It wasn’t all that long ago that Chris Christie was the darling of the Republican Party, his star burning so bright that a group of Iowa donors flew to New Jersey to convince the governor, hardly a year into office, that he needed to run for president.

Six years later, his lieutenant governor will be running away from Christie as fast as she can.


New Jersey Republicans on Tuesday tapped Christie’s second-in-command, Kim Guadagno, as their choice to take the helm in January. She beat out a relatively unknown state lawmaker, who tried throughout their bitter primary battle to link her to the governor, and she will now take on former Goldman Sachs executive Phil Murphy in the general.

Christie’s toxicity in his home state, where his approval rating is near rock bottom, is likely to be Guadagno’s biggest liability as she moves into a general election this fall.

Christie’s been scarred by scandal and embarrassed on the campaign trail as a second-tier candidate who couldn’t make it past New Hampshire. He was fired from the presidential transition team and passed over for the job he wanted in the administration of President Donald Trump, a personal friend.

His radioactivity is a point that doesn’t seem to be lost on anyone — including Christie.

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“I’ve done plenty of campaigns,” the governor said two weeks ago, already setting himself up for the rejection. “So my heart will not be broken if I’m not asked to campaign for someone in the upcoming gubernatorial race.”

Guadagno’s staff did not respond when asked whether she would request the governor’s support in the lead up to November, when she’ll face Murphy, who trounced five other opponents in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

After winning by a double-digit margin Tuesday, she made no mention of the governor during her victory speech in her home base of Monmouth County, where Christie twice won landslide victories.

“To the people of New Jersey, I’m running for governor based on my values, based on my record and based on my principles,” she told supporters, emphasizing the word “my” each time she used it. “My principles are Main Street principles.”

Guadagno, who had criticized some of Christie's proposals during the primary election, refused to speak to reporters after delivering her remarks and ignored shouted questions about whether she would seek the governor’s support on the campaign trail.

Earlier in the day, Christie surprised reporters at his polling place by saying he voted for Guadagno. He’d previously declined to make an endorsement.

Told yesterday afternoon about Christie’s vote, Murphy had just one response: "Oh good.”

In his victory speech Tuesday evening, Murphy made clear his intention to make the fall election about the outgoing governor: “Four more years of Christie-style politics won’t clean up the mess this governor made.”

It wasn’t always this way.

Christie, who was U.S. attorney in New Jersey during the second Bush administration, took office in 2010 promising to straighten out Trenton’s crooked ways and restore some fiscal responsibility to the statehouse.

A Republican in a solidly blue state, he rose to national prominence in what seemed like months, claiming his spot as a top presidential contender by turning his snarky Jersey attitude into made–for-TV moments, battling the news media and excoriating the state’s political class.

When Hurricane Sandy arrived, he channeled the state’s sense of toughness — “get the hell off the beach,” he ordered — and then turned on a sense of empathy that connected with voters. His approval ratings reached highs not seen since Gov. Tom Kean was in office in the 1980s.

But Christie’s career went into a sudden nosedive shortly after he was elected to his second term — residents turned on him after it was revealed that some his allies, including a deputy chief of staff, conspired to close lanes to the George Washington Bridge for Christie's own political benefit — and he’s never recovered.

He now heads into his final seven months in office as a wildly unpopular leader who failed to revive the New Jersey GOP, giving up half a dozen seats in the 120-member Legislature to Democrats who were already in solid control.

His own lieutenant governor — a former sheriff he plucked from obscurity — will have to treat him like a leper if she wants to win in November.

“Democrats would be over the moon if the Republican nominee showed up in a photo op with Gov. Christie, because that would be game over,” Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray said.

Murphy and the Democratic party, he said, are going to do everything in their power to make the election a referendum on Christie.

“Because if they do, and if they’re successful in doing that, they will win by a landslide,” Murray predicted.

While that’s a widely held opinion, Mike DuHaime, Christie’s chief political strategist, sees two reasons Christie could still be helpful for Guadagno — even after a recent Quinnipiac poll showed 77 percent of voters disapprove of the job the governor is doing.

First, he says, the governor has bright spots to point to — like what he calls a “great record on jobs.” Christie has touted success in restoring the jobs lost during the recession and adding new ones. (New Jersey has actually trailed the national average in job growth, but the governor views it as an area of strength).

Second, DuHaime said, “it comes down to the candidates on the ballot.” President Barack Obama left office with the highest approval rating of his tenure, but that didn’t get Hillary Clinton elected, he points out. In New Jersey, Kean left office with the highest approval of any governor in the state’s history but handed the statehouse office to a Democrat, DuHaime noted.

“Voters are ultimately looking forward, not backwards,” DuHaime said. “Democrats would be wise to focus on the race at hand, not the past.”

Wise advice or not, Christie sightings are likely to be rare in coming months. There’s a chance he could work behind the scenes, holding fundraisers or advising Guadagno on how to win the political chess match that is Jersey politics, though that would risk becoming fodder for additional Murphy attacks.

“Behind the scenes stays behind the scenes for about 10 minutes,” said Carl Golden, who worked as a spokesman for former Republican Govs. Tom Kean and Christine Todd Whitman.

Christie said last week that he has no intention of doing his own political events. There will be no more of his famed town hall meetings, where he can control a room like few other politicians.

The governor said it’s no longer his time — he needs to make room for both nominees.

“They’ve earned the right to compete against each other, have their voices be the loudest in the political debate over the next number of months, and then let the people decide who they want to be the 56th governor,” Christie said. “And I don’t think the 55th governor should be getting in the middle of that and trying to say, ‘Hey, whoa, look over here — what about me?’ I’ve had plenty of time in the spotlight. I’m satiated.”