Olivia Nuzzi (@OliviaNuzzi) is a political writer based in New York.

Earlier this week, when the Star-Ledger declared “we blew this one,” calling its endorsement of Chris Christie during last fall’s New Jersey gubernatorial race “regrettable,” it seemed like any remaining faith in Christie had evaporated.

Christie has not yet fallen, but the look in his eyes suggests he knows his fingers are slipping off the ledge, one at a time. Even if no documents emerge that put Christie’s fingerprints on the George Washington Bridge, he’s already in such trouble that to let even something as inconsequential as a months-old endorsement rest unrevoked would be an embarrassment.


Amid all the hand-wringing by the press over Christie warning signs they might have missed, it’s instructive to take a close look at the governor’s earliest, mostly forgotten, political adventures. Bridgegate wasn’t a sudden fall from grace—it was just the first time anyone was paying attention.

***

As a young lawyer in the 1990s, the rules and customs of small time campaigns were not of particular interest to Chris Christie. Local New Jersey pols—no strangers to bare-knuckle tactics—had never seen anything like him. Picture Christie, as he is today: overreaching, overbearing, over-everything. A personality so big it threatens to subsume the state he rules. Now take that image and superimpose it on the quaint landscape of the local Jersey politics of 20 years ago, with minuscule campaign war chests and candidates hammering in their own lawn signs.

Christie in Lilliput. There was a lot of breakage.

His early political career saw him kicked off a ballot, successfully sued for libel and all but chased out of local Republican politics by a pitchfork-wielding mob.

In April 1993, the 31-year-old future governor—then just an attorney from Mendham, the type of place a family in a Norman Rockwell painting might live—hit the ground running for his first political campaign… And came to a dead stop.

Christie had entered the Republican primary to unseat a 15-year veteran of the New Jersey State Senate, a man for whom he had previously been an aide, Majority Leader John Dorsey. In his formal announcement, Christie explained, “The issue which has energized me to get into this race is the recent attempt by certain Republican legislators to repeal New Jersey’s ban on assault weapons.”

A few days into his first political campaign, Christie was keeping pace. He publicly challenged Dorsey to limit the amount of campaign funds he would collect from PACs and he had already gotten the required 100 signatures needed to get his name on the ballot—in fact, he’d obtained 111.

But then somebody read the names.

Dorsey charged that 40 of the 111 signatures were from people in the wrong legislative district, and another 27 were not even those of registered Republicans. Dorsey had also trapped Christie, waiting until the very last minute to challenge the petitions, leaving Christie no time to correct his rookie mistake.

In a tactic he would repeat with Bridgegate, Christie went on offense. “I’m confident I’m going to be upheld,” he told the Star-Ledger. “This is just a perfect example of John Dorsey. He thinks that he has a birthright to this seat and he doesn’t want anybody to run against him.”

Christie and his attorneys met Dorsey in court. They asked to bend the rules by using new signatures they had just obtained, and they argued that because many of the signers believed they lived within the district, the signatures were valid. The judge didn’t buy it, and rejected Christie’s petition to appear on the ballot. Christie appealed, saying “those signatures were valid because they were taken in good faith.” No dice: A state Appellate Division panel ruled 3-0 in favor of Dorsey. “He may be an aggressive candidate,” Dorsey said at the time. “But he doesn’t seem to understand the rules of the law.”

Christie’s first try at a political career had lasted about a week.

***

It took a year, but Christie shook it off. The New Jersey State Senate having proven too lofty a first shot, he set his sights on something lower. In 1994, he entered another Republican primary, this time for a seat on the Morris County Freeholder Board (each county in New Jersey has one of these, a county legislature that operates not unlike a city council). One of Christie’s allies, a Republican activist named David Scappichio, called it “a positive, issue-oriented campaign.”

There were issues, all right.

Christie decided to run with the narrative that the incumbent freeholders were up to no good. It proved useful that his opponent, a 62-year old first-term Republican and community do-gooder named Cecilia “Cissy” Laureys, was on a committee that was studying police computer systems. When Christie requested the minutes of the group’s meetings, Laureys denied any had been kept. Christie pounced, calling her a liar. When it turned out she was wrong, she admitted it was an honest mistake. Christie demanded she resign, saying, “She knew damn well what I was asking for.”

Christie clung to the minutes issue, demanding to see minutes of other private freeholder meetings. When Christie’s next request to see minutes was rejected, a prosecutor asked to see the minutes himself, and he called his request an “inquiry.”

“Hi, my name is Chris Christie,” a young, thinner Chris Christie says into the camera, his wife and infant by his side, evoking a 1950s sitcom. Christie used the ad to announce his opponents were “under investigation by the Morris County Prosecutor,” and he wanted to make sure that everyone saw it. The commercial ran 400 times (at an estimated cost of $40,000) during the famous Devils-Rangers Stanley Cup Playoff Series of 1994 and in the local commercial breaks in CNN Headline News. It ran despite the fact that it included a blatant lie: None of the incumbent freeholders was being investigated by the Morris County Prosecutor. “It’s a matter of semantics,” Christie said.

Rick Shaftan, a Republican political consultant involved in Morris County politics at the time, told me, “Team Christie makes this ad that essentially makes it sound like [the incumbent freeholders are] all about to be indicted [laughs]. They made it sound like they kicked the doors in and took all their computers.” Even when the incumbent freeholders cried foul on the ad, Christie refused to pull it. Shaftan recalled, “They corrected the ad, but they took their sweet time doing it.” And even then, Shaftan said, “It was the same ad—it just had a little strip from the bottom corner that said something like, ‘Prosecutors’ investigation complete, no indictments at this time.’”

