Chris Christie's career was a squandered opportunity for a natural politician

In a career marked by bold and brazen behavior, Gov. Chris Christie's re-election speech at the Asbury Park Convention Hall in November 2013 may have set a new standard for audacity.

Surrounded by the Republican faithful — including a cluster of Livingston High School friends chanting "Let's go, Lancers!" — Christie cast himself as a bipartisan savior of not only Trenton, but possibly the country.

"I know that if we can do this in Trenton, maybe the folks in Washington, D.C., should tune in their TVs right now and see how it’s done,'' he thundered.

It was classic Christie: part self-promotion, part schoolyard taunt and entirely polished for TV soundbites and social media feeds. He offered a sharp departure from the conventional and air-brushed politician that he often derided.

In many ways, Christie at the time had it all: a quickly assembled résumé of success, a brash brand that no one else had and nearly imperial powers at his disposal. He was a political celebrity from a state known for political corruption and the Sopranos. He was rubbing elbows with celebrities and being whisked away on private planes.

And he had everyone from Henry Kissinger to an Iowa casino operator beseeching him to run for president. Seemingly almost overnight, Christie was the first New Jersey candidate to have a serious shot at winning the presidency since Woodrow Wilson in 1912. There had been other prominent New Jersey contenders, but none was ever anointed a front-runner as Christie was.

But something happened on the road to the White House.

Instead of a triumphant march to the 2016 Republican nomination for president, Christie roamed the country shadowed by a bizarre, "only-in-New Jersey" scandal.

Once cheered as the hero of Superstorm Sandy — and rewarded with a 77 percent approval rating — he was now dismissed as a no-show in his home state. New Jersey saw its governor flipping pork chops at the Iowa State Fair, strolling Oprah-like at New Hampshire town halls, and dancing on late night television with Jimmy Fallon.

What New Jersey voters didn't see was Christie doing his job.

Christie's legacy could have been a two-term governor who restructured the state’s universities and created medical schools, a governor who created a national model for bail reform, a governor who won concessions from public employee unions.

Instead, he's seen as a bully, a political failure with record-low approval ratings and a governor whose legacy is missed opportunities.

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A feeling of betrayal — that Christie walked away from the tough task of running a state in need of guidance and reform — hovers over him as he heads toward the finish line.

In more than two dozen interviews done by The Record and NorthJersey.com, voters, lobbyists, political analysts, legislators and other insiders say New Jersey history won't be kind to the former U.S. attorney who barnstormed into power in 2010. Christie was a talented political force whose legacy was squandered in his unrelenting quest for the presidency, they say.

"The people in New Jersey resented it, deeply, the fact that he wasn’t paying attention to the state,'' said former Republican Gov. Thomas H. Kean, who gave a teenage Chris Christie his first introduction to state politics.

"He said, 'I can do this long distance,' but I don’t think the people of New Jersey agreed with him. I think the focus, in all ways, became the presidency," said Kean, who had a falling out with Christie over his failed 2013 attempt to remove Kean's son from a leadership post in the state Senate.

Voters responded last week.

They overwhelmingly chose Democrat Phil Murphy, a liberal ex-Goldman Sachs executive, as Christie’s successor. A former U.S. ambassador to Germany, Murphy ran as a sunny, progressive alternative to the more combative, conservative Christie.

Next governor: Phil Murphy wins; beginning a new chapter in Trenton

Stile: How Phil Murphy pitched himself as the anti-Christie

Transition: Phil Murphy starts building his team, meets with Chris Christie

He won in large part by attacking his Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, as an extension of the Christie era. His slogan, “I’ve got your back,’’ played on voters' sense that, in the end, Christie didn’t stay and fight for his home-state constituents.

He abandoned them.

“Tonight we declare the days of division are over,” Murphy boasted after jumping onto the same stage to address his supporters in Asbury Park's Convention Center where Christie hosted his re-election four years ago.

Christie's defenders believe, and Christie himself has asserted, that history will look more kindly on his tenure. Over time, future residents, lawmakers and policy advocates will credit Christie for challenging the seemingly intractable power of public employee unions, reining in the rapid growth of debt and demonstrating that state government could play a more assertive role in tamping down property taxes.

William Palatucci, Christie's longtime political adviser, argued that Christie was the most "consequential" governor in recent history.

Christie, he said, tackled "monumental" issues, such as restructuring of medical education and bail reform, that predecessors only talked about for decades. Bail reform, he notes, was bandied about in the Legislature in the mid-1980s, for example, and the medical education restructuring throughout the state eluded governors dating back to Jim McGreevey.

"That will be his legacy: his success as a Republican governor in a blue state with a Democratic Legislature,'' Palatucci said.

Critics and his supporters agree generally on one point: Christie reasserted the primacy of the New Jersey's governor's office, the most powerful governorship in the nation.

Taking Trenton by storm

The political geek who built his own political machine as an undergrad at the University of Delaware in the early 1980s swept into the governor's office as if he were born for the role.

