Mr. Christie is picking a new fight.

It sounds counterintuitive: A Republican governor entangled in an imbroglio over his combative style girding for an ugly spat with government workers and their Democratic allies over New Jersey’s unfunded pension costs.

But this is a Classic Christie Clash — a fight on behalf of forgotten taxpayers, challenging sacred cows, venturing where predecessors dared not go. (After outlining a painful solution to the $52 billion deficit, he said, “That’s not the typical thing you hear from a politician, right?”)

No matter the outcome, the conflict is a proven winner with an immediate upside: It changes the conversation. Suddenly, New Jersey Democrats are talking about how to pay for public worker retirement benefits as often as lane closings at the George Washington Bridge.

“This is the better storm to deal with then the one he is dealing with now,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “It’s trying to gain control of both the agenda and the message, something he has always been able to do over his first four years and hasn’t over the past few months.”

Reining in government spending could do something else for Mr. Christie, should he emerge from the next few weeks unbowed: win him new admirers in the Republican Party, just in time for a presidential campaign.

Laughing at Himself

Suddenly, the lights went out. The governor, bathed in a soft white glow from tall floodlights installed by his aides, now looked like everyone else in the room.

It was self-mockery time. “They try to light me to make me look better,” he explained this week to attendees at a town-hall-style meeting. “But, you know, these are not miracle lights.”