Christie being sworn in as freeholder in 1994. | Olivia Nuzzi

The commercial did what Christie wanted it to do. Within days of its initial airing the incumbent freeholders’ poll numbers began to drop. And on Election Day, Christie had ousted Cissy Laureys from her seat. That’s when Laureys and another freeholder sued Christie for libel—and won. Christie appealed the decision, unsuccessfully, and later agreed to publicly apologize on Nov. 17, 1996, in the pages of the Daily Record.

“I recognize that a person who saw or read these advertisements could well have concluded that you have been engaged in some criminal activity or other wrongdoing in connection with your carrying out the duties of your Office,” he wrote. “This simply was not the case.”

Christie’s tail-between-his-legs apology may have been embarrassing, but he still had the office.

***

In April 1995, Chris Christie had only been a freeholder for two months. But Anthony Bucco, a former mayor and freeholder, had only himself entered the State Assembly that January to fill a vacant seat. Christie thought he had spotted another soft target.

Bucco, now 75, speaks with a thick accent and sports a weathered, quintessential Jersey visage. He told me that he had worked on Christie’s campaign for freeholder, and so he was “very surprised” when Christie decided to challenge him for the State Assembly seat. “[Christie] was very aggressive, as he is today. He was determined to win it. … There was a little brashness about him.”

Christie teamed up with Richard Merkt, a legislative aide, to run against the team of Bucco and Michael Patrick Carroll, who, upon learning that Christie had entered the race, was quoted as asking, “He’s been a freeholder for what, 20 minutes?”

Back then, Carroll was known for his staunchly conservative views (he’s a Civil War re-enactor with children named Benjamin Franklin and Robert E. Lee), which he often expressed in the opinion pages of the Daily Record. But today, Carroll is one of the four Republicans on the committee investigating Governor Christie over Bridgegate.

Christie and Merkt attacked Bucco and Carroll for what they called a “Guns for Votes” campaign, claiming they had a “radical plan to legalize assault weapons.” And they touted the fact that they had never voted to increase taxes—though Christie, having been in public office “for what, 20 minutes?” had not had many opportunities to vote, and Merkt, having never held public office, had not had any opportunities to vote at all.

Bucco and Carroll hit back, dinging Christie as a “perennial candidate” with bottomless pockets (he’d spent $60,000 of his own funds on his freeholder race the previous year). “If all you need to be a legislator is a lot of money and uncontrolled ambition, “Bucco told the Daily Record, “I think the state is in trouble.”

Christie’s biggest mistake, Carroll told me, was his positioning as a pro-choice, anti-gun candidate. “As you might gather, in a conservatively dominated primary, that’s not really a high-profile way to win an election,” he said. “So, I question the political good sense of having run such a campaign.”

For Merkt, who soon turned against his running mate, the issue was Christie’s inexperience. “One would think that you would want to spend a little time in office before you took the next step, and [going from freeholder to State Assembly] is a fairly big step,” he told me, shaking his head. “It proved to be a race filled with errors and misjudgments on our part, and we got shellacked.”

Perhaps the biggest misstep was underestimating how much bad blood there was in the wake of Christie’s vicious freeholder campaign. His liberal views on abortion and guns might have been a tough sell among Morris conservatives, but they didn’t make him enemies. It was the Cissy Laureys affair that put a target on Christie’s back. “It left some long-term scars,” Merkt said.

A Christie flyer from the 1995 State Assembly campaign. | Olivia Nuzzi

Come primary day, Christie received just 4,376 votes, finishing dead last out of the four candidates. “The voters didn’t want the dirty tricks,” Bucco boasted after Christie’s defeat. “June 6, 1995 put the end to that type of campaigning in Morris County.”

Christie returned to his post as freeholder to serve out the remainder of his term. When it came time to run again, Merkt remembered, “believe me, they couldn’t wait to see him bounced.”

***

In 1997, after three tumultuous years as freeholder—in which he was again sued, this time by an architect hired to design a new jail in Morris County—Christie was due for re-election. Republicans in Morris County were eager to push Christie out of the seat they believed he had obtained unfairly. They enlisted another Republican to primary Christie. “Everywhere I go,” one of Christie’s opponents was quoted as saying, “Chris is the issue.”

Cissy Laureys was intent on seeking revenge, and entered the race, releasing a series of advertisements reminding voters of Christie’s court-disapproved tactics. They read, “Is Chris Christie Really Sorry … Or Just Sorry He Keeps Getting Sued?”

Come primary day, Christie finished dead last, taking his running mate down with him. Laureys regained her seat. “When someone takes away your reputation, it’s something you never get back,” she said. “Republican voters of Morris County not only put me back in office, but they restored my good name.”

Christie arrived at the Republicans’ party to make his concession speech. It was an awkward scene, Christie told biographers Bob Ingle and Michael Symons. “[A]s I was walking off the stage, there was a guy standing by the stairs … and as I was walking down the steps, he was making kind of a kissing noise with his lips … And I kind of looked at him and I said, ‘what now, Chuck?’ And he goes, ‘that’s just me kissing your fucking career goodbye.’”

***

On a Saturday afternoon in late November, the phrase “Bridgegate” had yet to enter the political lexicon. But as Richard Merkt sat in a booth of a diner in Morris County and told me about the young future governor, he sounded just like the million pundits on cable everyday since the Fort Lee traffic scandal broke.

“He’s a racehorse,” Merkt said, his tone suggesting both admiration and disgust. “He’s basically someone who runs for a position so that he has that as a stepping stone to the next position.”

The racehorse has stumbled, and there’s nothing less intimidating than a horse on the ground. Unaware of how interesting such an idea would become in just a few short weeks, Merkt laughed, “He is vindictive when he’s not happy. He’d probably do something to me if he could, but he can’t.” He laughed again.