boehner for Speaker. The last poll before today showed him leading Byrne 43.2-40.2%. Young is batshitcrazy and described his supporters as "pitchfork people." Today the pitchfork people were overwhelmed by the city slickers in Mobile, who pushed the contest decisively in Byrne's direction, much to the relief of Boehner and Cantor. Until the Mobile precincts started coming in, Young was in the lead all night. With almost all precincts counted, Byrne had 52.5% to Young's 47.5%. The sigh of relief from the House Republican leadership could be heard coast-to-coast.

I'll update this post in the morning with final results, including how the northern Colorado secession movement fared and how the minimum wage vote in Washington went; it's currently ahead. Seattle did elect its first openly gay mayor, Ed Murray over progressive incumbent Mike McGinn. Here's the final, somewhat misleading Bradley Byrne ad:

UPDATES

In Virginia the attorney general’s race between state Senator Mark Herring (D) and GOP crackpot Mark Obenshain is still far from determined but as more votes come in, it keeps looking better. Technically, it's still a dead heat and will certainly go for a recount. Herring has a 541-vote lead over the psychopath with over 2.2 million ballots cast.

6 of the 11 counties asking their citizens about seceding from Colorado and trying to start a right-wing state voted yes. The only county with more people than cattle, Weld County, voted no, taking the steam out of the whole project. In Weld County, which had more voters against it than all the other counties combined had voting in both directions combined, it failed 57.1% to 42.8%. The worst county-- which Colorado should expel-- was Yuma, where 57 people voted to secede (81.4%). Yuma voted 77% for Romney last year and 84% for crackpot right-wing congressman, Cory Gardner.

Portland, Maine voters overwhelmingly approved Question 1 (70%), allowing for marijuana possession.

I Would Crawl Over Glass On My Hands And Knees To Vote For Barbara Buono Tuesday

Today everyone thinks it's wonderful that the Clinton's corrupt bagman, Terry McAuliffe, is going to win the Virginia governorship. Even I can admit that he's probably better than the Republican alternative, Ken Cuccinelli, an extreme right-wing ideologue and crazy-eyed fanatic. But what a heartbreak that election is! It's the ultimate "lesser-of-two-evils" choice. In New Jersey, the election is anything but that-- a Republican that hides his Cuccinelli side and poses as a "moderate" and one of the best candidates the Democrats have put up for any election, anywhere. Barbara Buono is an ideal candidate and she scared the hell out of the corrupt New Jersey political machines-- not just the GOP machine, but the Democratic one as well. Her campaign has been about the other New Jersey, the one Christie and his coterie have forgotten about. Her appeal has been to working families, the LGBT community, over 400,000 unemployed people, people struggling to make ends meet on minimum wage jobs, New Jersey educators and small businessmen and women. The New Jersey Establishment, as always is a self-serving scam. The bosses, regardless of party, are happy as can be with Chris Christie as governor. He's their kind of politician.

I meet a lot of candidates for office. I rarely meet any as dedicated, clear-headed and inspiring as Barbara Buono. I envy people in New Jersey today because they have the right to vote for her. It's unimaginable to me that any Democrat or independent who's been awake for the last 4 years could vote for Chris Christie.



UPDATE: POLLS ARE OPEN

Rep. Frank Pallone, at 6 this morning as the polls opened in New Jersey: "Today, I ask you to please go out and vote for Barbara Buono for Governor. Barbara is a progressive reformer looking to bring real change to New Jersey. She is a proven champion of working families, who will work to create good, living wage jobs, strengthening our middle class, fight for better education for all of our children, and be a steward of our environment.

"If you need help finding your polling location, this website can assist you. Remember to remind your friends, family, and coworkers that today is Election Day. Tell them Barbara Buono is the right choice for Governor, and remind them to vote for the entire Democratic team."

If Christie wins today, I'll need this photo to defend the country when he runs for president in 2016

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.