He cut deals with enemies and crucified his foes. Lawmakers and lobbyists ducked for cover, fearing Christie's acid tongue, his penchant for payback and his Rolodex of federal law enforcement contacts compiled during his seven-year tenure as United States attorney for New Jersey.

"The governor's office is the most powerful in the country, and he restored its power immediately in the first three months,'' said Harold Hodes, a veteran lobbyist who began his career as an aide to former Democratic Gov. Brendan. T. Byrne in the 1970s.

New Jersey’s constitution gives the governor sweeping powers. Christie used those powers to strike lawmaker’s priorities from the budget with his line-item veto. His ability to appoint thousands of people to positions — including plum spots on the courts and at state authorities — allowed him to reward loyalists and thwart lawmakers who thought of opposing him. And he used the broad powers of the office in other ways, like vetoing minutes of state authorities to stall projects and setting tax revenue estimates well beyond projections to help lay claim to the “Jersey comeback.”

Christie took aim at overlooked small game — patronage hires at the Passaic Valley Sewage Authority — and declared war on the biggest and most feared political operations on West State Street, the New Jersey Education Association, the 295,000-member teachers union.

Working with a small but influential cabal of Democrats — so-called Christiecrats — who were aligned with powerful Democratic Party power brokers, Christie in his first 18 months put together a dazzling string of improbable deals:

Landmark pension and health benefit reforms.

A new limit on annual property tax increases.

A tweaking of the tenure protections for public school teachers.

A sweeping restructuring of the state's medical education programs, a plan that eluded past governors.

"He came in guns a-blazing for 18 months,'' said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. "In terms of accomplishment, it was almost another governorship ago."

Soon, the national GOP began taking notice.

He stood out in a field of lackluster Republicans for the 2012 presidential nomination. Here was a colorful, oversized figure who hailed from the party's establishment wing but with a pugnacity that appealed to angry Tea Party activists.

Ken Langone, a major GOP donor and co-founder of Home Depot, assembled a gathering of politically minded millionaires and billionaires at a New York club urging Christie to run for president in 2012, and vowing to bankroll him if he said yes. One of them was former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who flattered Christie, calling him a man of courage and character.

Deep-pocketed Iowa Republicans worked to enlist him over dinner at the governor's mansion in Princeton in May 2011. Nancy Reagan invited him to speak at the Reagan Presidential Library. And Christie regaled some of the wealthy corporate donors with his Trenton war stories at a closed-door conclave in Aspen, Colorado.

"Who knows? With his enormous success in reforming New Jersey, some day we might see him on a larger stage, where, God knows, he is desperately needed,'' David Koch, the billionaire industrialist, told the crowd.

After letting the hype reach a frenzy, Christie announced in October 2011 that he was not running in 2012, a decision that was carried live on CNN. Instead, he endorsed Mitt Romney several days later.

To many observers, that point in 2011 was Christie's moment. He had the Republican establishment at his beck and call. He could escape Trenton without getting bogged down in a second-term quagmire. And he could escape Trenton unscathed by scandal.

Palatucci said Christie "had doubts in the back of his mind" that he was ready to run in 2012. And if Christie emerged as the nominee, he would have faced President Barack Obama, a popular, historic leader who spent $1 billion to get elected in 2008 and was likely to spend the same in 2012.

Still, Christie continued to prime the presidential hype. In early 2013, he quietly checked into a New York hospital to have lap band stomach surgery. When the New York Post broke the story that May, Christie scoffed at suggestions that his surgery was an acknowledgement that the public would never elect an obese president. He had the surgery strictly out of concern about his health and family's well-being, Christie said.

"This is a hell of a lot more important to me than running for president," Christie told reporters in Newark. "This is about my family’s future."

Yet the story and the steadfast denials put Christie front-and-center in the 2016 presidential speculation.

And then came Bridgegate

Christie's 22-point re-election rout of Democratic Sen. Barbara Buono in November 2013 turned him into an immediate front-runner for the 2016 presidential nomination. A CNN poll placed him at the top of the list of GOP presidential hopefuls.

It seemed that Christie's decision to wait had paid off.

A year earlier, he had captivated the nation — and won over the hearts of most New Jerseyans — as the crisis commander of Superstorm Sandy, guiding the recovery in his signature blue fleece, warmly welcoming Obama for an inspection of the battered shoreline.

Conservatives fumed at Christie for giving Obama a stage to shine as a leader with a week before the 2012 election. But Christie cast himself as a leader who put the needs of his frazzled state ahead of his political responsibilities.

And almost a year later, the grumbling was quickly forgotten as the national GOP began preparing for the 2016 race. Christie dismissed the CNN poll as premature and "completely meaningless." He noted that the presidential sweepstakes could "change any number of times" before the 2016 contest.

It was a prophetic remark that would quickly prove true.

