Christie

SUMMARY

Chris Christie has an incredibly short, thin career, and he has even that only because he was one of Bush’s money boys and was rewarded with a U.S. Attorney job he wasn’t qualified for. In a very short time his career has been blotted from one end to the other with crooked contract deals, illegal prosecutions, defamation suits, ruined careers, violated campaign promises, fired whistleblowers, fingerpointing, acts of million-dollar incompetence, hard-nosed scrutiny from House investigators, a whupping from a state court for stealing from school budgets and lying about it, and an effort to throw a Senate election by issuing a frivolous subpoena against a political enemy. Obama would just love to run against him.

DETAILS

Chris Christie has only been in the governor’s chair since early 2010, and has already added an amazing amount of baggage to his track record.

He won a local election by lying so egregiously about his opponents that they sued for defamation; a key county employee also sued for defamation. He was so controversial that he was primaried out of office by another Republican; Christie sued for defamation.

He then worked as a lobbyist, blocking regulations against fraud and other corporate skullduggery.

Despite having very little legal experience he got a job as U.S. Attorney by fundraising for Bush and getting a boost from Karl Rove; as U.S. Attorney he came under fire for giving no-bid contracts and legal breaks to relatives and allies, to campaign donors, and to one prosecutor who had declined to prosecute Christie’s crooked brother. One of his violations ruined the career of Michele Brown, an assistant U.S. Attorney. The House Judiciary Committee had to drag him in for questioning; Christie showed up, but then ignored the direction of the committee and ran out on the hearings. The same Committee investigated his use of the court monitor system, and shortly thereafter the Justice Department changed the court-monitor rules to prevent corruption. His tenure as U.S. Attorney was also marred by the illegal use of entrapment and cellphone tracking; the ACLU had to go after him.

He tried to rig a senatorial election by issuing a frivolous subpoena to a Democratic Senator just before the election.

He campaigned on protecting the pensions of police and firemen, and then violated an agreement and cut their pensions as governor, which led to a lawsuit.

He cost New Jersey $400 million in education grants by fouling up the grant application, and then tried to blame Obama for his own mistakes, and fired the official who blew the whistle on him. The New Jersey Education Association publicly slapped down Christie for rejecting a compromise with the unions, which contributed to the mess. Finally he was slapped down by the state supreme court for trying to steal money from poor schools and give property-tax breaks which would disproportionately help the rich. And deceiving the Court in the process.

He essentially proposed to end Medicaid in his state by lowering the eligibility threshold to around $5000 in income.

All this is why he has a net disapproval number in the polling in his own home state.