@coluber2001,
He is a soulless vindictive former panderer to 45. Wait until the dirt comes out.
In his first four years in politics, from ’93 to ’97, pro-choice and anti-gun, he challenged an 18-year Republican incumbent in the state senate in a bid that ended almost before it began because of invalid signatures he collected to get on the ballot, ran to be a Morris County freeholder (essentially a county commissioner) and won even though he was sued successfully for defamation for an attack ad, started running again for the state legislature mere weeks after his swearing in and lost badly in his first freeholder reelection effort. “His reach exceeded his grasp,” a longtime GOP pol would tell Ryan Lizza.
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An illustration featuring George W. Bush and the outline of New Jersey
20.
He helped raise (along with future political aides Bill Palatucci and Jon Hanson) half a million dollars for George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign. He went on Court TV as a legal analyst during the Bush v. Gore post-election controversy. Bush’s affectionate nickname for Christie: “Big Boy.”
21.
He was rewarded by Bush with a nomination to be the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey — despite no criminal or prosecutorial experience as a lawyer. In seven years, he oversaw the indictments and guilty pleas of more than 130 elected and appointed political officials — with not one acquittal. He also successfully prosecuted Jared Kushner’s father. “He was a very quick study,” said one of his deputies.
He was elected governor in 2009 with just under 49 percent of the vote. Trump sat in the front row of the Mass at his first inaugural.
25.
He cultivated a reputation as a bully. He called an ex-Navy SEAL a “jerk.” He called various reporters at various times for various reasons “idiots.” He called a Democratic assemblyman “numbnuts.” He heckled a heckler on the Seaside Heights boardwalk while eating an ice cream cone. “That makes me honest,” he told Jon Stewart. “That makes me say, ‘If you’re being an idiot, I’m going to call you an idiot, and if you don’t like it, then stop acting like an idiot.’”
Roger Ailes encouraged him to run for president in 2012.
28.
He thought about it, but he didn’t. He was, however, vice-president-vetted by Mitt Romney. In his speech that year at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, he said “I” 37 times — and “Romney” just seven.
“Bridgegate” broke Jan. 8, 2014 — “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Christie’s deputy chief of staff said in an email to a Port Authority official — and while Christie denied knowledge of the plot to exact revenge on a mayor who hadn’t endorsed him, his popularity cratered from there.
Still governor and back in New Jersey in 2017, with beaches closed due to a budget standoff, he sat in a chair with his family on an empty state park beach at the governor’s official seaside retreat. A Star-Ledger photographer snapped pictures with a long lens from a plane.
He also registered as a lobbyist in 2020 to represent businesses lining up for Covid relief funds.
