The New Jersey Star-Ledger, the state's biggest newspaper by circulation, said its editorial board regretted its decision to endorse Republican Gov. Chris Christie for reelection last year, even though they did so with significant reservations about his policies on minimum wage, gay marriage and climate change.
At the time of the decision, wrote New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial page editor Tom Moran in an article published Sunday, the paper was stuck between a "bully" governor it didn't like and Democratic Sen. Barbara Buono, a challenger it felt was much more likable but unfit to lead the state. Now, in light of a slew of state and federal investigations into Christie and his administration, the paper wishes it had never advised readers that the current governor was the better of two not-so-great candidates.
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"Yes, we blew this one. [...] Yes, we knew Christie was a bully," Moran writes. "But we didn’t know his crew was crazy enough to put people’s lives at risk in Fort Lee as a means to pressure the mayor. We didn’t know he would use Hurricane Sandy aid as a political slush fund. And we certainly didn’t know that Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer was sitting on a credible charge of extortion by Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno."
Moran is referring to three high-profile scandals that have rocked the Garden State governor and his administration over the past few weeks, even though Christie himself has not been directly tied to any of them thus far.
The first came when public emails showed that governor aides and appointees orchestrated a massive four-day traffic jam in Fort Lee, N.J., in September, allegedly as political retribution against the borough's mayor for not endorsing Christie's reelection bid.
Next came a federal investigation into Christie's use of some federal aid money meant to help victims of Hurricane Sandy. Some of the aid was used to produce a commercial designed to bring tourists back to the Jersey coast after the storm, but records show that the governor's office paid around $2 million more for an advertising campaign that prominently featured Christie and his family - although they could have chosen a campaign with the same message that the governor did not star in. The belief is that the extra money effectively turned a tourism ad into a commercial that also benefited the governor's bid for reelection.
The most recent allegation surfaced when the mayor of Hoboken, N.J., Dawn Zimmer, alleged on MSNBC and CNN that Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno told her that Hoboken would receive little Hurricane Sandy recovery aid for unless she approved a redevelopment plan favored by the governor.
Despite bringing up these incidents, Moran never explicitly says his team would have endorsed Christie's democratic challenger had they known about the scandals. Even though the newspaper is no fan of Christie, he writes, it worries that the scandals will tarnish Christie's image to the point that his likely bid for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 will fall to even worse candidates.
"If one of the tea party favorites gets the Republican nomination, then the country is at risk," Moran writes. Later in the article, he adds: "How does President Rand Paul sound to you? Now ask yourself this: If the Republican primary came to a choice between Paul and Christie, which candidate would you endorse? At the risk of repeating a mistake, I’d pick Christie in that primary, even now. And if you think that makes some sense, then you understand how excruciating the endorsement process can be."
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