In his State of the State, Gov. Chris Christie named so many other cities in so many other states that he might have been mistaken for a travel agent. Even though he has yet to announce whether he’ll run for president, the national implications of today’s speech are huge. If there was any question about that, the governor’s pre-speech off-the-record briefing said it all. NJTV News Correspondent David Cruz told Anchor Mary Alice Williams that Christie bypassed local media in favor of national reporters ahead of a possible presidential run.
“The governor excluded the local media because clearly this was a speech that was not intended for local consumption necessarily. He wanted to speak to a wider audience and he wanted to brief the press who would be reporting this on the national networks — CNN, etc.,” Cruz said. “It’s not the first time that the governor has kind of left the local press out. When he decided a few years ago not to run for the presidency, they seated all of the national media first and then put the rest of us in there. Some of us ended up in the back having to shout and try to be heard. So he will do this from time to time.”
Christie’s response to criticism from members of the local media was, “You guys get to see me all the time,” which Cruz said the governor also said when he went nearly two months last year without a press conference.
The governor might prefer talking to members of the national media because they’re less likely to ask him tough questions, like about Bridgegate. “I think part of that was his knowledge that the national media is going to concentrate on these national issues in the macro sense and not get so much into the micro,” Cruz said.