Gov. Chris Christie answers questions after voting at Brookside Engine Company 1 firehouse Tuesday in Mendham Township, N.J. | AP Photo/Mel Evans On primary day, cost of Christie's Trump endorsement looks steep Governor increasingly isolated in defense of presumptive nominee's statements.

This was supposed to be Donald Trump’s night of triumph, and by extension Chris Christie’s.

“New Jersey will clinch the nomination for Donald Trump on June 7,” Christie said in April. “Take it to the bank.”


That didn’t happen. Trump secured the nomination two weeks ago, New Jersey’s Republican primary turned out to be academic, and Christie was left, once, again, to explain himself.

“No, I thought it was going to [matter], but he’s clinched the nomination now,” Christie told a crush of reporters on primary day after he cast his vote for Trump. “So it really doesn’t matter at all what happens today, as long as our delegate slate gets elected, which I’m confident that it will, none of the rest of it really matters.”

While Christie's support for Trump in New Jersey has turned out to be less consequential than advertised, the political cost to the governor has been enormous.

Christie’s home-state poll ratings were already bad well before he endorsed Trump, with his approval declining during his own presidential run from the high to low 30s. But after the Trump endorsement, they cratered, falling into the 20s. No governor has seen worse since Democrat Jim Florio faced a tax revolt in the early 1990s. The latest poll, from the Monmouth University Polling Institute, showed Christie at just 26 percent approval and 65 percent disapproval.

The political fallout has come amid lingering damage from the Bridgegate scandal, as well as bad financial news, as Christie's administration attempts to address a $1 billion shortfall in expected revenue collections for the upcoming state budget.

“By the time he ended his presidential campaign, his approval rating was in the low to mid 30s," said Monmouth polling director Patrick Murray. "That was his opportunity to come back to Jersey, put his shoulder to the grindstone and try to make it up again. But the Trump endorsement just really sealed the deal for public opinion in New Jersey about whether this guy’s head is in the game as far as governing the state. And now he’s below 30. I don’t think there’s any question. This is not margin-of-error stuff. This is a clear trajectory.”

“I think his legacy is going to be being seen as using New Jersey as a stepping stone for his presidential ambitions," Murray said. "Running for president, and when that didn’t work out, getting behind Donald Trump."

While the awkward theatrics of Christie's endorsement of Trump back in February quickly made him a national punchline, the governor's political isolation has only grown since then, reaching a sort of apotheosis Tuesday as he faced the cameras to defend remarks from the candidate that were widely denounced as racist, breaking with scores of other mainstream Republicans in the process.

Talking to reporters about Trump's claim that Gonzalo Curiel, an American-born federal judge of Mexican heritage, can’t act fairly in a lawsuit against his company because “he’s a Mexican” — a remark that caused panic and drew denunciations even among Republican officials who have endorsed the presumptive nominee — Christie said, “Those are Donald’s opinions. He has a right to express them, the same way anyone else has a right to express any of their views regarding how they’re treated in the civil or criminal courts in this country. That’s part of what free speech is all about."

Christie dismissed the importance of his poll numbers, saying he doesn’t believe them and that anyway, since he’s not running for office in New Jersey again, it “doesn’t mean a lick to me.”

But Christie's record-low popularity, and willingness to defend Trump's most controversial comments, does mean something to several Republican lawmakers and candidates, some of whom have begun distancing themselves from the governor, to the point of complicating Christie's ability to govern.

“When I disagree with the governor, I’ll vote against him," said state Sen. Christopher “Kip” Bateman, a Republican from Somerset County and one of just a few GOP state senators who have voted to override Christie’s vetoes of legislation. "He’s not always right, and I’ll continue to vote in the best interest of my district and constituents."

Bateman, a Kasich delegate, happens to have a target on his back — Democrats picked off an Assembly seat in his district in 2015, and will be looking to take him out in 2017.

He said he doesn’t know if he’ll cast his vote for Trump in November, and criticized both Trump’s remarks on Curiel and Christie's defense of them.

“I was a little surprised at [Christie’s] comments that he didn’t think it’s a big deal,” Bateman said.

Bateman’s district-mate, Republican Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, is considering running for governor. Not long after Christie endorsed Trump and began traveling to do campaign events with him, Ciattarelli was the first of several New Jersey Republicans who said the governor should focus on New Jersey or step down.

“If we want to win this election in November, the best thing we can do is be honest about Donald Trump and hope that he hears us loudly and clearly,” Ciattarelli said Tuesday. "My hope is that what the governor is saying in public is not what he is saying privately to Donald Trump.”