CHRISTIE KELLY BRIDGEGATE 1.JPG

Chris Christie looks down as he listens to a question about his former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, during a news conference in Trenton last year after the Bridgegate story went public. (Andrew Mills | NJ Advance Media)

(Andrew Mills/NJ Advance Media)

Looking for a progress report on Chris Christie's campaign for president? Picture the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz after Dorothy threw water on her.

Yes, our governor is melting into a puddle of goo as his glorious power seeps away. His friends and enemies alike are watching, astonished at the speed of the decline.

"It's about the worst 30 days I've seen of any candidate," says Ed Rollins, a former aide to Ronald Reagan and a GOP campaign strategist. "In his first couple of years, he had a lot of promise. But people who a year ago thought he was viable now say he's not.

"He'll be the Tim Pawlenty of this election cycle."

For those who don't remember, Pawlenty was the former Minnesota governor who became the first major Republican to ditch the 2012 race.

That view of Christie is gaining momentum after a disastrous run that began with his goofy, jumpy hug of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones on national TV, and ended with him snarling at reporters in London after his amazingly dumb suggestion that parents should have more "choice" over whether to vaccinate their children for measles.

In between, the New York Times published a devastating report on his gluttonous taste for personal luxuries, all paid for by other people. The highlight was a $30,000 hotel bill in Jordan paid by King Abdullah II. It's illegal for governors to take gifts from anyone but personal friends, but Christie is trying to squeeze through that loophole. After all, he met the king once at a dinner thrown by Michael Bloomberg.

Suddenly, the governor who presents himself as a common man -- even after famously helicoptering to his son's baseball game -- is looking a little like Mitt Romney in 2012 when it was revealed he planned to build an elevator to move his four luxury cars around a garage bigger than most homes.

"The Christie campaign is suffering death from 1,000 cuts," says Ross Baker of Rutgers University. "I have always thought this was hopeless."

THE FLIP SIDE: How Christie can get his mojo back.

What a run. It is hard to believe this is the same Christie who could do no wrong after Hurricane Sandy, the guy who won a crushing re-election only 15 months ago, carrying independents, women and Latinos.

Republicans begged him to jump into the presidential race then, and he came close. Hard to imagine he doesn't lose sleep over that decision now.

Is it really over, as Rollins and Baker are convinced it is?

Maybe not.

Former Gov. Tom Kean sees Christie as wounded, and says he will be vulnerable when attention turns to his record in New Jersey. But it's early, Kean says, and Christie remains the top talent in the field.

"What happens now is not critical," says Kean. "And he's still in the most demand of any Republican in the country when county chairmen want someone to speak at their fundraisers. That's a big deal."

True, but that raises an obvious question for a guy running a state that is ranked near the bottom of the nation on fiscal health and job creation: Wouldn't Christie be better at hosting a talk show on Fox News than being president of the United States?



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Christie's decline from the glory days started with Bridgegate, and that still may be what ends it for him once and for all. The thing is growing.

Federal investigators on Wednesday questioned a Hunterdon County prosecutor who was fired after he protested a decision to dismiss a grand jury indictment against a political supporter of the governor's.

According to the former prosecutor, Ben Barlyn, the feds were particularly curious about Christie's role in that, given that one of the targets had bragged publicly in 2010, before the indictment was dismissed, that the governor would "step in and have this whole thing thrown out."

The Record on Thursday night reported another tangent: that federal investigators have issued subpoenas to track down charges that Dave Samson, Christie's top appointee at the Port Authority, pressured United Airlines to establish a new direct flight between Newark and his weekend home in South Carolina. The so-called "chairman's flight" was typically half full, and the route was canceled after Samson resigned under fire.

That suggests some of those facing criminal charges in the original case may be feeding prosecutors damning information about Christie and his crew in a bid for leniency.

Even if all this fizzles out, which seems unlikely, it has to be shaking the confidence of potential donors. Why risk putting your money on Christie when Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, offers the same centrist pitch without all the baggage?

"The rationale early on was that the big money guys in New York would help Christie," Rollins says. "I just don't think that's going to happen now."

ASK MORAN ANYTHING (AMA)

Star-Ledger columnist Tom Moran will take your #ChrisChristie questions Thursday at 4 p.m. on

during his AMA.

As a Jersey guy watching this national race, it drives me nuts that so little attention has focused on Christie's abysmal record as governor. But that day will come if he makes it deep into the race.

So suppose he survives Bridgegate, and the ethics complaints over taking expensive gifts from Jerry Jones, King Abdullah and Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate whose plane Christie and his family used for a trip to Israel in 2012. Suppose his brash style sells, and that he stops shooting himself in the foot.

He then will have to stand on his record. And what exactly is his signature achievement?

The bipartisan pension reform that put him on the national map exploded when he broke his promise to make hefty payments into the fund. On jobs, New Jersey is way behind neighboring state and the nation.

And the guy who promised to clean up the red ink in Trenton has made it worse. The state's credit rating has dropped on his watch, and is now the second-lowest in the country, behind Illinois.

"If this gets into a real race, they're going to look at New Jersey," Kean says. "They're going to look at that bond rating. And there are going to be opponents with a lot of money to do negative ads if they like."

You begin to understand why so many people are writing Christie off.

A poll from Monmouth University last week offered the final insult: Even New Jersey Republicans are starting to turn on him. They used to support his travels, but now they see it as self-serving.

Worse, they are about evenly split between Christie and Bush.

Pawlenty bowed out in 2012 after he lost the Iowa straw poll to Michele Bachmann.

My hope is that Christie bows out early, too, so that he can turn his attention to New Jersey.

My fear, though, is that it will take a great deal more to shake Christie off this scent.

Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find The Star-Ledger on Facebook.