Bob Jordan, and William Westhoven

Wires

The issue was the focus of a segment last week on The Daily Show. Host Jon Stewart, after showing clips Christie stating that his only job is to represent the people of New Jersey, said, "Now we know, Gov. Christie's presidential ambition is the one thing he won't put in a tiny crate."

TRENTON – Gov. Chris Christie has vetoed the highly controversial bill that would have prohibited confinement of pigs in small metal "gestation crate'' cages.

Christie killed similar legislation in 2013, and his supporters argued that the effort led by Democrats to ban the crates was all about politics and designed to hurt the Republican governor's standing with conservatives outside the state.

New Jersey farms have about 8,000 pigs compared to Iowa -- an important state in a potential Christie presidential run -- which has 20 million pigs.

The issue was the focus of a segment last week on The Daily Show. Host Jon Stewart, after showing clips Christie stating that his only job is to represent the people of New Jersey, said, "Now we know, Gov. Christie's presidential ambition is the one thing he won't put in a tiny crate."

Polls commissioned by the Humane Society of the United States showed widespread New Jersey support for the bill.

A veto message issued late Friday by Christie called the bill a "solution in search of a problem," and he said legislators should "turn their attention to actual problems facing New Jersey, instead of using lawmaking as 'a political cudgel' on issues outside our borders.''

A Humane Society spokesman, Matt Dominquez, said the group is "beyond disappointed that the governor would abandon his constituents and veto a common-sense bill that would protect mother pigs from cruel confinement."

The group pressured Christie the last six weeks by lobbying for the bill in Trenton and running the Great Crate Challenge, a traveling event where people were invited to spend four minutes in a steel-bar gestation crate similar to the ones used by the pork industry.

Bill S-998 was sponsored by Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-Union, who accused Christie of "putting his personal political ambitions ahead of the humane treatment of animals. There are many animal cruelty laws on the books and this should be one of them.''

"It has the support of the people of New Jersey as well as Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the Legislature but the governor chose to follow the dictates of special interests in Iowa,'' Lesniak said. "The truth is, he is capitulating to political influences in a state thousands of miles away. The way we treat animals is an expression of who we are and what we want to be, but this veto is not who we are nor does it reflect who we want to be."

Lawmakers have the option of trying to override the veto or starting from scratch with a new version of the legislation.

William Westhoven @wwesthoven contributed

Bob Jordan 609-984-4343, bjordan@app.com