New Jersey Slasher
Budget-cutting Chris Christie is conservatives’ new favorite governor.
New Jersey governor Chris Christie wasn’t supposed to become a hero for the Right. He wouldn’t even accept the label “conservative” during his campaign.
He was a washed-up local pol turned lobbyist but with enough connections to become George W. Bush’s top attorney in Jersey. Christie made some headlines going after political corruption; to no one’s surprise, prosecutable officials are more common than tollbooths in New Jersey. Then he beat an incumbent governor in a terrible year for incumbents. So what? Christie was an overweight, less heroic, bridge-and-tunnel version of Rudy Giuliani.
But soon videos of his confrontations with teachers, unions, and reporters began making their way onto YouTube, and Christie became a conservative sensation. The most recent has him calling the state’s powerful teachers’ union a bully, with children and taxpayers as its victims. “You punch them? I punch you,” Christie threatens, pointing his finger. Former Bush spokesman Ed Gillespie says Christie’s fight to tame the public-sector union “may be the most important public-policy debate in the country right now.”