By Michael Aron
Chief Political Correspondent
Tom Moran of the Star-Ledger was one of the first to call for Chris Christie’s resignation. His editorial to that effect appeared after the governor’s endorsement of Donald Trump. He still thinks Christie should resign.
“He’s made it very clear that governing New Jersey is a distant priority for him. The endorsement of Trump was just the thing that put it over the edge. It makes him politically far more toxic in New Jersey, it makes it much less likely that Democrats will want to stand up at a podium next to him, shake hands and cut a deal on pensions. It also, I think, shows that his priority is his career,” Moran said.
Last week Democrat Phil Murphy put up a website: doyourjoborquit.com.
This week, after Christie was with Trump the day of a state trooper’s funeral, Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop created a website: stepdownchris.com.
“You talk about disengagement from the transit strike, disengagement from the storm, the fact that he brought troopers around the country at the taxpayers’ dollar but at the same time choosing to go to a Donald Trump rally instead of a trooper’s funeral,” Fulop said.
“The Jersey City mayor who’s running for governor as a Democrat? Thank you,” Christie said.
Yesterday in at a wide-ranging news conference, Christie was asked about these calls to resign.
“I could care less. I answered this question already. I’m not resigning for any of the reasons that they might want me to resign. I’m not resigning. I’m serving my next 21 months. The state is being enormously successful under our leadership. And they don’t like that I endorsed Donald Trump, well that’s OK. Then they can endorse somebody else,” Christie said.
Christie dismissed a long question about whether his low poll numbers hamper his effectiveness.
“I get the picture—No—Yeah,” Christie said.
He said the lieutenant governor volunteered to attend the trooper’s funeral because he had an event already scheduled in Essex County, which he later canceled after Donald Trump called him.
“Would you have been as critical of the optics if I’d gone to the Donald Payne groundbreaking, because that’s what I was going to do. So would you have written that that was bad optics for me to be inside the state but at the Donald Payne groundbreaking rather than at the funeral? We had made the decision the way we always make the decisions,” Christie said.
Christie said he’s been campaigning for other politicians ever since 2010 and that with a good staff and cell phones, one can govern from afar.
“I’ve been doing this for six and a half years. The balance is, you try to determine where you’re needed to be and balance that both with your political obligations and your public obligations and your personal obligations, all of which you try to balance. And everyone will have different opinions about that. That’s OK,” he said.
And he chided reporters who count the number of days he’s been out of state.
“All this focus and attention on it is I think more of a media creation than it is anything else. When I go around the state and talk to people I never hear about this,” he said. “No one comes up to me and says ‘You’re not here. Are you doing your job?’ You guys focusing on it, sitting around counting every day. That’s what you do.”
None of which silences his critics.
“Chris Christie’s priority is Chris Christie. And we need someone in whose priority is New Jersey,” Moran said.