In January 2014, The Record reported that the mysterious traffic jams at the entrance to the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee that September were set in motion by top Christie aides to mete out punishment to the Fort Lee mayor for refusing to endorse Christie's re-election bid.

Suddenly, Christie was being singed by the very national spotlight that had cast him in an amber glow only weeks earlier. Suddenly, the new Republican for the modern age looked like a direct descendant of payback politics that gave shape to New Jersey's reputation for sordid, backroom deals.

Christie denied having anything to do with the scheme, and no detail was ever unearthed directly linking him to the plot. But the scandal came to define him — the Bully of the George Washington Bridge, another swamp creature from the Soprano State.

"There was no repairing or redeeming himself at that point,'' said Senate President Stephen Sweeney, the Gloucester County Democrat who served as Christie's key negotiating partner in the Legislature.

Still, the fallout from the scandal didn't stop Christie's pursuit of the presidency.

A taxpayer-funded investigation commissioned by his office cleared him — even though the New York-based law firm that was ultimately paid more than $8 million for the probe never spoke to the principal conspirators of the scheme. And it gave Christie the ability to proclaim the incident overblown and over, a "footnote" in a long career.

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Besides, Christie argued, presidential campaigns are about the future, not the past.

A second-term, never-ending road trip

Christie hit the road, and to many observers, he never came back. The never-ending road trip began in 2014, when Christie assumed the chairmanship of the Republican Governors Association, a job that took him out of state for 137 days, according to one count.

In New Jersey, the economy sputtered, the transportation fund for road and rail projects ran out of money and the public employee pension system headed toward insolvency.

Christie was on the road raising money, showing up at a celebrity party in the Hamptons with actor Jamie Foxx, and high-fiving Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones in his private stadium suite.

"People said, 'What are you doing?," said Murray, the pollster. "They said, 'You're traveling around the country, campaigning for other folks, raising your profile.'

"And that really hit home," Murray said.

In June 2015, Christie formally announced his campaign in the high school gym in Livingston where he graduated in 1980, surrounded by friends, family and local residents. But the rest of New Jersey was less than impressed.

Several days after his announcement, Monmouth University released a poll with a headline that distilled the public mood: "Governor has abandoned ship,'' it read. Only 27 percent of New Jersey residents surveyed said he would make a good president.

In reality, Christie still pulled off some legislative successes while campaigning.

In August 2014, Christie cobbled together bipartisan support for a sweeping overhaul of New Jersey's cash-bail system, a move that gave judges more discretion in detaining potentially violent offenders while preventing poor, low-risk offenders from sitting in jail, unable to make bail for days, sometimes weeks.

Dec. 29, 2016: Get out of jail free, or criminal justice reform?

Jan. 9, 2017: Christie signs bill adding judges in bail reform

"There was a lot of people that didn't understand that we were still talking,'' Sweeney said. "It wasn't like government shutdown. Inside, it was working. Out there, to the public, it wasn't. People just weren't having it."

That sentiment fueled the outcry after Christie's snappish reply to young woman in a New Hampshire town hall in January 2016 who asked him why he wasn't home attending to the coastal flooding in South Jersey caused by a blizzard.

"You want me to go down there with a mop?" he said to the woman.

After quitting his presidential campaign in February 2016, Christie entered a kind of political purgatory. He became a full-fledged member of Donald Trump's outer-circle of allies, going from trusted transition leader to outcast, and then back again as leader of Trump's commission on opioid abuse.

The alliance with Trump, an unpopular figure among New Jersey voters, only added to a sense of growing Christie fatigue.

The public was no longer interested in what Christie was doing in Trenton, but in what was going to be his next job and when will he leave. Will he join a law firm? Will he become a sports talk show broadcaster? Will Trump give him a soft landing?

Yet Christie has tried to reprise that first-term aura of authority. He pushed through a long-delayed renovation of the State House, a project that could cost taxpayers upwards of $700 million when completed.

And he was able to get the Legislature to insert language into the state budget that would allow him to pull $200 million from other state programs to cover the cost of drug treatment and rehabilitation programs.

Christie has made his crusade on opioid addiction his last hurrah, an effort to leave a lasting imprint before he retires, possibly to a law firm or to a job in the Trump administration or maybe as a cable TV commentator. He's seen speaking somberly in public service announcements with Vanessa Vitolo, 30, a recovering addict from Absecon.

"The road to recovery starts now," Christie says.

Christie's own image will likely undergo some rehabilitation over time. Kean believes that is inevitable. But he offered this assessment that could serve as an epitaph on Christie's tenure.

"He had some good instincts and did some very good things,'' Kean said. "The shame is that he didn’t do more."

About this series: Veteran New Jersey State House reporter and columnist Charles Stile examines the Christie record in a three-part series.

WEDNESDAY: The squandered promise of the Christie era.

THURSDAY: The pugnacious style that made Christie a political celebrity.

FRIDAY: The success and failures of his eight years in power.