By David Cruz
Correspondent
If Chris Christie is going to have a shot at winning his party’s nomination for president, he’s going to need to do well here, and to do well here, he’s going to have to do a lot of this.
At Joey’s Diner in Amherst this morning, the governor shook almost every hand in the joint and engaged in some sometimes substantive small talk with voters, eager to meet the guy they’ve been hearing so much about.
“I would ask that you never, ever refer to it as an entitlement. Your payroll taxes, my payroll taxes get put into it. It’s supposed to be a trust fund,” said a diner patron.
“I know what you’re getting at. I know what you want me to say and I know that you’re filming me and you want me to say stuff so you can use it later, but that’s not the way I answer questions. I know what you want; I’m giving you the answer that I believe and if that’s not good for your film, I’m sorry, but you’re doing your best and I love your persistence, but this is the answer I give,” Christie said.
“One of the things we’ve done is: Hispanic hiring in New Jersey state government is 50 percent higher today than the day I became governor. That’s really important; if you wanna diversify government, you have to hire people that represent those views,” he said.
The reaction — mostly positive, but not unanimous.
“I feel like I live in New Hampshire and it’s important to come out and talk to all of the candidates and ask them hard questions,” said Manchester resident Elizabeth Ropp. So if somebody asked her today if she’d vote for Christie? “I would not vote for Chris Christie,” she siad.
“The fact that he’s gone out to the Koch brothers audition and tried to get their $900 million war chest and seeing his record? It hasn’t really changed. I mean he comes to a diner; he wants to gladhand people, shake their hand and say, ‘Hey, I’m a real nice guy,’ but when you look into his record nothing’s really changed, I don’t think,” said Manchester resident Paul Brochu.
The press — finally moving beyond questions about deflated footballs — pressed Christie on issues like renewing the Patriot Act — he’s for it; fixing the immigration system — the nation needs to have a conversation about it, he says, and reports that until 2012, he used the luxury box at MetLife Stadium and billed the state for it. Not illegal, but optically, not optimum for a wannabe regular guy governor.
“Quite frankly in today’s world where everything’s kind of twisted and turned to look like it’s something wrong when it isn’t, I just said in 2012 to my folks, ‘Listen let’s just have the state party pay for this,'” Christie said.
The Christies traveled together to New Hampshire this week. Mary Pat Christie just quit her job in finance ostensibly to spend more time with the family — and the governor.
When asked what the strategy is for when the First Lady accompanies him, Christie said, “Strategy? The strategy of the First Lady accompanying me is I like it when she’s with me more than when I’m alone. In Fact I said to her this morning, we woke up in the hotel and I turned to her and said, ‘I cannot tell you how much better this is when I wake up next to you than when I wake up by myself.'”
The governor will be back here next week, content, by all indications, that his New Hampshire offensive is working like a charm.