10 Things You Didn't Know About Chris Christie

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All you yahoos are really saying, is that you're afraid this Republican Rock Star might just end up running for President next year. You don't mean to,...but you Liberal Democrats always telegraph who it is, you're the most threatened by as a political opponent, using over-kill. You're pathetic.

Rich of CA 2:55PM May 24, 2011

The comments are typical of frustrated, uninformed tea baggers who seem to think that they are suffering while residents of the other forty-nine states are having orgies. If they were really concerned about long term solutions to NJ's problems they would demand that the Gov. raise the gas tax. Let the out of staters that drive through NJ by the thousands pay down the pension shortfall caused by Christie Todd Whitman. By the way, Mrs. Whitman and her husband pay $150 @ yr in property taxes because the former governor claims that she is a rancher. Talk about corruption! By the way, NJ has the second best test scores in the nation, right behind Mass. Anyway, who wants to live in a state that makes you buy a beach tag? Talk about an unjust tax!!!

Gerard Iannelli of NJ 2:36PM March 15, 2011

Christie was elected in large part because Corzine was tainted as a Goldman Sachsian with small regard for mere citizens, a feeling underscored by his dismissal of most human rules (like forcing his chauffer to drive at more than 100 miles an hour on the Garden State Parkway between social functions) and his lack of touch with the extant major New Jersey democratic political machines. Christie ran on an anti-corruption platform that has repeatedly resonated well since his election as many of those same local machine democrats have been indicted and many sentenced for graft of all kinds. Christie has charisma (of sorts), is a clear thinker and has certainly pressed the flesh nationally to make his future with the Republican party, but make no mistake: New Jersey itself is a basket case of debt and continued local governmental overspending and waste. The state has the highest property taxes in the nation for middling school results, mostly due to the proliferation of one-horse towns throughout the state created since 1900 largely to keep out foreigners (first German Jews and Italians that settled heavily in Newark) and then blacks (that supplanted them beginning in the 1940's as the war effort brought many from the south looking for a better life in local industry. The huge capital burden of excess government of all kinds remains our legacy and Christie seems to have stalled on efforts to attack it in large part because he seems to cherish hopes of a National bully pulpit, if not a better job.
He is as good as Republicans can get (and that isn't bad), but frankly overmatched by the entrenched racism that misguides most Jerseyans to defend their village turf regardless of the fiscal and social consequences. A hold over from the 60's riot scares? Perhaps a bit, but with the state demographic increasingly Hispanic and recently arrived, it seems that the new fear is Republican whites fearing the new Republican browns.
NJ is the bellweather for the 2012 National election, make no mistake. If Christie can outlast his many local democratic detractors and challengers the State may benefit, but it has some serious growing up to do. Tea party influence here helped in 2010, but it promises to be a detraction and increasinly off-message going forward, ergo CC's romance of the Grand Old Party's Grand Old Partiers in DC and elsewhere.
Good luck to us all.

Peter Talbot of NJ 1:53PM March 15, 2011

School funding was cut because there was a million dollar shortfall created by previous Governor Corzine. He used part of the Obama Stimulus funding to balance the previous year’s budget. That was a one shot deal at the money & used all in one year. He asked the teachers to pay 1.5% of their health care premiums (approximately $750.00). That amount would have nearly closed that deficit amount. The union called his request one of the greatest assaults to education by a Governor in NJ. This union (NJEA) still thinks that it's operating in the 1970's.

jerzy gurl of NJ 6:54AM March 15, 2011