On Christie's final day, a not-so-fond farewell

Today is Chris Christie’s final day as governor of New Jersey, and even Pat Wonder is ready. For Wonder, politics are not the problem. She is a conservative Republican who likes Christie's politics just fine.

For Wonder, this is personal. As in, she does not like Chris Christie as a person. The sooner he leaves, the better.

“I’m happy to see him go,” Wonder, of Hawthorne, said as she took a seat at the back of the Essence Diner in Fair Lawn for an early Sunday afternoon brunch. “I really liked Christie when he started. I don’t like him now. That whole thing of him enjoying the beach when he’d banned everyone else. That was stupid.”

This is a big moment for New Jersey. On Monday, Christie will be governor. On Tuesday, he will leave. There is nothing special about this. Fifty-four people have stepped down as governor of New Jersey so far, ever since William Livingston did it first in 1790.

Still, there is something special about Christie. More so than any other person in recent memory, he has dominated politics — and the political discussion — in this state, for more than a decade, starting with his aggressive prosecution of 130 corrupt politicians of both parties during his six years as United States attorney.

Even now, in what many professionals in politics believe to be the sunset of his political career, Christie dominates like no other. In more than a dozen interviews with people in diners Sunday in Bergen and Passaic counties, only a handful of people knew the name of Christie’s successor, Phil Murphy.

Most had never heard of Murphy. None had heard of Kim Guadagno, Christie’s lieutenant governor, who lost to Murphy in November. And none could identify any other elected leader in the state Senate or General Assembly by name.

“I know Christie is about to leave,” Irving Acevedo, 30, said as he finished breakfast at the Alps Diner in Wayne. “But the next governor? I don’t know him. Didn’t he run against a woman?”

On the other hand, everybody knows Christie. Back in 2009, when Christie ran his first campaign for governor, and again in 2012, when mainstream Republicans across the country tried to recruit him to run for president, that name recognition worked in his favor.

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“I voted for him the first time. In the beginning I really liked him,” said Ron Plaser, 59, a Kinnelon resident who went to the Alps Diner on Sunday for a breakfast omelet. “He seemed like a guy who tells it like it is, and I appreciated that.”

But the same personality traits that won Christie his fame — his combativeness, his occasionally crass plain-spokenness — grew old. On the Seaside Heights boardwalk, Christie was captured on film chasing after a private citizen and screaming “Yeah, you’re a real big shot, shootin’ your mouth off.” A member of his entourage had to place his arm over the governor’s shoulder and lead him away from the confrontation. At a press conference on the second anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, Christie told a heckler: “Sit down and shut up.”

These incidents, and others like them, changed the narrative. Once considered refreshingly blunt, Christie came to seem like a thug and a bully by the end of his second term.

“On Sandy, I thought he did a good job until he told that guy to sit down and shut up,” said Pat Brown, 69, sitting at the Essence Diner’s counter. “He’s a public servant. He shouldn’t talk to his constituents like that.”

There also were more significant failures. Most of the people interviewed on Sunday believed the George Washington Bridge scandal was a turning point for Christie’s career as governor. For years, Christie has maintained that the scheme was orchestrated by his underlings, without his knowledge.

Most people interviewed on Sunday said they believe that is a lie.

“Shutting down the bridge was crazy. Who does that?” Acevedo said. “And then he tried to pin the blame on his employees. Give me a break! He knew.”

But the thing that really turned people in North Jersey against Christie was the beach fiasco. Shutting down the government and preventing people from visiting state-owned beaches at the height of the summer season was bad enough, said Beverly Conte of Wayne.

But then Christie had the audacity to take his family on a vacation to a beach his own order had closed to everyone else. That’s when Conte really made up her mind about Christie, she said.

“The whole beach thing showed that he is arrogant and smug,” Conte said as she finished breakfast at the Alps Diner. “I’m glad he’s out.”

Conte’s husband, Joe, always liked Christie more than his wife did. But after eight years of Christie’s outbursts, Joe Conte said, his patience has run out.

“People call him a bully because he’s a Jersey guy. He talks the way we do,” said Conte, 48. “But he was very stubborn. By the end, it just got to be too much.”

Maybe Christie’s reputation can still be rehabilitated. Steve Karas hopes so. Karas is the owner of the Alps Diner. Like his customers, Karas doesn’t know any New Jersey state politicians by name besides Christie. And like them, he acknowledges that Christie has brought his problems upon himself, as when Christie acted in the early days of his administration to cancel construction of a new train tunnel between New Jersey and New York.

“I think that was a mistake,” said Karas, 69, taking a break as the rush of customers slowed down.

But Karas doesn’t think that means Christie’s political career is necessarily over.

“I think the general population of New Jersey is better off today than they were eight years ago,” he said. “Christie is young. And he might be able to find another role in politics.”

On Sunday, Karas was in a minority of one. Even the people who still admire Christie’s political skills said they know everything about the man that they ever need to know.

“In the beginning I did like him. It’s good to be a little cocky, and I liked that about him,” said Verej Nazarian, 43, a Fair Lawn resident eating breakfast at the Empress Diner. “But with Bridgegate and the beach thing, those incidents showed he doesn’t care about anybody else. I’ll be glad when he’s gone.”